Why You Should Go With a Larger Advertiser!
I’ve touched on this topic in a previous post but felt that it was important to go into more detail. This post will focus on why I think it’s important to go with one large advertiser, rather than many medium sized ones.
Time and time again I will see advertisers flood the market by advertising on just about every small-medium sized website going. What I want to propose is that it is a far better plan to use all of these combined advertising fees on one advert on a VERY large website.
For my casestudy I will be using the examples of JohnChow.com vs JohnCow.com. Both are large blogs, but obviously the former is much larger…
Here are some stats that are pretty representative of each blogs size:
John Chow:
John Cow:
Now, looking at the price per review of your website John Chow is infinitely the better deal. You’re reaching over 10 times the number of subscribers, and a hell of a lot more visitors - yet the price is only just over double that of John Cow. I’m not trying to badmouth John Cow here either, their rates are very decently priced. My point is that you should purchase whatever is at the absolute top of your budget (be this John Chow, or John Cow, or whoever else).
I’ve outlined why below:
Of course there are counter arguments to my own…
Some people may argue that you will want to appeal to a wide variety of audiences, and if people are seeing your advert everywhere they will view you as more reputable. However, I feel like these objections are far outweighed by the benefits that I’ve listed above.
I’m personally not going to fritter away my spare cash on a series of unsuccessful minor advertising campaigns. I’m going to be saving up for a real A-list blog to advertise on, and start driving some serious traffic. I also want to wait a while until I have some more free time as I anticipate a lot of design work arising from this advertising. As a designer this type of advertising is particularly beneficial as I can recoup my expenditure with just one client - something that I would expect from a campaign of these proportions.
I would love to hear everyone’s opinions of this plan. Please let me know! 
Your plan sounds good, I agree. Maybe in a few months I will also save some money for advertising on a well known blog. But, like you said, it’s good to be prepared bofore you do it. After all, if you’re going to invest your hard earned money you’d better get something in return. I was thinking to start selling some stuff on my page maybe in the future (like you “sell” your skills), and then advertise my blog with popular bloggers. And I would pay more if it means a bigger audience. Though I would not quite forget about the smaller bloggers, they can always help too, and I think they are more loyal and likely to develop a long term relationship with you.
Yeah, I guess I wasn’t thinking too much about relationships but more about raw traffic and pagerank. I think that you can establish relationships with smaller bloggers without paying for advertising though.
yes, you’re right
When will you advertise on other blogs? It will be interesting if you’d let us know how it went,the benefits you got from it, and how much it cost.
It’s definitely something I would save up for in the future.
I’ll probably advertise at the start of summer vacation (end of may). I know that this is a long way off but I’m planning on building up a large number of posts, and a more established readership - then my advertising should pay off as people will realize that they’re visiting an established blog. Also over summer I’ll have loads of time for the extra design work that may arise. And of course I’ll blog about all my results for everyone to see!
Hey Tom! Looks like you spent some cash after all. Just spotted your 125×125 on http://www.j0n.org.
Yep, that was paid for before even launching this site though. The ad has actually been very beneficial, but I’m just interested in trying a new strategy for advertising.