Private ads are a great way to earn money on your website. Notice I didn’t say an easy way to earn money on your website? That’s because private ads take more work than simply throwing up a code from an ad network, but private ads can buy your groceries if you fill them each month.
How Much to Charge for Ad Space
This depends on size and placement of the ad. The larger the ad the higher the price. Ads above the fold are more expensive than ads placed lower on the website.
Savvy Blogging recommends using Lijit earnings to calculate ad rates.
How Long to Run Private Ads
Many websites have advertising packages, including discounts for multiple months or bundled packages. We recommend not selling ad space for more than three months at a time to one advertiser.
While it might seem like a good deal to sell out a spot for a year, it is only a good deal for the purchaser. If you sell a 150×150 sidebar spot for $50 a month when you have 100,000 visitors in January, in September this space is still only earning you $50. If your traffic has increased (which it probably has) you are losing money on this space, because your ad rates should increase as your traffic increases.
Think Outside the Box
If you want to sell your ad space every month think outside the box. Perhaps sidebar ad space comes with a giveaway or product review. Don’t just rely on your sidebar space for ad space. Ads can be placed under single posts, in newsletters, or in a text link in your RSS feed.
Run an advertising special and you’re guaranteed to fill the spaces. If advertisers know that your ads are worth X based your your influence and traffic, but you offer a special 1/2X or 1/3X special, you are more likely to fill the space.
Because sidebar ads don’t convert as well as links in posts or newsletter ads, we suggest including a special post or textlink in a post round up to drive more traffic and brand awareness. You are more likely to get sidebar advertisers to advertise again when this special offer.
Don’t Leave it the Ad Space Empty
If you don’t sell the ad space, don’t leave blank boxes on your sidebar. Depending on your site’s niche you can fill it with buttons for affiliate programs. You could also trade buttons with another blogger to fill the space. Just remember to find bloggers with similar traffic so it’s a fair deal.
Have you had success selling private ads? What has worked for you, what hasn’t? If not, what’s holding you back?
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I find that the leg work required for selling private ads is often more costly than the return – at least for sites of my size. Also, finding those who want to buy ad space can be a challenge. Affiliate sales {eBooks and such} seem to be a better payoff for me.
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Completely agree about monetizing sidebars. As Ashley mentioned, those seem to require a lot of leg work and I would love to hear success stories of how sites were able to sell their private ad spaces.
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Just curious…what type of traffic (in numbers) do you think a person should have before soliciting for ads?
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I actually like selling private ads now that they approach me. I never had much luck soliciting ads. For every 1 yes I received, I probably had 10 no’s (or more!).
However, getting the word out that you do offer private ads will eventually bring the advertisers to you.
And to answer Carol – I didn’t start soliciting ads until I had around 20K pageviews, but I know people who have very good luck soliciting ads at half that.
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Yes, that was my question too. How do you go about finding people to buy the private ads?
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