Direct Ad Sales means more Profits

Apr 17th, 2009 Promotion Techniques 0 Comment

I’m exploring the ways of direct advert selling, looking at the benefits and disadvantages of using this method and whether it is profitable in the long run.

Using Direct Advert Sales

When I first started this blog late last year in 2008, I was more concerned about getting content available on the site rather than monetising it. I used Google Adsense for a while, but I was only making a few cents/dollars per day and losing visitors at the same time.

By recently implementing direct ad sales, I found it was an option to add extra revenue to the site. For example my approach was:

Getting some popular articles written on the site, with backlinks.
Improve the Page Rank level.
Set a cheap price and promote the site on Digitalpoint.
Place image adverts only, on all pages and include doFollow links.
Limit the number of spots available.

Benefits of using Direct Ads

Direct ad sales is a great way to monetise your blog since there’s no middleman to take your profits. You can set you own ad rates and have more control over the advertising and payment options. As the site develops with more backlinks/popularity you can increase your advertising rates. Bloggers like Shoemoney and John Chow state that direct advert sales make up the majority of their site’s income.

Disadvantages

The main disadvantage is that since it’s up to you to find advertisers, you could end up with unsold inventory especially when you are just starting out.

Lessons Learnt from these types of Sales

I used this form of advertising recently, I found it’s slightly flawed. The price level was set right, I had a backlog of potential advertisers however the price was dependant on the Page Rank level and number of backlinks.

By selling links, I was in fact selling my Page Rank Juice by accepting doFollow paid advertising. In the most recent Page Rank update, my level dropped from PR5 to PR4. I think this is due to selling a high number paid links on all pages.

Since, then I’m filtering out the number of paid adverts and will not offer DoFollow paid links anymore, instead exploring: