Creating an “Advertise” page

If you’re running a blog that’s monetized, chances are good that you’ve partnered up with an advertising network. Any network that’s designed to connect content publishers with advertisers comes with a built in advantage… they’re connected to a wide range of advertisers, they’re able to manage large numbers of advertisements. These two things are both difficult for a beginning blogger or webmaster to accomplish.

However, there are advantages and disadvantages to working with an advertising network. One of the disadvantages you’ll immediately notice is that most networks will consume a large percentage of the money that your advertisers are willing to spend. If you’re interested in increasing your range by partnering with an ad network, then you’ll have to regard this as the cost of doing business with that particular network. For example, Review Me and Text Link Ads will both eat up 50% of the money your advertisers are willing to spend to advertise on your site. You’ll have to judge whether that cost outweighs your need to deal with advertisers directly.

If you’re spending most of your time producing valuable content, then you may not find time to be selling advertising on your own. However, if your traffic is growing, than it might be a good idea to create a page on your site that invites potential advertisers to deal with you directly.

A good advertising page should include the following components:

• Describe clearly the topic of your site
• Describe who your readers are and how much traffic you receive monthly
• Specify what kind of advertising you are accepting, along with cost and details
• Include “small print” details and contact information

Here’s an example of how your advertise page may read, once you’ve penciled it all out:

Mywebsite.com receives over 100,000 page views per month from 18,000 unique visitors, with an RSS readership of just over 2,000 subscribers. Mywebsite is a blog about blogging, and the primary readers of Mywebsite are other bloggers. If you have a website or product that deals with blogging, than you may be interested in advertising with us here!

There are multiple ways to advertise at Mywebsite. We are currently accepting one sitewide banner ad, placed above the post, at a price of $100 per month. We are also accepting four sitewide 125×125 graphic ads, placed in the sidebar, at a price of $40 a month.

Mywebsite.com reserves the right to approve sponsored advertisements. Advertising agreements are month-to month, where either party may terminate the agreement with 10 days notice. For more information, please send an email to me@mywebsite.com.

Have you ever considered selling your own advertising? I’m considering it here at Chris Bloczynski dot Com. Feel free to share your thoughts or experiences in the comments!