Blog Advertising is BROKE. Here is guide to fix it.

I have done a LOT of advertising on blogs over the last few years pouring hundreds of thousands into ad campaigns with mixed results.  I am the typical advertiser on your blog: I get started and I see less than expected traffic from your blog in the first week then it trickles down to next to nothing and I don’t renew in month two.  In this post I am going to show you how to attract and keep advertisers coming back to advertise on your blog and show advertisers what to look for to maximize roi on your ad buy! In general most blog ad campaigns that you purchase directly from the blog owner are:

• sold on a flat rate for a 30 day run.  Unlike typical ad networks that sell on a CPM basis blog owners find it easiest to manage ad sales on a flat rate for a given time period.
• typically the ad unit sold is a 125×125 ad unit.  This has become a staple on blogs as it fits nicely into most templates.  The biggest problem with the 125×125 ad that you purchase on a blog is that the visitors you are trying to reach rarely see them!  They are tucked into the right margin of most blogs and mixed in with 4, 6, or 8 other advertisers vying for your attention.
• no way to reach the rss readers.  Most ad campaigns don’t include a way to reach the rss readers of the blog as the website based banner ads do not show in rss readers.  Typically the rss readers are among the most passionate readers of the topic of the blog and it is a must for an advertiser to get in front of these enthusiasts.

The result of a standard blog advertising campaign is very little branding and even lower CRTs and visitors to your site. How to Fix Blog Advertising #1 – Blog owners need to think like advertisers! This is the overarching rule.  When it comes to ad placements and ad positions/formats you have to ask yourself: if I was paying to drive traffic to my blog what would that campaign look like? #2 – The 125×125 isn’t going away but you must supplement it with "interruption sized" banner sizes and placements. My suggestion is adding in a 468×60 at the top of the site and a 300×250 at the bottom of individual post pages.  Then once all three units are in place you need to ROADBLOCK the two larger ad units for the same.  So for each page impression one of the advertisers would get their ad on the top of the site (468×60), an ad in the left margin (125×125) and your ad at the bottom of the post (300×250).  All advertisers will get 100% exposure in the 125×125 section on the right margin. #3 – A monthly sponsor thank you post. The sponsor post serves two purposes: a. reach the rss readers who don’t see the website based and b. get the advertisers exposure in the content area of the page where readers won’t miss them.  Ideally the format allows the advertiser to add a logo and then a message that could be a description of their product/services along with a coupon code special for this site. #4 – Creative creatives! The ad has to draw the visitor’s attention and entice a click.  Adding a call to action like "click here" "get started", etc, can help.  It is important to try a number of different ads and test CTR to see what ads perform the best for you.  Even when you think you have one, it will go stale over time and ideally you are swapping out your creative monthly but this is hard to do.  Our most successful ad for TLA didn’t even mention our company name it was just this ad below run on TechCrunch: The Blog Owner Cheat Sheet To Attracting and Keeping Advertisers (feel free to copy for your own blog!) Advertising on XYX.com Rates: $X per 30 day run What you get: a 125×125 that gets 100% of pageviews in the right margin.  A 468×60 and 300×250 that will be shown together one out of every four page views.  Also* we will be doing a monthly sponsor post that will feature your products and services within the content area of our site and will reach our RSS subscribers! What we need from you: three creatives: 125×125, 300×250, 468×60 (shown in order below) Here is how to pay: Send any questions, creatives to: — Hope this helps you as a blogger to make more money by attracting and keeping advertisers longer and helps advertisers see a better roi on their ad buys!

Killer Blog Based Business Model #2 – Smartphone Experts

After renaming the $15M sale of Bankaholic as the "Killer Blog Based Business Model #1" I have found a network of blogs worth of that same title of Killer Blog Based Business Models and it is Smartphone Experts who operate these well known blogs: Crackberry, TreoCentral, IphoneBlog, WMexpert, and AndroidCentral. What is the Smartphone Experts network doing right?  Just about everything.  Here is a short list:

• Great domain names.  Name of the product in the domain which helps for seo and adds trust to the overall experience.
• Building a community by being an authority.  This can’t be stressed enough.  These are great blogs with writers that are experts within each niche phone device.  Covering launch dates, rumors on new phones, everything.  This expertise causes other relates blogs to link to them which obviously builds up trust in the search engines which lead these sites to accumulate extremely high rankings.  Not only high rankings but a very long tail of keywords due to the volume of posts per day giving them a chance to rank for all kinds of related keyword searches.
• "Ads" that reinforce the brand!  This is my favorite thing these guys do.  If you look at these blogs you will have trouble even finding an Adsense ad.  All ads are calling visitors to their own branded ecommerce stores selling accessories for the very phones the blog covers!  Why send visitors off when you can own the whole cycle yourself?  Brilliant.  It worked on me today.  I had been to Crackberry.com many times over the last couple of months checking news on the new Bold.  Then today I go to search for "blackberry bold cases" on Google and a familiar site pops into the top 5, shop.crackberry.com  Now all these sites will have the same products but of course I go with the site I "trust" as they have branded themselves an authority in my brain because of their great blog content.

Does this blog based business model work?  Well the company did $584k in 2003 and $16M in 2006, so that is a resounding yes! So I can’t get the point above out of my head and here lies the challenge of building a great blog based business: How can you not only build a brand by creating an authority blog for your topic but not stop there… own the traffic that comes in by developing your own product or service that answers a need for that crowd and delivers that product or service yourself?

Quick Guide: Double The Value of Your Premium Parked Domain

What is a great keyword driven domain without a base of natural search engine rankings?  An asset sitting at less than half it’s value.  There are a number of domain buyers out there looking to pick up a great domains that they will then:

• Add unique content.
• Build inbound links.  Use the above strategy to rank organically in the top search engines and harvest the "free" traffic.
• Use a combination of Adsense, banner ads and lead generation techniques to monetize the website.

This strategy laid out above and explained in more detail below can add significant value to your premium domains AND surprisingly also adds a lot of value to many buyers in the domain market today.  Giving your domain a head start towards top search engine rankings is of value to buyers because it can take many months for links to "age" and a domain to earn trust in Google.  Also, when your domain starts rankings for sought after keywords it gets on buyer’s radars.  By following the steps below you are adding value to your domain today while helping the buyer close the window on getting a return on their investment. Step 1.  Remove the current "parked domain" service technology and replace with unique content. The current parked domain technology is not adding a lot of value.  To attract natural links (see Step 2) you need unique content.  Who wants to link to a ad driven landing page with no content?  It’s not going to happen very frequently.  Instead, build unique rich content on the topic of your domain name and give it a fighting chance!  I suggest 500+ words and the content should be well researched and reference (with links) other authoritative websites that are related.  If you are not up for writing your own content you could post the job you need done at a place like RentACoder.  RentaCoder is one spot where you can list the work you need done and have content writers (or programmers if you need one) bid on your work. You can start with content for the homepage.  The theme of that content is easy enough as the name of your premium domain will guide the content.  When you are ready to add additional pages of unique content you can use Google’s Keyword Suggestion Tool to give you additional ideas on related top keywords you can target with sub pages. Step 2.  Get inbound links to your domain! Start the clock on top search engine rankings.  The challenge with this is it can take many months for a traditionally parked domain to rank in Google.  If today’s premium domain owner can add some unique content and start building links to their domain they in affect "start the clock"

• Easiest: link to the domain from another one of your relevant websites or your personal blog.  Get a business partner or friend to link to it from their website.  Note: need this to be from a site that is cached or can be found in Google.
• More work: build content on other websites that contain a link back to your website.  Sites like Squidoo.com, EzineArticles.com, Hubpages.com allow you to publish unique content that can contain a link back to your domain.
• More cost: Purchase a directory listing in such places as Yahoo Directory, Business.com, BOTW, and others.

Step 3.  Keep doing what you are doing (meaning making money!)  Your domain may be making some cash today even without any natural search engine rankings through a parking service that has placed ads on your site on your behalf.  Take the space back and place Adsense in strategic places on your pages.  Because you have already added quality content to your domain Adsense will take care of making sure your site is showing relevant ads that are paying a nice rate. So please use this guide to increase the value of your premium parked domain while raising the profile of your domain by making it found in top search engines! *Follow up note, my friend, Aaron Wall, has done a great job articulating the basic strategy I laid out above in a nice graphic which I included below.  It’s important to note that this strategy works for ALL websites,  it is just that premium parked domains happen to be one of the biggest opportunities for this game plan: