Online Advertising Proposal – How to write for your Website

So you decided to go against using the ad networks for getting advertisement on your website. Not really a good strategy if you are not #1 in your niche to attract advertisers directly.Anyway idea of this post is to help you take the next step which is writting an advertising proposal for your customers. Try to make a generic brochure kind of proposal. This way you need to personally address every letter sent out and can request your network to keep forwarding proposal till the time it reaches a hand which is interested or potential advertiser.

Start your proposal by introducing your site. The lines to follow should clearly outline sites niche,category,popularity and usage. Dont throw too much stats at them.

Second paragraph should be an argument “Why you”. I believe in having it at starting so that advertiser dont get bored and rush to straight away costing section to compare with other offerings. This way your purpose,reason and costing will always be read. This section should clearly help advertiser identify target audience of your site and your sites positioning against the competition.

Third Paragraph should explain advertiser services/product your site offers to your target audience. This is easy as its just listing sites usability and part of your vision.

Average site user Profile: – I like to put this as a seperate section again so that if in all the sales talk this information does not get clearly layed out to advertiser he may overlook the proposal.

Important Segment : Identify your potential site advertisers. Example : Online Travel E-commerce companies – give out points in their favour .So that if your proposal reaches out to someone in network he/she doesnt need to use mind to see who will benefit from advertising at your site. They can just forward it straight away to person from the vertical in their contact.

Once done with that provide a layout with description and value it can derieve for a potential advertiser. In the end put in tabular format the costing and your contact details.

With these ingridents your proposal is ready to hit your address book. Will be more than glad for people to refine it further down.

Avoid non relevant ads

If your blog talks about technology there is no reason to display ads about mortgage rates or hotels in Paris. Sure it might help you make some money on the short term, but over the long term it might harm your credibility since such non relevant ads offer no value for your readers.
Non relevant ads could include text link ads, sponsored reviews and direct sponsors. If someone is willing to advertise something on your site that is not even remotely related to your topic it means that he is just looking for the SEO part (i.e. Pagerank from Google). Secondly those ads might also discourage legit sponsors that do not want to get mixed with non relevant content.
I know it is hard to turn down potential revenue sources, specially when they help to pay your hosting bills. If you currently have non relevant ads or sponsors on your blog you could try to remove them gradually. Remove a single one initially and look for something else that could offer value for your readers.

Preventing Ad-blindness on Your Blog

The human mind doesn’t pore over every inch of your site, examining every image, reading every word and link. In fact, other than the content, readers take in very little. That’s why click-through rates on advertisements are so low (sometimes just a handful from a thousand impressions).

Once common and problematic pay-per-click (PPC) advertising myth is that more ads = more clicks – as if readers were clicking all over the page and simply need a bigger net to catch those clicks in. Not true. The more ‘stuff’ you push at your readers the less attention they’ll pay to each element. The ads will seem like nothing more than a blur.
Web users are very good at recognizing layout elements of little interest to them. The more ads you have, the more likely they are to be considered an obstacle and subconsciously blocked out.
Which brings me to the second problematic PPC advertising myth: that ads get more attention when they have a big swathe of space all to themselves.
Wrong again. The mind sees a cluster of ads surrounded by nothing of interest and ad-blindness kicks in. If anything, stacking the ads in one place makes this easier.
If you want visitors to give your ads the kind of attention you’d like, you need to do two things:
Place high interest elements near your ads. These include category lists, popular articles lists, posts, inspiring quotes and so on. Attention has a radius – it will be focused on what’s important and leak into the surrounding area. A note, though: never place your ads so close to another element that a reader might accidentally click the ad when meaning to click something they else. The reader will feel tricked.
Less is more. Ad-blindness tends to operate in broad strokes. Less and smaller advertising is unlikely to trigger ad-blindness as it’s generally lumped in with nearby layout elements. The less you have on the page overall, the more attention each element will get. Your ads will stand out rather than fading into the background.
The key is to experiment with your ad-placement – not just for a day, but for a week or so. Different locations, different ads and different combinations will perform at varying levels. Try fewer ads in more prominent locations. Try sandwiching your ads between elements of great interest to your readers.
De-cluttering can improve the performance of your ads
Readers have a definite amount of attention to give. Simplifying down to your blog’s essential, important elements will mean readers can divide their attention up into bigger portions. More attention given to PPC advertising will mean more clicks, as the reader needs to take in the message of the ad before they’ll be compelled to click it.
Fewer ads can mean more clicks
More ads means reader attention will be spread more thinly between them, possibly to the point where visitors aren’t taking in the message of any of your ads.
It’s better for you if they’re focusing closely on just one, rather than only partially registering the message of several. In addition to experimenting with ads in different locations, reducing the number of ads on your site could also be a worthy experiment.
What methods have you used to reduce ad-blindness on your blog?

Adsense Competitive Ad Filter

n the past we have already covered how to improve Adsense targeting, how to optimize Adsense units and what are the best positions to place your ads. Another feature that you can use to improve your overall earnings is the Competitive Ad Filter.
Google AdSense provides the functionality to block specific ads from appearing on your pages. Although Google ads are highly targeted to the content of your page, there may be situations in which you don’t want to display particular advertisements - for example, you may wish to block ads leading to competitors’ sites.
While Google defends that the Competitive Ad Filter could be used to avoid links to competitor sites you should be more concerned with smart pricing techniques from arbitrage sites. Those sites bid as low as $0.01 for clicks, reducing drastically your earning potential.
In order to block URLs you need to log into your Adsense account, click on the Adsense Setup tab and then click on Competitive Ad Filter. If you are not sure about what URLs to block you can check AdBlackList.com site, they keep updated lists of arbitrage sites.

Why You Should Be Careful with Ads on Your Site

There is nothing wrong with trying to make money from a website. You put hard work into it, you provide value to other people, so you should get compensated for it.
The mistake many website owners and bloggers do, however, is to get greedy once they see real bucks coming in. That is when they put one of the following factors on the site:
too many ads
ads heavily blended with the content
ads with flashy colors
unrelated ads
animated ads that are distracting
While in the short run these “methods” might increase your revenues, over the long term they will actually hurt your profitability. Having too many ads or intrusive ones will hurt the user experience and make you lose readers along the way.

Improving Your Page Rank on Google

There are numerous tips floating around in webmaster circles about how to improve your ranking in search engine results on Google.

<span style="font-weight:bold;">Get Those Inbound Links</span>
Since Google ranks your pages according to the number of links pointing at your page, it stands to reason that you should try to get as many links pointing at your pages as possible. This is so obvious that I'm only mentioning it for completeness sake.

<span style="font-weight:bold;">Your Title Tag</span>
Google seems to give weight to the title of your page. By title, I mean the text that is sandwiched between the HTML <TITLE> tags in the <HEAD> section of your web page. If you use a Web editor that automatically inserts a title like "New Page", remember to change it to some meaningful text with your keywords inside to reap the benefit of this feature.

Content-Laden Pages (Keyword Density)<span style="font-weight:bold;">
It has often been observed that Google considers keyword density a large factor in ranking pages in search engine results, more so than many other search engines.
<span style="font-weight:bold;">

Keyword-laden Links?</span>
According to a paper published by one of Google's founders, if the links pointing to your page has the relevant keyword text in them, it will cause your page to be ranked higher in search engine results. For example, a link with the text "Cheap Shoe Store" pointing at your site will cause your site to be listed earlier if a visitor searches for "cheap shoe store" than if the link simply said "click here". You can find a copy </span>of the paper online at The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine.

10 Ways to make your Blog more Attractive to Advertisers

1. Consider your Audience

It almost goes without saying - but it’s worth putting yourself in your readers shoes and consider what they might be looking for as they surf by your blog. Are they shopping for specific products? Might they be looking for related products or accessories? What would trigger them to purchase? Start with your reader in mind rather than the product. If you take this approach you could end up doing your reader a favor as well as making a few dollars on the side.

2. Genuine Recommendations and personal endorsements always work best

There are literally hundreds of thousands of products and services for you to choose from to recommend to your blog’s readers but making money from them is not as simple as randomly adding links to them from your blog. Your blog’s readers come back to your blog day after day because something about you resonates with them - they have at least some level of trust and respect for you and perhaps the quickest way to destroy this is to recommend that they buy something that you don’t fully believe will benefit them.

The best results I’ve had from affiliate programs are where I give an open and honest appraisal of the product - including both it’s strengths and weaknesses. The most successful affiliate program I’m involved with here at ProBlogger is Joel Comm’s e-book which I reviewed here. If you read the review you’ll see that I not only tell readers who I believe the book is for but I also mention those it is NOT for. In a sense I critique it. On a surface level one might think that this wasn’t a wise move and that I should have given a glowing review - however the sales that I’ve had through the program have proven otherwise. People want to know what they are buying first and even if they know a product has limitations they will buy it if it meets their particular need.

3. Link to Quality Products

We all like to make sure we’re buying the best products money can buy - your readers are no different to this and are more likely to make a purchase if you’ve found them the best product for them. Choose products and companies with good reputations and quality sales pages. There is nothing worse than giving a glowing review of a product only to send your reader to a page that looks cheap and nasty.

4. Contextual Deep Links work Best

When I started using the Amazon Associate Program I naively thought that all I had to do was put an Amazon banner ad (that linked to Amazon’s front page) at the top of my blog. I thought that my readers would see it and surf over to Amazon and buy up big - thereby making me a rich man. Nothing could have been further from reality - I was deluding myself.

I always says to bloggers that I’m consulting with that they should learn something from contextual advertising when it comes to affiliate programs. The secret of contextual ads like Adsense is that a reader is reading a post on a particular topic on your blog and when they see an advertisement for that same product they are more likely to click it than if they saw an ad for something else. The same is true for affiliate programs. A banner to a general page on every page on your site won’t be anywhere near as effective as multiple links throughout your blog that advertiser products that are relevant for readers reading particular parts of your blog.

So if you’re writing a blog about MP3 players and have a review for a particular product - the most effectively affiliate program that you could link to from within the content of that page would be one that links directly to a page selling that specific model of MP3 player. This is how I use the Amazon program today. It is more work than contextual advertising because you’re not just putting one piece of code into a template but rather need to place individual links on many pages - but I find that it’s been worth the effort.

5. Consider positioning of links

One of the things I go on and on about with Adsense optimization is the positioning of ads. I tell bloggers to position their ads in the hotspots on pages (like the top of a left hand side bar - or inside content - or at the end of posts above comments etc). The same principles are true for affiliate advertising.

6. Traffic levels are Important

While it’s not the only factor - traffic levels are obviously key when it comes to making money from almost any online activity. The more people that see your well placed, relevant and well designed affiliate links the more likely it is that one of them will make a purchase. So don’t just work on your links - work on building a readership. Not only this, consider how you might direct traffic on your blog toward pages where they are more likely to see your affiliate links.

7. Diversify without Clutter

Don’t put all your affiliate efforts into one basket. There are plenty of products out there to link to so there is no need to just work on one. At the same time you shouldn’t clutter your blog up with too many affiliate program links. If you do so you run the risk of diluting the effectiveness of your links and could disillusion your readership.

8. Be Transparent

Don’t try to fool your readers into clicking links that could make you money. While it may not always feasible to label all affiliate links I think some attempt should be made to let people know what type of link they are clicking on. I also think consistency is important with this so readers of your blog know what to expect. For example here at ProBlogger usually put a note beside or under affiliate links to simply let readers know that that is what they are. On my Digital Camera Blog I don’t do this because of the large number of such links make it clear by the text around the link that clicking on it will take them to some sort of shop or information where a purchase is possible (ie a link my say ‘buy the XXX product’ or ‘get the latest product on XXX’.

9. Combine with other Revenue Streams

Affiliate programs and advertising programs are not mutually exclusive things. I’ve come across a few people recently who have said they don’t want to do affiliate linking because it will take the focus off their Adsense ads. While there is potential for one to take the focus off the other - there is also real potential for both to work hand in hand as different readers will respond to different approaches. You should consider the impact that your affiliate links have on other revenue streams - but don’t let one stop the other.

10. Track results

Most affiliate programs have at least some type of tracking or statistics package which will allow you to watch which links are effective. Some of these packages are better than others but most will at least allow you to see what is selling and what isn’t. Watching your results can help you plan future affiliate efforts. Keep track of what positions for links work well, which products sell, what wording around links works well etc and use the information that you collect as you work plan future affiliate strategies.

What tips would you give someone getting into affiliate programs? What has worked well for you? What hasn’t? Share you experience and ideas on affiliate programs below.

How quickly after starting a blog should I put ads on it?

There are two dominant camps of opinion on this question - both of which have things going for them:

1. Run Ads from Day 1 - The basic thinking behind this approach is that if you’re thinking of running ads at some point you might as well integrate them from day one. The reasons include:

Reader Expectations - starting a blog with no ads and then adding them later means running the risk of disillusioning readers whose expectations are that the blog is and always will be ‘ad free’. Some readers feel very strongly about this and to change the rules mid stream can cause problems. Start with ads from the beginning and you set the expectations from the start and don’t have to manage a transition from no ads to ads later on.
Consistent Design - running ads from the beginning of your blog means that you design your blog (or have it designed by a blogger) with ads already integrated into it. This means that you don’t need to do a redesign later on to add ads but already have them built in.
Earnings - my first blogs were ad free for almost 18 months before I discovered AdSense. While in the early days I didn’t do massive traffic I was doing some and those blogs could well have earned a little money each day. Of course a little each day for 18 months can add up to a significant amount. Put ads on your blog from the start and you’ll begin to see money from the early days. it might not be a lot but you might be surprised.
Ad Optimisation Education - run ads on your blog from day one and you begin a process of educating yourself about how to make money from advertising earlier - you also get your blog optimised well from the start. Most of us learn best ‘on the job’ rather than by just reading ‘theory’ or experiences of others. The great thing about starting early with advertising is that you can experiment and try different techniques without too many people seeing the mistakes that you make a long the way. This means that by the time the traffic does role in you can have your ads optimised well already - something that’s sure to pay off.

2. Establish Readership and Then Run Ads - This argument is basically that if you put ads on your blog from day 1 that you potentially turn people off your blog because it will look too commercial or too much of a money grab.

The thought is that you can gradually add advertisements later once you’ve established a sizeable readership and Search Engine presence.

While I understand the reasoning behind bloggers taking this approach I don’t use it myself. For the reasons I’ve outlined in the first approach above I tend to add ads from day 1.

Having said this when I do this I tend to take a pretty subtle approach with ad placement and design in the early days. You can see this with my AdSense placement over on my newest blog Digital Photography School where I use a blended approach and limit the number of ads per page to 1, unless it’s a longer page where I have two.

This may well change as the blog establishes it’s readership (currently it’s sitting on around 1000 visitors a day). In the months ahead I plan to introduce a purpose built professional design to that blog and will use that opportunity to reposition ads in a slightly more prominent position where they are likely to perform a little better. In the mean time however they are there and readers know that they are a part of the site - they also have earned me a nice little income from day one and have taught me a thing or two about what does and doesn’t work in terms of placement and design on this blog.

Ultimately the decision to add advertising to a blog is one that can only be made by an individual as they look at their blog’s goals. My approach will not work for everyone.

When did (or when do you intend to) add ads to your blog? How did you make that decision?

Making Money Because of Your Blog - Indirect Methods

Consulting - when you are perceived as an expert on a topic you will find that people naturally come to you for advice - some of them willing to pay for it. Some niches are probably better positioned than others for their bloggers to get into paid consultancy work of course. I spoke with one blogger recently (blogging in a business/technology field) who was able to charge himself out at $600 per hour to give advice to a large company. Interestingly I’ve heard of a number of companies in the last 6 months who are developing VOIP services that bloggers will be able to add to their sidebars to enable them to be called by readers for consulting. The systems would have per minute rate on them to automate this consulting process.

Employment Opportunities - Just this last week PR blogger Steve Rubel announced that he’d been hired by a bigger PR firm. While he didn’t say it explicitly in his post I suspect that one of the reasons for him landing the job was the profile he’d built over the last year and a half from blogging. Steve’s case is not the only one - bloggers are increasingly being targeted by companies because of their demonstrated abilities in their field of expertise.
Business Blogging - Similarly there are some businesses who employ people to blog for them either as their main role or part of their role. One example of a company who employed a couple of bloggers was Vespa who now have two blogs. BloggerJobs is one site worth following if you’re looking for these types of jobs. Most of the jobs there are from blog networks but occasionally they include businesses looking for bloggers also.
Book Deals - Some days as I read through the RSS feeds that I follow it seems that every blogger I read has a book either in progress or coming out. Once again it’s about being seen as an expert in your field - if you can achieve this you will find publishers are more receptive to having an idea pitched to them and at times will even seek you out. This is becoming more and more common with publishers as they are seeing not only some great writers but that many of them already have large amounts of content on their blogs ready to be pulled together into a book!
Offline Writing Gigs - Manolo from Shooeblogs recently landed a writing gig in the Washington Post Express after he was discovered via his blog. These types of opportunities can be in the form of newspapers, magazines, trade publications etc.
Online Writing Gigs - Similarly some bloggers also land jobs writing for other forms of websites as a result of being discovered from their blogs.
Selling e-resources - I wasn’t sure whether to classify this as direct or indirect (and depending upon how you do it you could probably go either way) but some bloggers are leveraging the expertise they have in an area by putting together their own ‘e-products’ such as e-books, tele-seminars, courses etc and selling them to their readers.
Business Partnerships - One of the benefits of blogging about a niche topic that interests you is that you will begin to connect with others who have similar interests and expertise. As you interact with them it’s amazing to see the opportunities for working together that arise.
Speaking Opportunities - Once again this is dependent upon the topic you’re writing about but some lucky bloggers end up with all kinds of opportunities to speak at conferences, workshops and seminars on their topic of choice. Sometimes they are freebies, other times the conference will cover costs and on other occasions there are speakers fees.
If you’re planning to use some of these indirect ways of making money because of your blog it’s important that you think seriously about building your own profile and credibility as a blogger. Think about the types of people that you respect and look to as experts an consider what they offer in their fields.

These people are generally original thinkers that not only report what others are doing, but who provide answers and vision for their industry. They are also often well networked and have the ability to draw others along with them.

What does this mean for your blog? Here’s where I’d start:

provide useful content that shows an understanding of your niche.
network within your niche. Work on being connected with other key players (big and small).
use your blog not only to report and rehash news but to also show initiative in proposing solutions. Be proactive in your blogging and lead the conversation rather than just react to it.

How to Make Money From Your Blog - Direct Methods

Direct Income Earning Methods - these methods are where a blogger earns an income directly FROM their blog.

Indirect Income Earning Methods - these methods are where a blogger earns an income BECAUSE of their blog.

Most blogs tend to fall into one or the other of these methods - although there is nothing to stop bloggers experimenting with elements of both ( I’ve seen a few bloggers get into trouble with this (example: Scenario 1 in the previous post).

In this post I’ll look at 8 direct income earning methods and in the next post of this series I’ll explore indirect methods. Please note that on occasion in the following post there will be few affiliate links to services that I use and have had some success with. These will be marked with (aff) after them.

Direct Income Earning Methods for Bloggers

1. Advertising

There are many ways of selling advertising space on a blog (this could almost be a series of it’s own) but some of the different advertising options that I see bloggers experimenting with include:


Contextual Advertising - Programs like AdSense and YPN (beta) are very popular with bloggers and are probably the most common income stream being used by them today (MSN are developing one too). In short - these programs scan the content of your blog to assertion what it’s topic is and attempt to put contextually relevant ads (text and image) onto your blog. They are generally simple to use and involve pasting some code into your blog’s templates. Payment is on a ‘per click’ basis (referred to as CPC or ‘cost per click’ ads). Contextual ads suit blogs that have a particular niche topic, especially if it has some sort of commercial angle (ie it has products and services associated with it). They are not so good with ‘general’ type blogs (ie many topics) and/or political/spiritual blogs which argue just one side of a case (this confuses AdSense). I write much more extensively on how to use AdSense on your blog here.
Other CPC Advertising - There are a variety of other ad systems that pay on a per click basis which are not contextual in nature (which is important as systems like AdSense do not allow you to run contextual ads on the same page view as them). These systems include Chitika’s eMiniMalls (aff) which I reviewed here.
Impression Based Ads - Impression based ads pay a small amount for every person who views the advertisement. The amount that they pays varies from program to program (and ad to ad) and is generally a fraction of a cent. There are a variety of ad systems around like this including Fastclick (aff) which I reviewed here and Tribal Fusion. Impression based ads won’t earn you much if you don’t have a lot of traffic but can be great if you do.
Blog Ads - BlogAds have become something of an institution when it comes to advertising on blogs. They traditionally have had a focus upon monetizing political blogs but are expanding their focus lately. The beauty of them is that bloggers set their own rates and can accept or reject advertisers that apply to them to be featured on their blogs. These ads put the control of what ads show and how much they earn into the hands of the blogger. The downside is that if you price them too high you could never have any ads showing at all. They can also be difficult to be accepted into as a publisher as these days they only accept people into the system if they have a someone who is already in ’sponsor’ or recommend the new publisher.
Text Ads - Another increasingly popular way to sell ads on your blog is to look into text links. The beauty of these are that they don’t take up much room and that depending upon the system you choose to run them you can have control over which advertisers you accept and reject. AdBrite (aff) is one such system that gives you control in a similar way to BlogAds in that you set your own prices and approve all ads. They also other other formats of ads. Text Link Ads (aff) is another text link seller that more and more bloggers are using. The beauty of both of these systems is that they have a pool of advertisers already so you don’t have to go looking for your own advertisers. Their systems are also both very automated and are just a matter of pasting some code onto your blog. I use them both and while they don’t earn anywhere near as much as AdSense or Chitika for me they add up over the year and have done well for me. Bidvertiser and Adzaar are other system that I know are popular with some (we’ve used them quite successfully on b5media although I have little personal experience with them).
RSS Ads - An increasingly popular way for people to read blogs is via RSS. As a result publishers and ad providers have been keen to find ways to place ads in feeds. These attempts have been met with a variety of success levels. I’m yet to hear of too many people making big dollars with RSS ads yet but the ad systems seem to be improving. AdSense offers RSS ads to some of it’s publishers (you have to have a certain number of impressions first) as does YPN. Feedburner is a tool I’ve used to help monetise my own feeds - they give publishers three options (1. AdSense if you’ve been approved by them, 2. Amazon affiliate program and 3. if you have a lot of subscribers (over 500) they have an Ad Network). Pheedo is another system that you might like to try (although I’ve not had much experience with it).
Other Ads Systems - In addition to the above systems (most of which I’ve used myself) are many other advertising options which I’ve not had experience with and so won’t personally recommend. I’m sure they are worth experimenting with however as I see many of them being used by bloggers every day. Here they are in no particular order:
AdGenta, CrispAds, Clicksor, Intelli Txt, Peak Click, Double Click, Industry Brains, AdHearUs, Kanoodle, AVN, Pheedo, Adknowledge, YesAdvertising, RevenuePilotTextAds, SearchFeed, Target Point, OneMonkey, and TextAds. Feel free to add your own and tell us how you’ve gone with them in comments below.
2. Sponsorship

Another form of advertising that a smaller number of bloggers are using is to find their own advertisers. All of the above systems have the advantage of finding you advertisers (or at least assisting in the automation of ads to your blog) but as your blog grows in profile and influence you might find other options for private deals come up.

The big blog networks have people dedicated to the task of finding advertisers (often working through ad agencies) but smaller bloggers might find this worthwhile also. I’ve been selling ads on my Digital Camera Blog for two years now and as it’s grown in traffic and profile and managed to attract larger companies (who are willing to pay more) to buys space. Currently the blog features ads from Adobe who have bought a combination of banner, newsletter and text ads.

The key if you’re going to take this approach is to target advertisers in your niche that have products that closely relate to what you’re writing about. There are a variety of ads that you can offer them including banner ads, buttons, text links, mentions in newsletters and even individual post sponsorships. I would highly recommend that you always make it clear to readers that your post is a sponsored one when you’re writing a sponsored post.

3. Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are where you take a commission for referring a reader who purchases a product or service to a company. Probably the most common of these for bloggers is Amazon which has tens of thousands of products that you can link to (I reviewed it here). Other affiliate programs that represent many different companies and products include Linkshare, Commission Junction and Clickbank.

Affiliate programs take some work if you want to get the most out of them (perhaps more work than advertising) but can be lucrative if you match the right program with the right blog/topic. If you want to explore affiliate programs more you might like to read 10 tips for using affiliate programs on you blog.

4. Selling/Flipping Blogs

The idea of selling (or flipping) your blog is one that many bloggers have in the back of their minds for ‘one day’ but in reality it is not something that is overly common… yet (I think this is changing). Probably the largest sale is that of Weblogs Inc (a network of blogs) which sold to AOL for a reported $25 million. Of course this is the stuff that most of us can only dream of - but there are examples of smaller blogs being sold, either privately or via auctions on sites like eBay and SitePoint. One such auction was that of the Blog Herald which took place here.

Starting a blog with the main goal of selling it down the track is one that I’ve heard of a number of bloggers doing but few have been successful. Rather than starting with this intention I think if you start with the intention of building a quality site that has a large readership and it’s own good income stream you are more likely to find buyers down the track.

5. Donations and Tip Jars

A very small number of blogs have a history of making good money with these (Jason Kottke being one of them). To be successful with asking for money from readers you’ll want to have a large and loyal readership (and a rich one might help too). Most bloggers just don’t have the critical mass or the cult following to make it work.

6. Merchandise

Another method that some blogs use with reasonable effect is to sell T-Shirts, Mugs, Stickers etc with the blog’s name, logo and/or taglines on it. This is another idea that will probably only work if you either have a brilliantly designed merchandise range and/or you have a cult-like status as a blogger with some fanatical readers who are a little obsessive about your blog. Some blog topics lend themselves to this more than others.

7. Selling Subscriptions

The idea of charging readers for content is one that surfaces from time to time. While there are numerous websites around the web that do this successfully (community membership sites) I’m yet to see many (any) blogs do it well. The problem that most bloggers who have tried it have run into is that most topics that you could think to start a blog about already have free sites available. To make it succeed you would need to have some sort of premium/exclusive content and/or real expertise on a topic.

8. Blog Networks

Another emerging income source for bloggers are blog networks. There are two ways to make money here. Firstly you can start a network and contract bloggers to write for you or secondly you might like to join a blog network as a writer. There are many networks out there and all have their own strengths and weaknesses. I’ll attempt to write a post on what to think about when you’re looking at whether to join a network later in this series.

Creating Custom file names in Blogger

Creating Custom file names in Blogger :


1. Compose your title containing all the keywords (6 is the limit) and in the right order
2. Publish.
3. Now open the post in w.bloggar, an offline blog editing tool and change the page title to something more meaningful.
4. Click "Post & Publish".

This increases your Google Page Rank by allowing you to include your keywords in the file names

Earth to Adsense Newbies: Slow Down!

The Washington Post recently published an article featuring many ordinary people who’ve become financially successful due to displaying Google Adsense ads on their web site. These folks are pulling in $10,000 to $40,000 a month. They are definitely stars in the world of Adsense publishers.

Web publishing newbies read stories like this and start salivating over the possibility of pulling in big bucks. If those people can do it, why not me? Is their reasoning. And, there’s nothing wrong with that kind of thinking. Everyone’s looking for a way to make money from the Internet. These types of stories are great motivators.

But let’s look a little deeper into what it takes to make $10,000 a month or more this way.

Each one of the people featured in the article has a niche they are working in, and not just any niche, but a great niche that brings in lots of traffic. Andrew Leyden has a podcasting directory. David Miles Jr. and Kato Leonard give away MySpace design pages. Jock Friedly specializes in free public documents. Matther Daimler researches the best airline seats.

Funny. No MFA scraper sites were featured. Maybe because these people are all focused on long-term success, not short-term gains. Please resist clogging up the Internet with thousands of auto-generated sites with contextual ads thrown on a few pages to make a quick buck. Search engines are cracking down on these so you’ll find it hard to get rich this way.

The big earners found a niche that interested them and put a lot of long hours and work into making their sites user friendly and informative. Some may even have spent good money bringing in traffic as well. What you’re reading in the WAPO story is the end result of much dreaming, planning, and slaving over a computer for hours at a time.

Unless you have a gazillion dollars to spend on buying technical resources and hiring people to create content, there is no quick and easy way to make big bucks with your web site, especially if it’s brand new.

If your goal is to build an online empire, plan to spend at least two years doing research, writing, SEO, publicity, tweaking, and learning how to make the best web site possible. That’s right. Two years. It took all of those ordinary folks TIME to get their sites to the point where they created buzz and traffic, and yes, earning great money.

It will take you time too, just like the rest of us. If you want to make the big bucks faster, then work longer and harder. Now, that’s the real story behind those success stories. So, slow down and don’t get discouraged if you’re not an overnight sensation - nobody is. Remember that old saying:

Slow and Steady Wins the Race.

Tips for Formatting Adsense Ads.

Advertisements should blend into the content.
Text Ads. are best.
Best performing Ad. is 336x280.
Second best performinf Ad. is 300x250.
Place Ads. in middle of a long post.
Place wide skyscraper Ads. in a right hand column.
No borders on Ads.
Background color same as page color.
Ad. URL color same as page text color.
Ad. Link color should be blue.
Ad. Title color same as color of Posts title.
Horizontal Ads. better than vertical.
Put small thumbnail size images bordering the Ad.

Number of Adsense Ads. per page.

One link unit per page. Usually placed at the bottom of the header section.
Maximum two Adsense for Search boxes per page.
Maximum three Adsense units per page in addition to above two.
A single referral button per product in addition to above three.

Making Google Adsense Pay

From what I am reading in online forums and discussion boards, Google adsense is still ruling the roost, in terms of popularity, for those wanting to start earning money from home

Ok you won't make a fortune with a few hits per day but if you are constantly building websites and optimizing them for adsense then the income can REALLY add up.

A few of my most recent websites are only getting 10-20 impressions per day but really high click through rates. Some days I can earn $2-$3 per site for a couple of clickthroughs from these low traffic sites. This denotes HIGH interest from advertisers paying big bucks to Google for certain keywords.

Unbelievably, many entrepreneurs are earning six figure incomes per month from adsense revenue alone.

The smart earners are building site after site then building out the ones that show potential.

The idea is to set up sites in relatively unknown markets but also balanced with some interest in the advertising field. For instance, if you choose a niche with little or no interest from advertisers then the income will reflect this lack of interest, ie. no one will be paying google for advertising in your niche or they will be paying very little and you will earn pittance per click thru.

One site of mine in an obscure niche gets hundreds of unique visitors per day and loads of adsense clickthrus, yet the income is only a dollar or two daily. This tells me that advertisers are paying very little, probably in and around 10 cents, for keywords in my niche.

At the other end of the spectrum you DO NOT want to choose a niche with so much competition that you cannot get any traffic at all. The "work at home", "home business", "internet marketing" niches are not good examples for a newcomer to make money from Google adsense. The competition is just too great. If you DO already have an established home business site then by all means add some adsense ads to your site.

Like everything else I have done online I have learnt through trial and error, Google adsense has been no different. If you don't put the ads out there then you will never know the potential.

I do get some clickthrus from my home business sites and the click thru rates can be anything from 10-15 cents to $1-2. Not bad!

Google adsense is definitely here to stay for the forseeable future and we can all see why. If you have any vision at all you can see the potential in earning from Google adsense and exactly why it has become so popular.
Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com

Tips for attracting the Googlebot to your page.

* Make every single page on your site accessible via a text-based link as the Googlebot only speaks text.
* Keep the number of links on a given page less than 100.
* Do not use URLs with query strings.
. Google offers the allintitle syntax, which lets users search only text that appears in a page title. Give every single page on the site a complete and meaningful title.
* Avoid frames.
* Make sure that the title and alt tag attributes exist and are complete and meaningful in each page's markup.
* Make all relevant information on a page textual. Don't embed page content into images or objects like Flash movies.
* Make sure your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This feature allows your web server to tell Google whether your content has changed since the Googlebot last crawled your site.
* Use robots.txt and meta robots tags to show the Googlebot around your site. These standard mechanisms for directing well-behaved robots like the Googlebot will allow you to specify important things like whether or not Google will cache your page content and/or images, and whether or not the Googlebot will index content on pages that maybe you don't want available to the searching public.
* Use meaningful text inside your tags so the Googlebot can associate that text with that href link. Meaning, if I am going to link my pictures from the war protest, I should say "Take a look at my photos from the war protest" instead of "My war protest pictures are here."
* Include a tag in your page header to summarize your site.
* Place more important content higher in the markup than less important content in a page.

Ten Indian online advertising networks

Online advertising is steadily robbing the market share from traditional media advertising. Given the potential of growth and increasing Internet penetration in India, online advertising is set to explode in coming years. The 38.5 million Indian Internet users, according to an IAMAI study, have become the prime target for numerous advertisers clouding the web.

To cash in on this growth, number of online ad networks have come up in India in last few years. Here is an overview of current pool of online ad networks in India.



Komli is a leading online ad network in India offering tools to Publishers to help them manage, optimise, and make the most of their online advertising. On the other hand, advertisers have access to millions of clients worldwide in order to increase their consumer commitment, brand recognition, leads, and sales. They offer different options such as CPM and performance based CPC and CPA marketing.
Solutions to both publishers and advertisers include Komli premium network and Komli performance network. Komli premium network offers publishers tons of advertising formats using the newest web technologies, as well as many top brands, and provides advertisers with rich, targeted ways to connect with consumers.
Komli last year got $7 million funding from 3 VCs namely Nexus India Capital along with Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Helion Ventures.

Although branded separately, Pubmatic is service offered Komli.
Simply put, Pubmatic is a ad network aggregator that helps publisher to maximize the revenue that you can earn from your web site , and it reduces the complexity of managing multiple ad network relationships.
Pubmatic optimises the Ads for publishers by offering the ad real estate to the network that maximizes your earning opportunities.




Tyroo is an India based online advertising network that uses proprietary targeting technology to ensure advertisers reach out to the right websites from its inventory of publishers.
Internet company Yahoo picked up at least 35% stake in Tyroo for an undisclosed amount in July 2007. Incubated by Delhi-based digital media company Smile Interactive Technologies Group, Tyroo was voted as one of the 10 most interesting startups by Business daily Mint, a part of the HT Media group.
Recently Tyroo claimed to reach 2.5 billion Ad impressions a month. According to Tyroo, its 2500 strong publisher network includes Perfspot, Facebook, About.com, SantaBanta, Smashits, Yatra, and OneIndia. The company counts Microsoft, General Motors, Pepsi, ICICI and Yahoo amongst its advertisers.



dgm India claims to be the largest performance based affiliate ad network in the country. dgm India is a wholly owned subsidiary of Deal Group Media.
dgm India offers to its advertisers affiliate program to develop a virtual sales force using one of their turnkey affiliate marketing products, whereby advertisers promote their products via relevant and top performing affiliates /publishers.
For publishers, DGM India will optimize their online inventory, monitor and evaluate performance and provide with attractive deals from all the advertisers




Ozone Media is another online Ad network in India. Even though they are one of the early entrants in this business, I am not sure how they are positioned currently. Not much information is available on their site other than that they use Accipiter’s AdManager with geo-targeting features which helps to target campaigns to different countries and audiences.
I am really surprised that being into online advertising space they themselves do not have much to show on their website.




PayPod is an online ad network specifically tailored to help advertising agencies take advantage of the digital medium. Targeted at the advertising and publishing industry in India, PayPod’s Digital Advertising Network solution helps deliver ads on the Internet based on geography, context, content, gender and age group relevant to specific requirement and target audience.
Along with online Internet advertising, PayPod has also launched mobile advertising solutions for publishers in India.




IndiAds is the leading Internet advertising network for the Indian and South Asian online community. They claim to deliver 800 million ads per month to Indians and South-Asians living in North America, Europe and Asia.
IndiAds offers ad serving services for websites with traffic over 20,000,000 pageviews per month. With ability to precisely target ads to any geographic location, with greater flexibility in campaign settings, publishers are able to acquire new advertisers and provide better results for their existing clients.




Sulekha is another Indian ad network claiming to be India’s No.1 Ad network reaching 2 million unique visitors a month and 10% of online global Indians.
Sulekha Ad Network has a network of 600+ websites serving Indians and NRIs. Sulekha Ad Network influences consumer behaviour and lead to brand awareness, lead generation and online sales by leveraging the LARGEST ad network serving NRIs and Indians:





AdsforIndians also claims that it is the largest Indian Ad network and came into existence in 2004.
it also claims to be the only Indian ad network, which has the advanced technology to syndicate the text ads with pictures as well as banner ads. Ads placed on AdsforIndians are published on all their participating partner sites worldwide. Ads can be geo-targeted to specific countries and ad channels to reach the targeted visitors relevant to your Advertisement.




Although not Indian, it is the most popular Ad network not only in India but worldwide. More than 5 publishers mentioned above claim to be the largest Ad network in India. I wonder how that can be with more than 75% market share is with Google alone !
Any other Indian Ad networks remaining?

How to Optimize Your Blog

Once your blog is up and running, it's time to optimize it to attract more readers and to make it more crawler friendly. Blog optimization is a never ending process, which gives you more readers and better rankings in search engines. Your strategic ad placements and daily posting alone cannot give the desired results, unless you do not put that extra effort to optimize your blog. It is generally observed that, large number of bloggers completely ignore this step and wonder why the results are not as per their expectations. Let us see the important steps in optimizing the blog.


Optimization Process


» Domain name and URL structure
» Layout optimization

» Post refinement
» RSS feed optimization
» Ping, ping and ping !!!

Domain name and URL structure

If you are serious for making some money from your blog, and have a blog name like "yourblog.somedomain.com", then it is not a wise decision to start with. Purchase a domain name and if you have low budget you can use any free blog hosting service for your blog. Better URL structure makes them crawler friendly and helps in quick inclusion in search index with much better rankings from the rival having poor URL structure on exactly same topic. What is better URL structure? Well, the URL having numbers or unnecessary deep directory structure make it poor for crawling. For example: abc.com/posts/123679/bloggingtips/ is not good URL scheme. Try to cut out the extra numbers from your post URL and make it something like, abc.com/posts/blogging-tips/ .

Layout Optimization

The overall layout of your blog is one of the most critical part of blog optimization process. The most successful blogs have one sidebar on either side and posts column on the other side. Although you can opt for columns on both sides with posts in the middle too. You can read my previous post of landing page optimization for creating a good landing page for your blog.

Post refinement

The headline of post matters the most for better search engine rankings and for attracting readers. Do some research on the topic of your post, and make sure to include the keywords in the headline of the post. Include social bookmarking links or buttons and feed subscription button at the end of post. Include relevant tags and related posts list at the end of post, to reduce the bounce rate of your blog. Use images in your post to make them more attractive to readers.

RSS feed optimization

Offer full RSS feed to your readers. It is generally observed that large percentage of subscribers prefer to get full feed through Emails. Make sure you have the option of feed subscription through EMail. Feedburner is the best feed distribution service, as it is completely free and have tons of options, including a separate tab dedicated for feed optimization. You can easily create RSS button from RSS button maker for your blog.

Ping, ping and ping

What is the use of pinging? Well, every time you post on your blog, you must notify all important RSS feed readers and blog search engines about your blog update. It will keep your blog status updated in major blog search directories and RSS reader services, and will make it easy for your readers to find your blog. Use Pingomatic and Pingoat to manually ping your blogger posts, and if you are using Wordpress, you can automate the process of pinging your posts. Make sure to include these important update services in your Wordpress control panel.


Applying SEO techniques to your blog is another part of blog optimization process, and these techniques will be dealt separately in future, through a series of posts

Why Your Adsense Ads Do Not Receive Clicks?

Every Adsense publisher wants to see an inflated cheque in his mail basket every month. Some publishers get high click-through rate (CTR), while some wonder why nobody pays attention to their Adsense ads. Are you experiencing the same problem?
There can be many factors that may keep your visitors away from paying any attention to your Adsense ads. Let's discuss each one of them one by one.


Choosing A Wrong Niche

Sometimes publishers pick a wrong niche that inherently has no scope to perform well with Adsense. If you are writing about your garden, your dog and about your eating habits, how much traffic can you expect in the long run?

Choose a profitable blog niche and rest assured that half of the problem is already resolved. Sometimes choosing a popular niche alone does not solve the problem. Some popular niches have very tech-oriented and web-savvy audience who are familiar with PPC ads. They are simply blind to these advertisements and never click on them. For example, blogs on Internet marketing, SEO and blog tips normally receive knowledgeable crowd who are already familiar with these ads. On the other hand, large percentage of traffic on a weight loss blog is not aware about Adsense ads. The probability of clicks is much higher on a weight loss blog when compared to an Internet marketing blog.

Wrong Placement

Sometimes new publishers fail to place their ads at the best performing areas on their blog. Adsense has provided a heat map for publishers suggesting the best placements for their ads.




The red zone represents the best position for ad placement. This zone lies right in the middle of the page, above the fold just before the main content. The second best zones are highlighted in light brown color and the least profitable zones are highlighted in yellow color. Ads embedded around the main content are known to perform the best. Follow the placement suggestions given in this heat map to increase your CTR significantly.

Crazy Color Schemes

Take a look at the color scheme of a sample ad shown below. This dark color combination is definitely going to put strain on the eyes of most visitors.



Such color schemes normally repel the visitors and results in immediate bounce from the site. The enthusiasm and lack of experience contributes to generation of such color schemes by new Adsense publishers. I did it in my early days and found them damaging instead of giving me any clicks.

The best performing ads are gelled with the color scheme of the blog. Follow these simple guidelines to generate the best color combination for your ads.

1. Keep the ad background color, link color and the text color same as your blog's theme.
2. Use the Adsense latest custom fonts feature to closely resemble the ad unit same as your main content.
3. If you are embedding the ad right next to the main content, remove the border from the ad.

Sometimes, color blindness play a major role in reduced CTR. You can use the powerful palette rotation feature to deal with this situation. Recently, I've written an article about reducing ad blindness through palette rotation.


Not Using Large Ads

In many cases, a publisher uses small size ads that may fail to attract the attention of the visitors. Use large rectangle 336x280, medium rectangle 300x250 and wide skyscraper 160x600 to get the best results.

The combination of right color scheme and large ad size, supported by correct placement according to the heat map shown above, increases the probability of getting more clicks for your ads.


Displaying Less Ads

This is one more reason that may contribute to low CTR on your blog. Adsense allows up to three Adsense for content units, three link units, two search boxes and one Adsense for video unit on a single web page. So you have a total of nine ad units available for a single page of your blog. Having said that, one must keep in mind the negative implications of stuffing all these nine units on tightly packed page with relatively less content.

If your blog template is wide with good portion covered with your main content, you can experiment and choose the best combination (number of ads on a single page) for your blog.


Irrelevant Ads

Adsense ad delivery technology is very sophisticated supported by years of refinement to serve the most relevant ads on your blog. Still some publishers complain about getting irrelevant ads on their blog. What's the reason?

Well, this normally occurs when you try to blog about just anything under the sun. When a blog has no definite topic (no definite niche) and host content on wide number of topics some of which are totally irrelevant from each other, this phenomenon may occur. Narrow down your niche and post consistently about that topic to get the most relevant ads on your blog.


Dull Content

If you are experiencing low CTR, see the bounce rate of your blog. If it's alarmingly high (80% or above) you've found one of the reasons that are contributing to this low click-through rate. One of the primary factors responsible for high bounce rate is low quality content.

If large numbers of your visitors are not staying for long on your blog, the probability of clicks automatically reduces drastically. Write compelling content to give them a reason to stay longer on your blog. The more time they will spend in scanning the content, more will be the probability of getting clicks on your Adsense ads.


Less Organic Traffic

If large portion of your traffic is coming from social media sites or referral sites, you may observe low CTR with high bounce rate. Visitors coming from search engines are more likely to click on ads as they are genuinely looking for something, querying for something.

You cannot expect the increase in percentage of traffic from organic sources in a fortnight. It takes time to build an archive of quality content. As your blog archive will grow, traffic from organic sources will automatically increase bringing the kind of visitors you need.


Have Your Say

Have you ever experienced this phenomenon? If yes, what other steps you took to increase the CTR on your blog?

Finding Advertisers for Your Blog

1. Show them what they’re buying - one of the most powerful strategies I used in my early days of selling ads to people was to show them how I ranked in Google for their keywords. Compile a list of words that you rank for that you can pull out next time you’re talking to an advertiser. If when people search the web for information on products that they sell they end up on your site you have a key selling point.

2. Traffic is a Powerful Motivator - there’s no getting around it - to many advertisers traffic numbers are key. I hope that this trend is changing (what I saw at ad:Tech in Sydney recently confirms this as advertisers are looking to get more niche in their focus) but in the mean time it does count. Keep working to build traffic and be ready to share your numbers and back them up with graphs/tables etc.

3. Collect Demographics - every ad agency I ever spoke with about buying space on my blogs asked about the demographics of my audience. Do some surveys and collect this data as it’ll help sell your case.


4. Start with Small Advertisers - The tactic worked - they bought up ad space at reasonable rates quite quickly. In time however traffic grew and the bigger campaigns started to appear - having advertisers already on board helped convince the big guys though.

5. Put together an Advertiser Pack - compile your stats, rates, advertising options (ie what you offer) reader demographics and any other relevant figures into a professional looking document that you can email to interested advertisers. Include your contact details and references from other advertisers if you can get them.

6. Sell the Niche Angle - the fact is that most of us will never compete with the broad publications that are out there - so don’t compete with them by trying to fool advertisers into thinking that you’re bigger than you are - sell the fact that you’re different and that you can reach a narrow and targeted group of people that makes the money an advertiser spends much more effective. ‘Spend $1 on a big site and you might reach a lot of people who are mildly interested in your topic - sell $1 on our site and you’ll reach people who are obsessed with your topic….’

7. Key Influencers - do other bloggers read your blog and pick up on what you write? If so - sell this too. You’ve got influential readers - not just passive ones