Getting advertisers to purchase space

Hey those of you who have advertising space on your forums, and are not using adsense. Who did you contact or pitch your forum to in the company? Did you contact them directly or did you get contacted about advertising on your forum?

 

I was pretty lucky in that advertisers contacted me long before I was ready to run ads. I'd originally started out wanting just wanting to use Adsense but that didn't cover my hosting costs.

You have to put together a media kit. A media kit includes a mission statement, synopsis of the site and your target audience (demographics), and current stats. You can optionally include pricing in your kit. I do include pricing but some have a separate pricing & placement document. I update mine every year. Normally the first page of my media kit is a brief synopsis of the goings on over the past year.

After you create the kit I'd mail it off to companies you're intrested in courting. Personally, mine is only available upon request.

If you like PM me your email address and I'll send you my kit as an example

 

I have an advertising page on my site. I just allow them to contact me directly. I don't usually go out searching but if I do, I offer discounts as well.

 

I have adsense on my forum but come a time that I really need some paypal amount which I don't have, I did try to sell my ad space in some forum. Of course we all must have know that for computer technology forum or Admin forums, its easier to get advertisers in WHT so I did post there about the ad space and I got about 12 private messages inquiring about it.

 

I announce on my forum that ad space is available. As the forum grew, more companies wanted to sign up to purchase ad space. You can advertise that you have space available in marketplace sections of some forums. I have heard of some forum or website owners being contacted directly without even promoting space.

 

I was excited about that a few times, until only doing research on the company/brand. Disappointment ensues.

I wish I had a legit company come and ask for adspace like that.

 

Interesting concept, has anyone been approached to have people advertise on your blog? I use blogger right now and trying to find a good template to use on it rather then the one I have now, it's pretty hard if you ask me. I'm using bidvertiser right now for ads, not sure how well it will do. I need some advice on how to throw a package together for ad placement and prices, so anything thoughts and ideas on this subject would help me greatly. How much is too much? I know there are pages you can add to the blog, I'm running a how to make money website and trying to improve it daily.

 

The best way to do this is adsense though because my earnings have went from 1p per click to 70p pretty good really not the most money in the world but it allows me to repurchase my domain and stuff.

 

I've had an advertiser renew a spot for $45 a month for the past few months. Our second advertiser didn't renew last month.

 

Selling ad space on your site is hard.
Keeping up with billing month after month is even harder.

I've done a couple of long term deals with big companies, and in my case they wanted me to bill them after the ad campaign (6 months of ads before payment). I was also given a 1099 at year end.

I found out quick that I couldn't stay on top of it. I outsourced to isocket.com, and more recently to buysellads.com. My opinion is try buysellads.com first - get the low down on how things work, then strike out on your own if you feel froggy.

 

I found that yearly billing was a helluva a lot easier than trying to go month to month. A first we started off with a 6 months term. One guy would drag his feet so long on paying (he was good for the money but actually getting paid was the problem) that by the time he paid it was time to bill him all over again.

We switched to a yearly billing which is a little bit of a nut for the advertiser to swallow but I offer a discount for yearly billing.

If someone wants to get their feet wet and go monthly, I'll do it for a month or two after that it's yearly billing or they setup an automatic payment subscription with me so I don't have to chase around money.

 

I think you might find it is hard to get anyone to place advertisement, if you don't have your own site. Being on Blogger is, in other words, a pretty big disadvantage.

Aside from that and in general, one of the important things to remember, if you are selling an advertisement service within your site, is you must also somehow prove your ad service is worthwhile to buy into. Dan's advice above is some good stuff. I'd also recommend having a credible third party, like Alexa, measure your site's activity and add those statistics/ link to them in your media package. It makes the "reach" of users you are trying to sell to the advertiser much more believable and also more valuable (if you have a good reach).

Scott

 

I run a forum based on the use of electronic cigarettes. I get most of my profit from that forum. My tactics are very simple...

1. I allow advertising for free in authorized areas of the forum. In fact, I just require members to make one post that is not advertisish and then they can start posting their ads.

2. I inform members that their ads are nofollow and will only help those who are surfing the forum.

3. I inform members that we sale advertising in the form of text link, banners and email marketing and that they have a better chance of getting more traffic and maybe customers that way.

4. Lastly, I remind cheaper in advertising than my competition. In fact I am so cheap that people usually buy advertising in bulk (as the longer they pay for it, the cheaper I make it) and I get quite a bit of money.

It is easy for me to earn 6 months of server cost with just one advertising client

But selling ads also depends on the niche, too. No one want to buy ads on my admin forum and that is because there really isn't anything to advertise.