How do you monetize your website? To do so, most blogs are selling ads spaces, or at least, they try. Last week, I visited lots of blogs and studied how they directly sell ad spots, using an “Advertise” page. A good “Advertise” page, with the proper info can make your blog gain new partners quicker than you may think.
Here is 10 tips and tricks to create a killer advertising page for your blog and attract new advertisers.
Make it visible
This may sound as a basic tip, but regarding the amount of blogs who hide their advertise page and simply display a link on their about page, it has to be said.Advertisers don’t have time to lose by searching how they can advertise on your blog. There’s billions of blogs, so if they can’t access your advertising infos and price, they’ll simply advertise on another blog.
To make sure that everyone can easily access your advertising page, add a link to your navigation menu or below your main ad space.
Be clear about your prices
Believe it or not, I saw many blogs were the author ask potential advertisers to email him for giving out the price of an ad spot.
Seriously, excepted if your run a very popular blog, I doubt that many people will agree to waste their time by sending you an email to ask for the price of an ad space.
Even better, if you sells ads spots at a very competitive price, what about displaying the price below your blog’s main ad spot?
Selling differents ads spaces? Describe each individually
If you’re selling different advertising spaces (125*125px banner, text links, 60*250 footer ad…) you definitely should consider describing each of your space individually, and show pros and cons of each space. You should also let potential advertisers know if banners are rotating or not, if if you allow animated gifs/flash banners.
Honestly is obviously a good way to start creating good relations with your advertisers.
Create a clean table for your prices
More than one year ago, I came across a WordPress theme called Wp-Maganews. This theme doesn’t exist anymore, but I remember how stunning the “Advertise” page template was, mostly due to the table displaying both ad positions and price for 1, 3 or 6 months.
Add a site plan to your ads page
Another great idea is to display a huge screenshot of your blog showing where ads are being displayed. Ads position is a very important factor for an advertiser, so the most precise your are, the better it will be.
A good example of an advertising plan can be found here.
Don’t waste time. Add paypal links.
I already said it twice before, but advertisers haven’t any time to lose and there’s many other blogs that sells ad spots and links, so the competition is pretty high.
If you want to stand out of the crowd, you should definitely provide a quick “Buy it now” Paypal link, directly on your advertising page. This can also gets benefits from compulsive buying.
Though, you must think about being clear in the kind of ads you find appropriate for your blog. If you don’t say a word about that, you can for sure expect requests for porn and viagra ads!
Don’t be afraid to show your popularity
Remember that you’re are selling ads. So, you must convince your potential client that buying an ad spot on your blog will be good for him.
Always take screenshots when you hit digg frontpage, or when you’re are linked by a popular blog, and make sure to provide links so the advertiser will be sure that there’s no fake. This is a real proof of your blog success.
My blog Cats Who Code have a pretty good example of it.
Show off your stats
The popularity of a blog can be estimated using several parameters as such as GooGle Pagerank, number of RSS feed subscribers, Alexa rank, and a lot more.
To attract advertisers, you should definitely display this info publicly on your “Advertise” page. If you’re using WordPress, a plugin called Blog Stats allow you to easily display all the informations a potential advertiser need on your blog.
This include: post count, comments count, average comments per post, registered users count, Pagerank, technorati rank, alexa rank, feedburner subscribers, google backlinks, yahoo backlinks, and more.
A very great thing with this plugin is that it will automatically update the data once per day. A definitive must have if you’re running a WordPress blog.
Using WordPress? Take advantage of page templates
If you’re using WordPress, you should definitely use a page template to give a special style to your advertise page. Creating a page template is easy: You just have to start with a blank .php file and add the following:
<?php /* Template Name: Advertise Page */ ?>
This will create a page template named Advertise Page. Now, you have to use your creativity to populate this page with useful info – for example those you’ve learnt while reading this article 
But, where’s the 10th tip? Well, the 10th tip is YOUR tip. If you have any trick to enhance your advertise page or attract new advertisers, let me know in a comment!
{ 8 trackbacks }
{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the tips! When I start putting ads on my blogs, I will be sure to remember this!
@Eric B : Glad you found this post useful!
Great article thanks for the advice, I will be sure to refer to this on many occasions in the near future.
Just one thing, I presume the link to your advertise page on cats that code should be:
http://www.catswhocode.com/blog/advertise and not the one listed which goes to a 404.
Either way, great post and thanks.
Steve @ Cooca
@Steve : You’re right, the link was broken. It is fixed now – Thanks for letting me know!
I like the “create table for prices” idea. Other tips are good too, thanks.
Great! I was looking to create my own advertise page on Design Informer. Right now, it just leads straight to BuySellAds.
@Design Informer : Mine also lead straigt to BSA. As BSA have their own stats, the tips from this article are more likely to be applied on blogs that directly sell ads.
Though, a good “Advertise” page is a must have for all blogs. I’ll create one for CWB as soon as possible
Jean-Baptiste – There are a fair number of misspellings in this article: ‘Time to loose” (2x); “add space” (2+times) and … what’s an animated “gig”? :-p
However, it’s still a timely article and one that has me (finally) re-writing our “Advertise” page!
@stk : Sorry for the mistakes, I just corrected it. English isn’t my primary language, so sadly I don’t speak it as good as I’d like too
Great article! I was glad to see that I’m already taking many of these tips into account on my page. I was wondering though, how do you create a full page screen shot or advertising plan like the one you linked to in the article? Is there a program that will take a snapshot of your blog like that?
Awesome post. I’m glad that I use BuySellAds.com though, so I don’t have to worry about this.
In line with one of your tips to display information below the main ad area to advertise, I use the AdBrite service. This displays ads from their network when available, and allows other services like Google Adsense when they run out of ads that are suitable for the content AND, they always show ‘Your Ad Here’ option! You can check out on my site.
@Chris Brennan : Theres’ possibly software to do such things, but you simply take 2/3 screenshots and assemble them using Photoshop.
Of course! Thanks!
This post is awesome . But easy said then done
One tip I really need to apply from your list is allowing instant payment via Paypal.
Very Usefull…….
Thank you.
I need the paypal link too.
“@stk : Sorry for the mistakes, I just corrected it. English isn’t my primary language, so sadly I don’t speak it as good as I’d like too
”
You don’t speak it as WELL as you’d like to
You’re welcome.
D
All great tips and I will be following some of them that I did not think of. I don’t blog very well, but I am improving.
Thanks for the tips.
“Be clear about your prices”, that’s a very important hint. Never selling oneself too cheap!
Thanks JB! For my personal blog, I really need to get it together and get some good advertisers.
Excellent post. Does the Paypal thing work well with others? Just curious.
@sapphire : When I had the paypal thing implmented on Cats Who Code, it worked very well. Compulsive buying!
Why your own advertise page is not following the tips you shared?
It is just going to buysellads page.
But, nice tips
@Site Reviver : Because those tips are good for people who sells ads directly, while I only sell BSA ads. If you go to catswhocode.com or wprecipes.com, you’ll see my “advertise” pages
Thanks friend, this article surely will help me to create killer advertiser page which i am working now.
Thanx jean.This is surely going to help me in designing my new blog.:)
Well, you’ve saved my life with this article. Actually the price table is a good idea that I could never imagine. Thanks, there are many good points. The most important stuff is to save time and be honest with your statistics.