Google AdSense Vs. Private Advertising

Google AdSense Vs. Private Advertising

Posted by legacye in Home on 06 7th, 2008 | no responses

Google AdSense can be a great way to make some extra income on your blog or website. Most blogs either use it right now or have employed them in the past with varying levels of success. I’m here to tell you that in 2008, it might be a good idea to not put all your eggs in one basket.

I have had clients ranging from start-up companies to the type of teenagers you see on the news making thousands from MySpace layout sites. One of the key differences between these people isn’t their age or what they’re selling – it’s their approach. The age old phrase “Knowledge is power” has never been more true than with the world of online advertising.

The first thing you need to be aware of when using Adsense is that more often that not, only a very small percentage of your visitors are going to click on your adverts. Amongst the other visitors, some of them are going to be using tools like AdBlock, meaning that on any given day, you shouldn’t expect more than 10% of your visitors to click on your links. For many of you that work from home – this income isn’t going to be enough to pay the bills at the end of the day.

So why is it that you keep hearing about others making huge fortunes online?. The answer to this is private advertising. Did you know that a site like PerezHilton.com pulls over $5000 a month or that Hot-lyts.com make about $2-3000 in the same period?. That’s not including the amount these sites earn from other revenue streams including affiliate marketing.

Private advertising basically means that you sell an advertising spot on your website to a person or company for a set period of time for a certain amount – in many cases this can be for 3, 6, 9 or 12 months. Most of the higher earners are able to achieve large incomes because they’ve managed to build up the traffic to justify charging a decent amount for each ad-spot. If you are able to guarantee that a lot of people are going to be heading over to their site because they saw it on yours – you’ve hit the jackpot. Reaching this goal however takes time and effort, and I may dedicate another article to it.

So how do you go about securing private advertisers?. Some sites try to achieve this by having contact forms or advert shops on their sites. This isn’t a bad idea but there are a few more pro-active things you could be doing to get that all important wind-fall. My suggestions? Find advertisers yourself.

This may not sound like the easiest thing in the world to do, but if you’ve managed to get past the traffic hurdle, it’ll be easier to secure a good line of advertisers than you think. Many owners of small companies wishing to increase their traffic (and invest money into doing so) will often join forums, communities or groups either related to their particular site’s topic or for purely entrepreneurial discussion. Some such sites are the Warrior Forums or MySpace Pro’s. There are several more of these such groups out there.

Those wishing to rope in the larger corporate advertisers can either try catching the attention of companies such as BlogAds or probably more relevantly – contacting the company’s advertising reps directly. If you can price your ads competitively at first, you’ll be able to prove to other potential advertisers that there is sufficient interest in your site for them to jump into the advertising pool too. The key thing to bare in mind is don’t give up.

Going from nothing to a highly profitable venture will take a few months at the very least, but keep yourself busy. Working towards the day when your site is making you more than your day-job is worth it and you’ll be glad you invested just that extra bit of time when you have all that money to keep you warm at night ; )