Blogging Tips

I have read a lot of posts on blogging and web development related blogs in the last few weeks. Many of these blogs are only a few months old and are unfortunately making the same mistake in their ad area.

One technique bloggers use to advertise an ad space is to place a default ‘Advertise here’ banner in their sidebar however I have seen many blogs putting 2 or more of these ads on their sidebar. There is no need to place more than 1 banner ad on your blog which shows you have ads for sale. I know it’s tempting to simply place 4 or 6 ‘Advertise here’ banners on your sidebar and simply replace them as and when you sell some advertisements however you are not doing yourself any favours.

• First of all, you could be losing some potential earnings as these ads could be replaced by affiliate banners until you have sold an ad.
• Secondly, you only need on default banner to tell visitors that the ad is for sale. You do not need to repeat it over and over. Infact, my advice is to place a text link above or underneath the ad zone which simply reads ‘Advertise here’ and links to your advertising information page. Presently I am unable to do this because of the styling problems the BuySellAds creates however once that ad run has been completed there will always be 6 adverts on the sidebar of BloggingTips. Some may be affiliate banners, some may be direct ad sales. You most likely have (or should have) a link to your advertising information page in your main navigation menu so you could argue whether a default banner is needed in the first place.
• Last but not least, a blog with lots of ‘Advertise here’ banners gives the impression that the blog does not get much traffic and can probably lose you more advertisers than it will get you.

Here’s an example to illustrate my point. This is what the Blogging Tips sidebar currently looks like.

As you can see, I currently have 1 default banner up which links to the BuySellAds page where potential advertisers can see information about advertising here. At the moment I have sold 1 ad and the remaining banners are affiliate banners. Here’s what the sidebar would look like with the affiliate banners replaced with ‘Advertise here’ banners.

I’m sure you will agree, this looks less professional and gives the impression that traffic is low here. I would also be losting out on potential affiliate commissions. Unfortunately, many new blogs are making this mistake and placing more than one default banner in their sidebar.

If your blog currently has more than 1 ‘Advertise here’ banner I would advise you to replace those ads with affiliate banners until you have sold the ad slot. If you want to use a banner which highlights that you have ad space for sale, use 1 at most.