So you have a website that is getting visitors and creating some interest. If you offer something of value and have a decent number of relevant visitors, then you can generate revenue from your website. One of the best ways of doing this is through selling advertising.
There are many websites out there that offer a vast number of products and services to a business and consumer audience. Some of these websites choose not to sell space on their sites and others rely on it.
If you are in the rather fortunate position of having a high level of targeted visitors to your site, you can bet there are a number of advertisers out there that will be willing to give you some of their ad budget to reach them.
Although online advertising is a popular choice at the moment, it is also a hugely competitive market for websites.
More advertisers are now demanding something out of the ordinary, in terms of awareness, click through interest and enquiry levels. If you can find a distinctive angle or service that is unique to your marketplace, you will be able to secure more advertising orders from customers that will stay with you longer.
The fundamental point here is to establish a good potential advertising hit list, then contact those companies aggressively. Too many companies rely on search engine optimization and other marketing techniques, in the hope that advertising enquiries will flood in - it just does not happen. You have to make the initial contact and prioritize the companies and your offerings first. Some of the biggest spenders may want to take the prime slots and packages before anyone else and you have to protect your big potential spenders.
One other thing you have to concentrate on is the correct formats to sell and the right prices for those adverts.
If you are offering a service that is of tremendous value to an advertiser, then don't be afraid to ask a good price for it. Remember, expensive is a word used for something that is probably not worth the money. Advertising is all about giving the customer a quality service and if you meet the advertiser's requirements, why not charge a price that an advertiser will be happy paying to achieve that level of service.
When you have found your target audience you will have to contact them and ask questions. You should always come up with a list of friendly contacts and bounce ideas off them first. These ideas will cover pricing, ad formats and overall monitoring and tracking of the ads themselves. More advertisers want detailed stats and this is quite easy to set up. All you have to do is find a service that offers ad tracking which can be easily incorporated into your current platform. It does not have to be too fancy, just a basic package that can show impression rates, clicks and enquiry levels from particular adverts.
When you have the basic operation in place, test a series of text and image ads and monitor the results. Always try to place ads around good text content of the site, but do not place advertising on pages that can detract away from your message or other products you are selling. By all means place ads on highly visited pages, but don't created mixed messages - make sure you prioritise your offerings to all users.
Remember, selling advertising is not always that simple to do, but if you have the basic foundations in place, you'll find it a lot easier than some of your competitors.
