ProBlogger: How to Make the Switch Between Monetizing with Ad Network to Selling Ads Directly on Your Blog

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How to Make the Switch Between Monetizing with Ad Network to Selling Ads Directly on Your Blog Posted: 17 Jul 2013 08:06 AM PDT Over on Reddit today someone asked for some advice on switching from monetizing a blog using just ad networks (like AdSense) to selling advertising directly to advertisers. I found myself writing a rather long response and thought it might also be of some use to readers here. Here’s the question: I was reading a post about blogging and money and was wondering when in a bloggers career do the emails start coming in where companies are trying to advertise on your website? I am curious because when first starting out you don’t have a lot of traffic so no proof of presence so companies don’t really care to be shown for long periods of time on those blogs. So people get adsense or amazon ads up. Then at a certain point there are a ton of people coming in and people now want to throw ads up. This is a great point to just take down the automatic ads and go with the ad management setup. When did you realize your traffic was high enough to switch over? And my response (which wasn’t really written as a blog post – so I hope it is helpful): This is a question I hear fairly regularly and I wish there was a magical number that applied for all blogs. The reality is that I’ve seen bloggers sell ads directly to advertisers before they launched and to bloggers who couldn’t sell ads directly, even with tens of thousands of visitors a day. As with most things in blogging – there is no formula. My own experience is that I have monetized my blogs in a variety of ways from day #1 and  that as my blogs grow this has not changed. What has changed is the type of monetization. As your traffic and brand develops, new opportunities will open up for different types of monetization. So for me, in the early days, I started with AdSense and a little affiliate marketing (Amazon’s program). This generated a few cents a day – but they were a few cents more than I had when I started! More importantly, I learned a lot about ad placement and design, and what type of ads worked best on my sites. As my traffic grew, I began to realize that I might one day be able to sell ads directly to advertisers. However, these advertisers didn’t magically appear. I had to go and chase them. While I had an ‘advertise with us’ page on the site, the only ads I was able to sell were small ads with small advertisers. I had a camera review blog and my first advertisers were small local camera stores who paid $20-$30 for a month of advertising (discounted for 12 months). It wasn’t much – but it was $20-$30 a month more than I had… and again I learned a lot from selling those ads! As traffic and brand grows, you can command more for ads but you shouldn’t just rely upon advertisers coming to you. Ask yourself a few questions to identify potential advertisers: What is my readers intent? Why are they coming to my blog? If you can nail what this is you might just find an advertiser who matches that intent. For my camera review blog, I realized my readers were researching before they purchased a camera, so pitching to camera stores was a smart move. Who are my readers? What are their demographics? Knowing who is reading your blog is golden information when finding advertisers. Surveys and polls of your readership can help work this out. Once you know that, ask ‘who is trying to reach this type of person?’ Who is actively advertising on my niche? Look on other blogs/sites/forums to see who is advertising. Look to see what advertisers ads are appearing on your site through the Ad Networks you use. Look to see who is advertising on Google when you type in key words related to your niche. These advertisers are in the market for readers in your niche and should be places you go to pitch your site as a place to buy ads. As you approach advertisers you’ll see that they want certain information that you can begin to pull together into a media kit. Information about your readers is important to include (readership numbers, demographics, reader intent etc) as well as the opportunities and costs associated with advertising. Include what type of ads you can run (ad size and placement). Also think about how you can offer bundles of ads. For example, you might offer ads in your newsletter, on social media or to do a giveaway to your readers. These extras could be offered either as incentives to advertisers (buy some ads and we’ll throw in XXXX) or you could use them as up-sells. In time, you’ll see what kind of information that advertisers want. Smaller advertisers often won’t need as much but as you approach bigger advertisers (usually you need to do this through their agencies) they’ll ask for more and more information and make more demands in terms of paperwork and your pitch. Even when your site is big, you’ll still find that you need to pitch TO advertisers more often than not. Some will come knocking but I find that these are more likely to be PR people wanting you to write about their products for little or no money or in return for product (it’s hard to live off free products). Having said that – this depends a little on your niche and traffic. If you’re writing about something very specialized and in demand, advertisers are going to be more keen and will seek you out, even if your traffic is small. Lastly – I’ve done many direct ad deals over the years but even though they are regular I still run some ad network ads on my blogs to fill the gaps. I’ve also found that as your traffic, brand and reader engagement grows there are other ways to monetize by developing your own products (eBooks, courses or even physical products) as well as doing some affiliate marketing. But that’s probably another story :-) Hope something in that helps! Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger How to Make the Switch Between Monetizing with Ad Network to Selling Ads Directly on Your Blog

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Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

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FTC Gets Aggressive in June Posted: 17 Jul 2013 06:04 AM PDT June was a banner month for the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) aggressive campaign to hold non-marketers liable for the misdeeds of their marketing clients. No sooner had the ink dried on last month's post in this space describing the FTC's efforts to expand the liability orbit than the agency announced its latest action against a merchant processor, followed by another processor suit and a federal appeals court's affirmance of an FTC judgment against a product developer who had no involvement in the marketing of her products. As icing on the cake, the FTC also returned nearly $600,000 to consumers under a settlement with Landmark Clearing Inc., another processor accused of aiding deception. All three actions involve phone sales covered by the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR), including its provision imposing liability on anyone who provides "substantial assistance" to a seller-telemarketer while knowing, or "consciously avoiding" knowing, it is engaged in unlawful conduct. In the processor actions, both asserting fraud in credit card debt relief programs, the FTC amended complaints it had originally filed only against the telemarketers to add their processors. Named, respectively, were Independent Resources Network Corp. (IRN) in FTC v. Innovative Wealth Builders Inc. et al., and Newtek Merchant Solutions in FTC v. WV Universal Management, LLC d.b.a. Treasure Your Success et al. Both are charged with being on notice that telemarketing in general – and debt relief services in particular – are high-risk areas, creating a duty of inquiry, and then breaching that duty by ignoring red flags of fraud or failing even to look and see what color they might be. In the case of IRN, it allegedly knew or consciously avoided knowing that Innovative Wealth Builders (IWB) was a telemarketing company offering debt relief services and had an "F" rating with the BBB. It further allegedly ignored "alarmingly high chargeback rates," knew that MasterCard had tagged IWB as a "high" fraud risk, and was aware of IWB investigations by the FTC and state of Florida, yet continued processing. Similarly, Newtek allegedly knew Treasure Your Success (TYS) was selling debt relief services through telemarketing, yet violated its own due diligence procedures by failing to review TYS' scripts, and was aware of substantial chargeback rates and placement of TYS in MasterCard's monitoring program, yet kept processing. Based on these allegations, anyone providing "substantial assistance" to sellers/telemarketers has a "duty to inquire" and to be on "high alert," not only from empirical evidence of possible fraud, such as excessive chargebacks, but from the mere fact that the seller is engaged in telemarketing (or "suspect" verticals, such as debt relief, business opportunities or weight loss). From that moment of awareness, substantial FTC risk attaches – a risk that can only increase with time if the assisting party ignores warning signs and stays in the relationship. Under a new appellate ruling, the same now holds true not only for key infrastructure vendors like processors, but also for product creators who also play no role in marketing activities. In FTC v. Meggie Chapman et al., the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an FTC judgment against a grant writer whose materials were sold through a grant-related telemarketing program. Dismissing Chapman's defense that she did not provide "substantial assistance" because she had no part in the misleading marketing, the court held her liable because she still was an "integral part" of the telemarketing scheme and knew or consciously avoided knowing it was deceptive. Her part was integral, the court said, because she had produced the grant materials, and she met the "conscious avoidance" test because she: 1) was aware of a state attorney general's investigation of the business and request that it change its marketing, yet she never asked to see the marketing materials; 2) was aware a success rate claim for one of her products was not substantiated; and 3) had been advised by a former employee of the company to be vigilant about monitoring its marketing. On the "substantial assistance" prong of liability, the court said it is "sufficient that Ms. Chapman played an integral part in the … scheme by providing the services and products they marketed to consumers." Product developers, manufacturers and service providers everywhere: take heed that under Chapman, you now face possible FTC liability for deceptive marketing even if you play no role in the marketing but nevertheless become aware of some reason to think it could be deceptive and remain indifferent to what you see. You, like processors, could now have a duty of inquiry, too. Looking for an SEO service that won’t get you banned?

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