Cut Out the Middleman to Maximum Your Online Profits – Part 1
If you’re into business, you should already know that cutting out the middleman should be one of your many goals down the road. I mean, why would you want to pay some outside vendor when you could eventually just do the work internally? Well, I’m here to talk about the various ways of cutting out the middleman to maximize your online money making profits.
Since this is a guest post on Bloggingtips.com, you’re here to “take your blog to the next level” so I’ll focus primarily on cutting out the middleman on a blogging and online money making aspect.
I’m going to assume that a large majority of people here own a blog or at least you guys are considering setting up one in the near future. Believe it or not, quite a few people do it strictly to make money; and if you’re not into making money with your blog, you will if your site gets big enough. So, things like selling private ads, writing paid reviews and so on will be right around the corner for you.
There are plenty of middleman companies that will help find advertisers for you (such as Adtoll, Projectwonderful, etc) but they all take a percentage from your cut. Same thing goes for paid review sites (ReviewMe, Sponsoredreviews, Payperpost, etc) and some of them take as much as 50% of your profits.
You see how much you could be losing?
There are a few different ways of cutting out the middleman in these instances.
1.) One way (this is primarily for the paid review sites) is to sign up for all those middleman company sites and then go directly to the advertisers from there. Once you reach the advertisers site, go to their contact page. Simply leave them a message introducing who you are, how you reached them and the reason why you’re contacting them.
A majority of the advertisers you contact will reply back to you within a couple days at max. I mean, there is a reason why they’re listed in a middleman company’s site. And if you stay with this method, you just earned 100% profit rather than 50-70%.
2.) This is similar to the first method, but rather than contacting advertisers through the middleman company, you could go to an established competitor in a similar niche as yours.
The reason: Most established bloggers have advertisers contacting them and they should have plenty of sponsored ads on their blog. Simply click on those ads which should take you to the advertisers’ homepage and then contact them with whatever contact information they have listed.
And if your site has potential and the price is right, I can guarantee those sponsors wouldn’t think twice about advertising with you.
When you do this, you’re helping your competitor because you’re clicking through which would look good to the advertiser but you’re also helping yourself to a potentially new sponsor.
It’s a win win situation. Who knows, maybe you’ll be taking a sponsor away from your competition!
But I decided to break this topic into separate posts. I’ll be discussing how to cut out the middlemen of affiliate networks and others in my upcoming post.
Plus, it gives me another reason to stick around if you guys will let me. 
Erik Karey | July 11th, 2008 at 1:06 pm #
There is definitely good reason to cut the middleman out in a lot of situations. However you also sometimes may feel morally responsible to reward the middleman for their service. You may not have found your advertiser had the service not existed. Maximizing profits is obviously important, but so is being morally responsible.
rob | July 11th, 2008 at 1:25 pm #
a blogger that intends to sell ads directly also needs to understand the responsiblity required to keep track of ads. for some, since the middle man has the systems in place, it’s A LOT easier.
thanks
Phuck-It | July 11th, 2008 at 9:24 pm #
Forget the middleman.
I appreciate them showing the way but when you see an opportunity you must take advantage of it!
Thats how I look at it.
Branded Bottled Water | July 12th, 2008 at 3:36 am #
Wow! nice post buddy!
I’ll will in touch with you …on the Blog
Stumbled you ! cheers
TheAnand | July 12th, 2008 at 1:42 pm #
I would rather staying with the middlemen when you are small as it gets you noticed if you have a decent blog. And to maintain contacts even after you did a sponsored post with a middleman as they might reach you again after sometime for another review, if you did well that is.
Also, if you do approach advertisers directly, you might want to point out the price you provide which should obviously lower than the price if they approached you through the middleman.
Old real life business tactic. 
Salary Calculator - A Tool for Checking your Salary at MySalary.co.uk | July 14th, 2008 at 2:04 am #
WoW! this is the great job make for best carreer
I’ll will Accept This…..on the Blog :
Stumbled you ! cheers
China Business Success Stories | July 14th, 2008 at 8:18 am #
Hi Jay,
Good post! It reminded me of http://www.chinasuccessstories.com/2008/06/18/effects-inflation-china-sourcing/ , which also talks about cutting out the middleman. As far as selling ad space goes for us a middleman could be a way to get a foot in the door (depending on the advertiser, well worth the commission), like you suggest in the first paragraph.
Cheers,
Michael
WebTrafficRoi | August 8th, 2008 at 1:11 pm #
You can’t always avoid the middlemen.You should weigh the various options and finally come to a decision whether you want to use a middlemen or not .Because it’s not always possible for a single person to do everything and moreover the middlemen will have a system in place .