Make Money With Advertising

One of the things you should decide as a do it yourself website owner is how you want to set up your advertising, and figuring out what type of advertising is right for you. Not every website or blog needs to have ads on it, and if you don’t have any, don’t feel like you have to. If you have a professional or business site related to your work you may not want to have ads, or you at least will want to have ads that you have complete control over, such as direct sales ads. If you are going to have ads you will want to consider what type of ads are best suited to the type of theme you have. Your site might not be well suited for banner ads and you might be better off with in-line contextual ads for instance. The next thing you will want to decide is how much space on your site to give up to ads. The more ads you include on each page, the less you will be able to charge for each ad, but you make up that difference if you are able to sell all the available ad space.

You will also want to decide is if you want to sell directly to advertisers or if you are a blogger, think about joining a blog network.  You may want to do both, it is common to join a network such as Google’s AdSense for some spaces and then sell some spaces directly. HeavyTable.com is an example of a blog that uses a combination of Google’s AdSense, direct ad sales, and selling sponsorships.

The Heavy Table is a food blog based in the Twin Cities, Minnesota.  By selling advertising and sponsorships directly, it allows the ads shown on their site to be directly related to the content they are producing.  By selling sponsorships, The Heavy Table is able to take direct advertising to a new level and offer local businesses exposure the blog and across other social media platforms.

Gothamist, a site about New York City art and events, offers banner ads above the header, in the sidebar, and within the content. As shown in the screenshot, all three ads can be bought in conjunction with each other, which can be a great option for advertisers with larger budgets.  They also attract advertisers who relate to the content of the site, having to do with tourism and entertainment.

At the end of the day, it is important to remember that all the ads in the world won’t do you any good if there is nobody there to see them. If your blog has been sitting idle with no growth in earnings, subscribers, or traffic then try removing some of the ads. You will find that a user friendly site with solid content and a few small ads will consistently outperform a confusing cluster of banners.  If those small ads also relate to the content you are providing on your site you will be well on your way to having a successful advertising model on your blog.