Soliciting Solutions for Direct Buy Advertisers

Posted by Mehul as Advertising

Once you are well known as an authority in your market or niche and have attained certain level of traffic and repeat visitors, additional revenue maybe generated from direct buy advertising. It is often more profitable for you to solicit advertisers directly for your blog or website without having to go through a middle man such as AdSense or a CPM network

What is the certain level? It will vary depending on your niche or market area, but if you are one of the top blogs or websites in that area, you can likely command the money to make it worth the effort, which could be bringing in thousand’s extra a month, making the annoyance of the bit of extra work of little concern. The following guidelines will help to ensure that you aren’t leaving any money on the table and are making the process as user friendly for those advertisers as possible.

Soliciting advertisers:
First and foremost, make it known that you have an “Advertise with us” page on your site. Link to it from your homepage, “About us” page and even in the footer of your site along with your regular footer links. Blog about the fact you are now accepting advertisements to help jump-start the ad buys and add it to your signature on your outgoing business-related email. Do keep in mind that your AdSense Terms do not permit you to contact the advertisers you see appearing in your AdSense ad units.

Make it Effortless:
Make the process as efficient and professional as possible, with an “Advertise with us” page that gives potential advertisers all the information they need, including an interface that enables advertisers to:

Place an order
Upload Graphics or add text
List their chosen URL and
Submit payment and Reorders

How to Charge:
How to sell your advertising, is strictly for you to decide, and there are two basic models to choose from:

The direct buy of $X per month model, which requires the least amount of work on your part.
If you have an ad serving system that is somewhat self-serve for the advertiser, the Certificate Management Protocol (CPM) model might be best, where the advertiser is paying for impressions instead of a specific spot for a specific amount of time, especially you are still building traffic, or traffic come in peaks.

Package or solo deals?
Depending on just how much ad space you actually have, you can choose to offer single spots only, or package deals that will splash a single advertiser in multiple places for the month thereby having a greater likelihood of selling out your entire ad space inventory.

What Fee to Charge:
Often the most complex question, you should research other similar sized sites in your niche and see what their ad rates are. Lowball your rates to start, so you can attract the initial group of advertisers… higher rates that don’t sell mean less money for you than selling out all your lower priced ads. It is definitely a case of supply and demand… if you sell out the first six months of your best positioned ad the first day, you know you can command a huge jump for people booking the seventh month and higher in that prime spot and bump the price up significantly.

Discounts:
Consider offering discounts for multiple months or multiple ad placements, or for those who want to buy all your available ad spaces for a single month; something advertisers may expect when doing larger ad buys.

Artistic Power:
Will you allow alternative ad sizes, pop-ups, specific keywords linked within your blog, and interstitials? Are they text only or will you allow video ads, flash ads and graphic ads? Advertisers may be willing to pay a premium for video above what they would for ordering a 250×250 ad space for a static graphic.

Placement of Ads
Different ad spaces are definitely more sought after so decide where will these ads be appearing and then charge advertisers accordingly: