Why You Should Sell Advertising Yourself Instead Of Joining Advertising Networks

Paid advertisement is the most common monetization methods that blog owner use to make money with their blogs. Blog owners make money by displaying ads  and banners on their blogs  which are paid for by the advertisers. Generaly speaking there are two ways to monetize a blog with ads. First is by joining an ad network and the other way is by selling advertisement inventory yourself.

The first way by joining ad networks is easier but also less profitable. The main advantage of becoming a publisher of ad networks is that the ad networks take care of everything associated with running paid ads on your blog and all you need to worry about is blogging and promoting your blog. To start displaying ads from ad networks on your blog all that is necessary is to apply for a publisher account and once your application is approved, insert a code from the ad network in your website.

Online advertising networks offer payment depending on several models:

1. Pay per click is an advertising model that pays every time visitor clicks on an ad on your blog. With this model blog owners are paid an amount of money which is based on several things but the earnings per click can be anywhere from 1 cent to several dollars per click. Worlds greatest ad network is Adsense which is a subsidiary of Google. How much do Adsense publishers make depends on how much advertisers are biding for click on their ads, and Adsense displays the ads with highest cost first. When visitors click on ad, the advertisers are charged and the profit is shared between Google Adsense and the publisher.
2. Pay per Impression or  is another payment model used by internet advertising networks. Unlike pay per click model, networks that work on per impression model pay the publishers based on the number of impressions. The  earnings are calculated for every thousand impressions and are usually from under a dollar to several dollars depending on the niche, the countries from where do the visitors come and other things. Pay per impression model is good for blogs that have lots of traffic.
3. Another way blog owners can monetize their property is by joining ad networks where they can sell the advertising spots on their blogs for a fixed amount of money for a certain time period. This way the earnings of blog owners will not depend on the number of clicks or impressions but they will receive fixed amount of money regardless how many visitors view the advertisements or how many times the ads are clicked. Blog owners can join ad networks like BuySellAds and sell advertising spots to interested buyers on a monthly basis.

Monetizing your blog with ad networks is easy because once you become a publisher all you need to do is insert code in your webpage and the ad network takes care of everything else. You don’t need to worry about finding advertisers, billing and processing payment because the network does all this things for you. The disadvantages of going along with ad networks is sharing your profit with the ad network. However if you decide to sell advertising inventory yourself you will keep all the money but you will also do all the work associated with finding advertisers, billing, managing ads, processing payments etc.

How much you should charge your advertisers?

The question on how much you should charge your advertisers is crucial because if you charge too much advertisers will not be willing to spend what they might think too much money, if you charge too little you will be losing potential profit.

How much you should charge depends on several things:

1. The traffic. The most important thing to determine how much you should charge if the number of impression the ads might be receiving. If your blog has many visitors you can charge more for your adverting spots. You can charge your advertisers on a per-impression basis but better way would be to charge a fixed monthly amount for an ad spot.
2. The size and position of the banners. You can charge more money for certain banner sizes. For instance Leaderboard or Rectangle usually cost more that 125 x 125 banner. Positioning of the banners on the webpage is important because advertisers are ready to spend more for banners that are positioned close to the top of webpage than they are willing to pay for a position close to the bottom. You will earn more if you place more than one banner on your  webpage but don’t be greedy because too many ads will ruin reader experience and you will lose readers in the long run.
3. The niche of your blog. Certain niches are very difficult to find advertisers even if your blog has lots of visitors. There are certain niches that even a blog with low traffic like 100 visitors a day can find advertisers if the products advertised are high priced and all the advertisers need is to make a single sale a month to make a profit on their investment.