Selling Private Ads Via Forums
Forums are a great tool to sell private ads. Personally, I’ve sold private ads through both Bloggeries and DigitalPoint forums. Not every post in the “sell advertising” sections of these forums fares well, however. By following a few tips, you can make your ad attractive enough to catch the eye of prospective advertisers.
Be Straightforward
Whether your blog gets 3,100 visits a day or 13 visits a day, be honest. If you lie to people, they’ll most likely never want to buy ads from you again. It’s not worth the up-front gain; you’ll fare much better in the long run by being honest and straightforward about your blog stats. Don’t worry - there is a market for blogs of all sizes!
Set Your Prices Fairly
So, you’re honest and say that you get 100 visits a day. Then, you come out and say that you’re charging $125 per month for a 125×125 ad block? That’s insane! It is true that prices vary from site to site, but be reasonable. Try looking at the CPM and setting it at a reasonable cost such as $5 CPM (Cost per 1000 views). For example, a site that got 100 views a day would get 3100 views per month. $5×3.1 thousand views per month comes out to about $15.50, which is a very reasonable price for a site of that size.
Run A Special Pricing
If you’re running a special on your site, that’s a great time to go to forums to let people know about it. If you aren’t running a special at your site, you might consider giving a 2-3% discount to those who buy ads through the forums until you’ve built up demand for ad spots on your site. Even then, it’s still good to offer discounts from time to time!
Be Persistent
If someone contacts you for information about ad pricing and you don’t hear back from them after a week or so, follow up. Don’t be rude or try to pressure them in to buying, but kindly ask them if they’d still be interested in placing an ad on your website. If you ever happen to be sold out of ad slots, make a backorder list of people who you’ll contact as soon as an ad slot is about to become available.
By following a few of these tactics, you might end up selling more ad slots than you thought you would. It’s worked for me - try it yourself !
blogengage Said:
Great advice! Being honest is a given really! But I guess if you find some nub that’s lying it doesn’t feel so good as a buyer!
I’d be interested in your 125* 125* top left of the 4 come visit me in your forums, http://www.blogengage.com/forum/
April 11th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Alan Said:
I posted the april special in the forums - http://www.blogengage.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=261
Thanks!
April 11th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Charla Said:
Great advice once again. I’m going to my stats and figure out how many views I’ve gotten within the past month.
April 12th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Sabrina Said:
I need to check into this more. I would love to get more advertising on my blog. I just don’t know how to set the prices. I’m gonna check out your April specials too.
April 12th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Alan Said:
The special pricing isn’t listed on the buy advertising page, so if anyone decides to buy ads during april let me know that you want to use the april special for $5 image ads or $1 text ads.
@Sabrina - Do you run a stats program such as the free wordpress plugin? If so, you could shoot me over some of your stats for the past few days and I could see if I can come up with something for you. Of course, the pricing for ads can also depend on the niche and what level of demand there is for quality ad placement in that niche.
April 13th, 2008 at 12:02 am
Sabrina Said:
Thanks Alan,
I’m sending you an email now.
April 13th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Private Ads Monetize This Site - Zero and Up Said:
[...] In fact, so far, Zero and Up has been monetized solely by private ad sales - no middleman involved. Forums have been a great tool to sell ad space, resulting in additional exposure. At first I gave out a [...]
May 6th, 2008 at 10:09 pm