mag's 'n ad's blog - RateCards.net develpment blog and random toughts about advertising

.howto implement advertising on your website or blog*

by valto

May 29th, 2008

If you are looking to implement advertising on your website or blog, here are some guidelines on how to do it. Also, if you are wondering how to get sponsors for what you are doing, offering advertising positions on your website for your sponsors should be one option.

Building your ad positions with the help of ad networks

Begin by joining Google AdSense, an affiliate program (or programs), and/or one or more ad networks where you can register and start displaying their ads in your site. Some ad networks have limitations or eligibility requirements that you must meet, like the number of visitors per week or Google page rank, but services like Google AdSense and most of the affiliate programs don’t.

The next step is to design your ad positions on your website or blog layout on all the pages where you want to allow advertising, or directly on your website or blog template. Using these ad networks, you can get all your ad positions filled out and begin receiving advertising revenue.

Once you have chosen and created your ad positions, you are already well on your way to showing potential advertisers the type of advertising options you can offer, like where the ad positions are on your site and what ad sizes (various banner dimensions) are available.

Depending on which ad networks you use and what tools they provide, you will get lots of statistical information about how the ads are performing in different ad positions on your website. Given the ad network and settings that you have selected, you will also start to understand what kind of advertisements from which advertisers are starting to show up on your website or blog, and where.

Determining your advertising rates (i.e., prices for advertising)

Establishing your advertising rates will probably feel challenging. When determining your ad rates, you have many options for getting information, but the most important tip is to get it started somewhere. The easiest way is to start is to calculate the ad revenue you are receiving via the ad networks. The ad revenue from direct ad sales should be somewhat higher.

Using the statistical information that you receive from the ad network(s) you are using, you can identify the best-performing ad positions and target those when you first start to create your own ad rate card for attracting direct advertising on your website or blog

To determine the right prices for advertising, you can do the following. Begin by looking at the ad networks statistics to identify the average revenue per position. Multiply that by a number ranging from two to five. Then offer a 20% discount on that price to attract advertisers.

You should also search the web to see what the average advertising rates are on other websites or blogs in your subject area. Understand that just like there are multiple ad types, ad sizes and ad positions, there are also many kinds of ad price models and advertising revenue models, like CPI (cost per impression), CPM and CPT (cost per mille and cost per thousand), CPC (cost per click), and PPC (pay per click). Other advertising rates are based on duration, like per week, per month, etc.

The right advertising rate depends very much on your audience and readers. The more targeted your website or blog is on a particular topic, the more valuable it is to advertisers. So the right advertising price depends on the volume of your visitors and the profile of your readers. The better you can match advertisers and readers, the better the advertising relationship will be for you, your readers and for the advertiser.

Creating your very own ad rate card

After you have determined your ad positions, advertising pricing models and advertising rates, you can easily create your own ad rate card. If you are looking for sample ad rate cards, you can find them in our rate card directory, which has ad rate cards created by other people. In our directory, rate cards are done based on our ad rate card template. You can use this template to create your own rate card. All you have to do is fill out a few web forms.

Advertise your advertising

After you have created your ad rate card, you should advertise your advertising opportunities on your website with a “view ad rate card” or “advertising details” link. To promote your advertising opportunities, you can add it to our rate cards directory for free. Advertisers use our directory to search for sites where they can advertise.

Now you have opened the door for potential direct advertising on your site and created a professional way for advertisers to find your site, study the advertising opportunities you are offering and contact you easily.

Offering direct advertising opportunities on your site is not really a big or burdensome step if you already have some ad network ads on your site. Naturally you replace network ads with direct ads only if/when you get them. This way, all your ad positions are generating maximum advertising revenue all the time.

There are good, free tools for managing your ad positions and ads from multiple sources. A tool like openX, can automatically switch your ads depending on the given criteria. For example, you can have adword ads running in one position and then you can add direct ads into the circulation with a higher ad revenue value. After the CPM or duration has ended for that particular ad, the tool switches back to lower-revenue ad.

Selling and promoting your ad positions

The next step beyond opening the door for potential advertisers to contact you is to promote and sell your ad space (or have someone else do it for you), but that’s only if you choose to go this far. Giving advertisers an option to buy direct does not mean that you have to start selling, too.

If you would like to sell, then you need to see which ads are performing well on your site, based on the ad networks’ ad statistics. Contact those advertisers or their competitors directly to offer them your best positions with a fixed term. This allows the advertiser to “own” your best position and shut out the competition

If you are not so keen to sell, you can try to make a tempting offer, which lowers the barrier to contact you and get ads created. You could try to offer free advertising for one week, 10 CPM, or something similar to get things started. This will increase your contacts with advertisers and start building relationships with them. You can target only those that you will accept on your site, meaning those that you believe have potential value for your visitors and readers.

Why can you expect more revenue from direct advertising than from ad networks?

There is no middle man to take a cut.
You are building the advertiser/publisher relationship, so when you work directly with the advertiser you can help to modify the ad to “hit” better with your readers, since you know your audience and to what it responds to.
The greater the effort you make, the more revenue you will receive.

Direct ad sales are not intended to replace your other advertising revenue models (i.e., ad networks / affiliates) unless you can fill all your ad positions all the time with direct ad sales. Use both direct ad sales and other advertising revenue models, and always using the highest revenue source for each ad position.

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.openInvitation*

by valto

May 20th, 2008

I have started one of the biggest tasks of my life, but with great passion! I’m trying to get bloggers and smaller print publications to understand their value in terms of advertising sales.

As for myself, I have a general business background. For the past four years, I have been offering consulting services to new entrepreneurs on their new startups and related topics.

This particular task began while I was working for a smaller nonprofit organization through pro bono consulting and seeing their day-to-day struggle to secure funding. I went ahead and started creating their ad sales from scratch with good results. At the same time, I started thinking that not knowing how to sell advertising must be a bigger problem. Never could I have imagined that this was a huge worldwide problem.

I started creating a tool that would help anyone create their ad rate card easily and start offering and selling their ad space directly.

My journey has just begun and the feedback I get from bloggers and smaller organizations just proves my point and convinces that I’m on the right path.

High-quality websites and good blogs with clear target audiences deserve to get their direct ad sales. Usually these sales are 3 to 10 (or even more) times higher than adwords revenue for the same site, depending on the audience.

There is no reason for some giant to take a big handful of revenue for its needs (even though we all do love Google so much) when someone else is attracting the right readers with their content. Print publications do not even have options like that.

That’s why I have created tools for direct advertising for everyone who has the right kind of media to benefit from direct sales. Now I just need to spread the word.

However, I’m a businessperson and I understand that real impact can be made only by making money. I’m all for business, since it is possible to do good business and great things at the same time. The new strategy calls for generating more revenue and/or cost savings overall so that the changes are not difficult to justify.

So I’m inviting others to join me in my efforts to help everyone understand the value of their own media and start pushing to offer and/or sell at least part of their ad space directly.

I’m also open to all kinds of ideas for collaboration, so feel free to contact me. I feel strongly that those who own their content should get more direct sales out of the circulating ad revenue.

Please let me know if you would be interested in cooperating with me in this venture!