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One of the best ways to make money online with your blog is to bring on advertisers that pay you to use the space on your blog. You’ll get a commission from the advertisers by putting their banners or ads on your blog and advertising their products to your readers. Some questions you might ask are:

• How do you find advertisers?
• Should you go with individuals or ad networks?
• What’s the best way to get started?

Traffic Matters

If you want to make money online by getting someone to advertise on your site, the first thing they’re going to want to see are your traffic numbers. If you get only 10 visitors per day, you’re probably not going to get many advertisers. They want to see that you have a considerable amount of traffic (visitors) to make it worth their while. If you have that, you can start soliciting advertisers. If not, focus on building traffic first. We like at least 10,000 page views per month, but if you want to get into ad network, you will need even more (20,000 for basic ads and at least 100,000 for traditional advertisers).

It also helps if your blog is focused on a particular niche. This makes it easier for advertisers to reach their desired audience.

In many ways it’s like a popularity game. People will respect you more, or in this case willing to advertise on your site if they see that you have a huge following. Politicians and corporations do it all day long when they seek to influence others through opinion leaders. Learn from them and be the central hub, then leverage your expertise into money.

Make It Easy For Advertisers To Contact You

Going back to answering the original question of how to find advertiser, one of the simplest things to do is make “advertise with us” a tab on your website. Advertisers will actually compose a percentage of your website’s visitors. Why not make it easy for them to contact you?

You can also publish a blog post letting your readers know that you are looking for advertisers and the spots and location available. If you have an email list (which you should), you can email your subscribers and mention you are looking for advertisers.

Go to the popular blogs in your niche (there are usually 4 to 5 major players in any industry), find out what companies advertise with them as well as which ad networks they use and contact them. Come up with a proposal of what they’re going to get and why. Basically you want to find and sell to receptive potential customers.

Also based on our experience the more you grow your audience the more likely advertisers will come to you, which is a lot easier and more awesome!

Join An Ad Network

Google AdWords is by far the biggest and most popular ad network for advertisers. On the flip side, the Google AdSense program is designed for publishers like you. It’s fairly easy to sign up. You’ll need a legitimate telephone and mailing address. Google will confirm on both.

Once approved for AdSense, you will then determine the size of your ad units which comes in different shapes. You can even add tags that will allow advertisers to target a particular ad – for example, a Leaderboard (728 x 90 pixels) in top center of your home page.

You’d most likely get paid by each click (CPC) instead of impressions (CPM) or the result of a sale (CPA). This is fine at the beginning. But eventually you want to reach the point where you will get paid simply by showing your ad to your customers. The advertisers would determine that based on the perceived desirability of your blog.

How You’re Going To Get Paid

Let’s review really quickly the three payment models in online advertising. Cost Per Click or CPC is payment by each click. The price can range from a few pennies to tens of dollars. With proper planning and research by logging on and using the AdWords Keyword tool, you could start a blog whose niche overlap with a high paying keyword. The downside is that high paying keywords often have low traffic, so again proper research to balance two is highly recommended.

CPM is the cost per 1000 ad units. In other words it’s how much the advertiser would pay you every 1000 times the ad is displayed on your website. For example anywhere between $0.50 CPM and $8 CPM. If you have a high traffic website, this is an excellent earning model for you as the publisher because it doesn’t require action from your visitor for you to earn money!

CPA also known as Cost Per Action pays a lot more for each instance than CPC & CPM, but is also harder for you to get paid because it requires your visitors to take a particular action such as buying a particular product.

There are plenty of other networks out there, but nobody beats Google AdSense for simplicity and ease of use. Plus there’s no minimum traffic requirement – many ad networks require that 100,000 page view minimum. It’s probably the best way to get started especially if you don’t have much of an audience yet.

Should You Go With An Individual Advertiser?

Ad networks are easy – individuals affiliate programs are a LOT more profitable. This is a middle person fee, and you will only get a percentage what the advertiser is willing to pay – especially if you combine advertising with an affiliate arrangement. 

You can have both passive advertising and active promotions so that you get the best of both worlds. It’s a win-win for both you and the advertisers. You’re building a true long term partnership that will grow and become ever more lucrative. Essentially you move from an unknown affiliate to their preferred superstar. They might even design custom commissions for you that pay much more than their standard.

In conclusion remember to focus on growing your site and providing great content. Don’t focus on monetizing from day one because you’ll be disappointed with the results. Once you’ve demonstrated authenticity, and build a sizable following, advertisers will find you! They’re PART OF your audience already – be awesome and they’ll want their brand behind you.