Are You Generating A Positive ROI For Your Blog Sponsors?
Most bloggers depend on some form of advertising revenue to survive. Yet few really know how to create value for the advertiser. This post, therefore, will attempt to uncover some ways to attract and retain blog sponsors for long-term gains.
The Numbers Game
Sponsor’s love to look at statistical data. So, create a web page containing your blog’s estimated daily or monthly unique visitors. Don’t guess this. Use web analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Elogic and Woopra to track and report this information. Woopra, in particular, provides additional insight on traffic source and visitor activity.
You should also include your blog’s Alexa ranking, subscriber base, keyword ranking and PageRank. All of these metrics are important to sponsors. They serve as quality indicators.
Charge the right price. If your blog is fairly new, my suggestion is to offer free advertising for the first month or two. This way a sponsor can test multiple ads without running the risk of financial loss. Unlike established blogs, a new blog has limited data to report. In order to compete, therefore, the blog owner must lower price. All other variables are outside his/her immediate influence. For well-established blogs, I’d recommend a free one-week trial. This allows the advertiser to build confidence before fully investing in your blog. Look at what your competitors are charging. You want to be within their price range or lower. Unless you are getting in excess of 25,000 unique monthly visitors, $45/month should be the absolute price ceiling on a 468×60 banner ad and $30 on a 125×125 square ad.
Ad number and placement are also important to sponsors. Don’t offer more than eight 125×125 square ads. It creates too much distraction for your readers and lesser exposure for the advertiser. The same goes for 468×60 banner ads. I’d say one or two at best. In terms of location, you want to place your ads in areas of high visibility. This is entirely up to your discretion. Usually navigational areas work best for square ads. A 468×60 banner ad may work well in your blog’s header area.
Finding Sponsors
After creating your advertiser web page, the next step is to actively communicate this interest to a broad audience. How do you do this? Well, there are a number of different ways. Start by sending out an email to your opt-in list. Tell them your looking for sponsors and are willing to offer a one-week free trial. If you do not have any subscribers, you could consider traditional e-zine advertising or purchasing an opt-in list yourself. Try publishing in popular article directories for additional exposure. Actively participate in forums as well. This can create very good opportunities for your blog. Do not spam though. Check out the sponsors on your competitor’s blogs. If they provide contact info, approach them directly and see if they are interested.
Retaining Your Sponsors
The sponsor’s ad conversion rate will be a key factor in determining your blog’s monetization potential. Sponsors expect a certain percentage of your blog traffic to translate into sales for them. This is why they chose to advertise on your blog in the first place. Most MMO bloggers fail to realize that it is not the amount of traffic, but the quality that ultimately counts. In order to create value for the advertiser, you have to drive targeted traffic to your blog. This implicitly means that you will have to optimize your blog for search engines. Social traffic will often result in high click-thru rates and low conversions. Organic traffic, on the other hand, is laser targeted. It converts so much better. This is what attracts blog sponsors. In fact, many blog sponsors type in their keyword of choice in Google, observe the websites in position 1,2 or 3 and then contact the owners for advertising opportunities. Why? They know those websites are highly targeted. In general, search engine visitors often look for a certain type of product or service while browsing websites, making them very valuable. If your blog targets the right keywords, it will not only attract and retain blog sponsors, but also receive better recognition in its corresponding niche.
Take an active interest in your sponsor’s advertisement results. His success is your success. Make it a priority to contact him and inquire about your service. Were you able to generate any sales for his business? If so, how many? Tell him that you are committed to his ongoing success and if the advertisements are not converting into enough sales, you will either lower the price or offer better ad placement. In short, provide excellent customer service. How many bloggers seriously do that? Your relationship with the sponsor does not end with taking his money and posting his ad. It has to go well beyond that. Offer solutions for your blog sponsors when they run into problems. Help them turn a profit.
The benefit is mutual. In addition to providing value for the advertiser, you are also getting constant feedback on the performance of your blog’s advertising system. If this information is positive, it can be included in your advertising web page, thereby, boosting author credibility. If the information is negative, however, find ways to improve your blog.
I hope this post has provided some insight on the topic of blog sponsorship. Feel free to share your experiences or comments.
Written by Ryan DSouza from Internet Marketing StrategyPosted on April 7th, 2009 and filed under Making Money
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6 Responses to “Are You Generating A Positive ROI For Your Blog Sponsors?”
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Thanks for this info. I’m about to start direct advertising on my site and this was really helpful. What do you use to track the clicks? I used openx but one reason I haven’t started my direct advertising is, I need/want to hard code it into my site so I can track it accurately. I have a plugin, but I don’t trust that.
You make some good points but I disagree with a few things you mentioned at the start.
First of all, you mention off free advertising if your blog is new. I disagree with this. For one, if your blog is new you shouldn’t be thinking about adding advertisements, you should be thinking about adding more content and promoting it rather than try and monetize a blog 100 visitors.
Secondly, I don’t think that you need to offer week long trials. 1. Because there are always people who will take the trial and have no intention of advertising and 2. Because if your blog is ‘established’ then you won’t have to. Established blogs rarely have problems getting advertisers (that’s if the are actually established!).
Lastly, you state that unless you have more than 25,000 unique monthly visitors $45/month should be the absolute price ceiling on a 468×60 banner ad and $30 on a 125×125 square ad. I disagree with this. It really depends on the niche. You can’t put a set price on all blogs because some types of blogs get traffic easier than others but are harder to monetize and vice versa.
Take for example a medical blog or a blog advising readers about the law and their rights. They might only have 15,000 visitors a month but they could probably charge over $100 for a 125×125 banner ad because their traffic is so targeted.
You do make some good points though. In particular, about your advertisers success being your success. If your advertisers are making money, they will always renew their ads with you
Hi Kevin,
You raise some excellent points actually. My cost structure for advertisements primarily refers to MMO/make money online type blogs. I should have been more specific there. My fault was in the assumption that most of your readers fall within the MMO/IM niche and my price point for ads was intended to target them.
Your right, corporate blogs can and actually do easily fetch a much higher price for advertising. Topics such as hedge fund strategy, intellectual property law, distributed computing and cardiothoracic surgery are some clear examples. I just didn’t assume you’d have a surgeon, hedge fund manager, or lawyer read my article’s advertising price point. Once again, the fault was mine. Should have specifically mentioned MMO blogs.
With respect to one-week long trials. Sure, you raise a very good point. I see your angle. An established blog never runs short of finding sponsors. True. Also, there is the possibility of exploiting the free offer with no intention of actually advertising. Agree.
If only Google did the same right? They never run short of ad words clients. Yet Google offers free $50 vouchers for new customers. They don’t need to, they choose to. But you may ask, “Google versus someone’s blog is comparing apples to oranges”. Well, how about problogger? I am sure we’ve all heard of the legendary Darren Rowse. Safe to say, he doesn’t need any advertisers? He’s only running a 6-figure net profit annually. But, in his post “Find a Sponsor for Your Blog”, you’ll find that he not only suggests a free trial, but has also offered it. Here’s a direct quote from his article, ” I’ve found that having one advertiser (even if it’s a free one) can actually attract other advertisers (or at least make selling sponsorships easier)”. There are a few others. Feel free to check it out.
I do agree, however, that a one-week long trial may be excessive. Perhaps 3 days or so would be enough. My thought process at the time was that the sponsor should have enough time to test if a blog’s traffic is converting for his ad or not.
Call me overly kind, but i didn’t feel it right to take the sponsor’s money with him/her having reservations about my blog’s ability to generate sales for his/her business.
Lastly, your right about new blogs. I am a big fan for original relevant content. Content is king. Most of us know that. I mentioned it in my last article as well. A new blog’s primary focus should be on creating high quality content first. I should have added that in. Nevertheless, there’s always new bloggers that will look for sponsors, regardless of whether their blog is content-rich or empty. In those cases, free advertising is their best bet. (my expectation was that new bloggers would be discouraged by my suggestion of the free advertising model and try to establish their blogs.)
Sorry about the long comment. Just wanted to explain myself fully.
Thanks.
Hi Cecil,
I am glad you found my article helpful.
All thanks to Kevin for giving me the opportunity to post.
What click data would you specifically like to track? For ad tracking, which i think is what your referring to, check out http://click.websitegear.com. They seem to offer a pretty detailed service. But, I’ve not used them personally, so i cannot say for sure.
Since, I run adsense on my blogs, my interest has only been to track pageviews thus far. For this, i use eLogicwebsolutions. But, they provide detailed analysis on user activity in their Pro package. Woopra is another analytical tool i’d like to try. Heard positive things about them.
This is helpful. Thanks for sharing Ryan. After reading this I tried checking my google analytics never check it for a while.