Posted: 10:57 pm by tom in
Blog,
Blogging,
Marketing
For those of you considering paid advertising it CAN be as simple as seeing a good looking blog and paying for an advert. But it certainly SHOULDN’T be. With a little research and thought you can save money AND drive more quality traffic to your website! Find out how with my simple list of to-do’s before buying your first advert:
1. Shop around. Many of us have made the mistake of purchasing the first attractive looking ad space available. You will get far more bang for your buck if you look at as many websites as possible.
2. Purchase one great ad, rather than several bad ones. This may sound obvious but far too many bloggers are trying to reach a wider market by purchasing ad spots on multiple websites. You will get far better traffic and a higher quality of visitor if you save up and invest on one large blog.
3. Purchase ad space on a website with a minimal number of ads. You will receive considerably less traffic if your ad is competing with 7 ads instead of 3. Also the websites readers will probably be more likely to click your ad as they won’t feel like advertising is being rammed down their throat.
4. Use Alexa wisely. Alexa may only be a rough tool, but it’s incredibly useful for researching potential places to advertise. Be sure to look at the 1 week average on the traffic details page rather than simply glancing at websites ‘Alexa Ranks’ which show a less relevant 3 month average. The ‘compare sites’ function is perfect for comparing possible places for advertising. In a sense it is more about the graph than the numbers. Try to look more for rapidly growing websites rather than those maintaining a constant level of traffic. Often if you watch Alexa 1 week averages closely you will be able to advertise on fast expanding websites before they raise their prices.
5. Email asking for statistics. Far too few people take the initiative to drop the webmaster an email asking for page views and unique visitor stats. This is the next logical step after checking Alexa. It removes all the ambiguity of Alexa’s rough trends and gives you hard facts to compare.
6. See if the webmaster has plans for promotion. Has the webmaster been blogging recently about promotional strategies that he’s soon going to enforce? Have you been seeing his website advertised on all your favourite forums? Is he going to host a HUGE contest in just a weeks time? All of these possibilities are good reasons to invest in an advert that will exploit the future growth in traffic.
7. Have a look at the number of subscribers on their website. More subscribers means that their site is most likely more reputable and therefore likely to send you lots of quality traffic. If they have achieved a high number of subscribers in a short space of time then their site is likely to continue growing well.
8. Don’t be afraid to make them a valid offer. If you are interested in purchasing an ad spot but think that they are charging too much don’t be afraid to make them a lower offer! Only attempt this if they appear to be having trouble filling their ad spots. They will most likely be grateful for some money.
9. Check out their website on Technorati. I’m just getting into using Technorati as a research tool and so far I’m highly impressed. Try and choose a website that has a higher authority on Technorati as this will in turn raise your site’s authority and reputation.
10. Don’t forget to check pagerank. It doesn’t take a lot of effort but even I find myself forgetting to check out the pagerank of a potential advertising spot. Look for major differences between their homepage and subpages, go for a site with consistently high pagerank across all their pages. Even if you don’t personally see the value in pagerank (and you should) your own advertisers and visitors will!
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