Do blogs really need an “advertise” page anymore? This is the question which popped up in my mind after a prospective advertiser used the Contact form to get in touch with me regarding advertising.

Do We Need "Advertise Here" Page?

You should know that I do not have an Advertise page on this blog. Because, an advertise page has data that changes almost every month and moreover, I only need to disclose the ad rates to prospective clients.

Frankly speaking, having an advertise page is rather ineffective. If you think that having an advertise page can help you land more advertisers, then you think wrong!

The days have passed when all bloggers diligently placed an Advertise page on their header. Most advertisers hardly look at the page. The worst part is that more often than not, the site statistics on the page are shown outdated – which looks really unprofessional.

Some Benefits of NOT having an Advertise page:

• Complete privacy from competitors while quoting your ad rates.
• You can give real-time site statistics to your prospective advertiser.
• By not having an ad page you have the ability to negotiate your ad rates. If you put up rates on the Advertise page – it may be too much for an advertiser and he/she may not bother to contact you. Whereas, when an advertiser contacts you, both the seller and advertiser have a chance to negotiate pricing which satisfies both of them.

There is no risk involved when you forgo the Advertise page. As anyone who is interested in advertising on your site will finally use the Contact form to get in touch with you.

There are two popular models of advertising on the internet: Cost-Per-Click (CPC) and Cost-Per-Mille (CPM) used by bloggers. Many webmaster make use of CPC and CPM ads to make money from their websites and blogs. But many have a doubt, whether CPM or CPC advertising is better for their blog. This post will examine this question that is asked by many bloggers.

The case with both these advertising models are that they might perform well for one person, but not that well for another. All ad publishers might not enjoy the same earning from CPC as others do. It is possible that some sites perform better for CPM.

What is Cost-Per-Click (CPC)?

Cost Per Click is the most popular advertising model that is used by webmasters today. CPC advertising is simply stated an advertising model where the ad publisher earn for each click on the advertisers ad. The most popular examples of a CPC ad is Google Adsense. Google Adsense is a very popular CPC program for ad publishers that displays contextual ads that are relevant to the keywords used in articles.

The cost-per-click of an ad may vary according to the advertisers. Some advertisers are ready to pay the publishers in two-digit dollar amounts for a single click on their ad. Whereas, there are many advertisers who pay only a few cents for each click on their ad. The advertisers who know that they will be earning almost 20-30 times more from the lead generated per click will be willing to pay a few dollars for each click on their ad. The other advertisers who do not earn that much from a lead will pay less to publishers. Of course, advertisers who pay more get to be listed on websites that use uncommon keywords. This is why it is important that a publisher needs to focus on the keywords he uses while advertising with the CPC model. Some keywords will pay a publisher a lot of money for each click whereas, some keywords will only pay a single cent.

Another important factor is that to make a decent amount of money from CPC ads, you need an above average traffic level to your site. There are so many bloggers who are frustrated from CPC ads due to the low earnings they register. Most sites can only generate a few cents of revenue in a month from ads.

Advantages of CPC ads

Before coming to CPM ads, here are some advantages of the Cost-Per-Click (CPC) ads:

• It is easier to get approved for a publisher account of CPC ads.
• CPC ads are keywords based, so you can earn a lot for targeted search engine traffic.
• There is no limit to how much you earn in a month from CPC ads, you may earn only a few dollars in a month and earn in four figure the next month.

Disadvantages of CPC ads

There are always two sides of a coin, so along with the advantages of CPC ads there are also some disadvantages:

• You need a good amount of traffic if you want to earn a decent amount from CPC.
• Mostly effective on Search Engine Traffic.
• Earnings are very dependent on the placement of ads.

What is CPM?

CPM is an acronym for Cost-Per-Mille. Quite simply, the definition of CPM ads can be explained as the cost an advertiser pay for a thousand views of his ad. This advertising model is impression based, so the advertisers is paid simply for displaying the advertisers ad whether they are clicked or not.

There are many CPM advertisers on the internet. The main advantage of putting up CPM ads on your site is that you do not have to worry about whether your ads are clicked or not. In fact, you have to focus on your website’s traffic aspect. Since you are paid for every thousand impression under the CPM ad model it is important for you to generate as much traffic as possible to your site as possible.

There will not be much difference whether your traffic comes for targeted search engine keywords or direct hits. CPM eliminates the risk involved i.e. whether your ad is clicked or not. You will be paid for every thousand impressions it has – which is why it is sought after by many bloggers who do not specialize in keywords.

Advantages of CPM

• Great for publishers who do not have targeted keyword-based traffic.
• Can be placed anywhere. The placement of CPM ads does not matter at all.
• There is no risk involved since one only needs traffic and does not require the reader to click on the ads.

Disadvantages of CPM

• It is difficult to get approved for a CPM publisher account as they ask for a minimum site traffic (10k+/month) requirement when you submit your application.
• Since a site does not have huge traffic level fluctuations except in rare cases, your earnings are predictable and capped to an extent.

Bottomline

So it is easy to understand that the CPC and CPM ad models may not perform well for every publisher. Some advertisers who get a lot of targeted search engine traffic can earn more from CPC ads rather than CPM ads. And sometimes the earnings you get from every thousand impressions of your page may be more than the income from clicks made on your ads. It is important that you do a little bit of a experimenting and testing before you finally decide on your advertising model among these two.

This guest post was brought to you by Tom Walker who is a writer for an online store offering HP supplies. When he isn’t guest posting, Tom edits and writes posts about advertising and design for the CreativeCloud.

In today’s world, it is all about the marketing. There are a number of standards that a website is required to live up to in order to get the advertisers flocking to the page. Likewise, there are a number of ways that will stop them in their tracks altogether, never noticing a website to begin with. Things that stop an advertiser from approaching your blog:

1. Being Out of Date:

If you are not up to date, or if you are inconsistent in posts while taking long breaks in between posts, advertisers will not notice you. They will feel as if though you are not around enough to have an audience, and without an audience, who will see their ads?

2. Poor Blog Design:

Advertisers enjoy a website that is easy to navigate and has easily visible sections dedicated to their ads. If the design is poor, meaning it has a poor selection of colors that make it difficult to see, or if ads are so far out of the way that hardly anybody will see them, or if the blog is so difficult to navigate, advertisers are not going to feel comfortable approaching you for purchasing a slot.

3. No Unique Information Available:

Maybe the advertisers do want to put an ad on your website. However, if you do not have a set page designated for informing hopeful advertisers where to contact you, how to contact you or how much your advertisement space will cost, then they simply cannot put ads on your website. Do not forget to go the extra mile and make it a clear, concise figure where it is easily visible from the first, starting page.

4. Changing Domains & Branding:

If you are constantly changing new websites or changing the domain altogether, it will be impossible for anybody to find you, let alone advertisers. Do not get discouraged if they are not all piling on your door from the first day – after all, Rome was not built in a day. It will take some time for the website to build popularity, meaning it will take some time before advertisers notice you are on the Internet.

5. Writing Waffle Instead of Concisely:

Though not as tasty as the similarly sounding breakfast item, advertisers will be turned off by bloggers who post an abundance of content that do not relate to one another or are a confusing mess to try and follow on a website. If you are going to discuss the latest movies, do not think out loud and type out your recollection of the time you fell off the swings and how you were reminded of that because there was a park in one of the movies for all of two seconds. Advertisers prefer a concise manner of words over a nonsensical verbosity.

6. Prolonged Inactivity:

If you do not market yourself or tell anybody that your website exists, how is anyone going to find it, let alone advertisers?

7. Clutter:

Advertisers will not look forward to buying your ad space if you are going to clutter up the website with an abundance of videos or flashing banners or any other similar content, especially near where the advertisement would be placed. It is a distraction that will draw attention away from the advertisement, which is the polar opposite of what the advertiser is looking for.

8. Lack of Visitor Demographics:

As it was stated before, advertisers want a website that has a large enough audience. If they do not know right away how popular your website is, or how many people it reaches per day, they may not feel comfortable reaching out to you for advertising space.

9. Copyscape Says No:

Advertisers will not want to be associated with you if your website is full of copy and paste information that is only unique to the person who originally wrote it elsewhere. Like a previous tip, not only is it important to have up to date information, it is important that the content is unique.

10. Practicing introvert methods:

If you don’t reach out to the advertisers, they may not find you, and it is important to get those first couple of ads in order for others to notice you are there.

Do Leave your comments and thoughts!

Hi Guys,

There seems to be no doubt that Google Adsense is getting harder. Even seasoned webmasters who once earned handsomely from the Adsense program are twitching in frustration.

If you are an AdWords advertiser you would notice that Google has empowered advertisers with statistics very powerful. It has become quite easy for an advertiser to see which web pages in the AdSense network are generating profitable traffic for the advertiser and which are not.

Advertisers react to this data by quickly pulling out their ads from such webpages and from web pages which are just not relevant enough.

What you must do as a publisher is to provide high quality content so that advertisers can in return achieve highly targeted audience. One great way to boost your AdSense earning prowess is to write valuable content and educate your audience on the service of the kid of ads that get shown on your website. If you do not do this, then you will quickly see the number of advertisers competing for your site falling down. You will also notice a drastic reduction in the amount they are willing to pay per click.

Result: reduced AdSense income.

But unfortunately, most of us consider writing articles much tougher than it is. If you do write more number of articles there are a lot of benefits-

1) More probability of Search Engine Traffic

2) More keywords for AdSense Ads

3) Greatly improve your reader interest

4) A higher quality site since a large number of content will help you build your site out

I hope this post let you know what you need to improvise on to really boost your AdSense income.

Wishing You Blogging Success.

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Google is obsessed with Advertising start-ups. It has been taking over start-ups faster than a croc snapping its prey.Take a look at the take overs by Google in the last month:

Teracent Display Advertising Start-Up

A week back Google brought display advertising technology start-up Teracent. Display ads are different from text ads (which are content related), display ads are banner ads that are often used as branding tools by corporations.

The speciality of Teracent ad technology is that it customizes graphic advertisements based on who is watching them. These ads modify themselves according to the time of the day of the viewer and also the pre-dominant language. It is like a whole new level of advertising.

Google has not mentioned the money involved in the Teracent deal but Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said this summer that display advertising is likely to be “the next billion dollar business” at Google.

AdMob Mobile Advertising Start-up

Google brought out AdMob with a click of its fingers for $750 million in stocks. AdMob is one of the top sellers of banner ads on iPhone applications and Web pages that can be retrieved from mobile phones. Mobile phone advertising is small but rapidly evolving online business. Google seems to be smart enough to take a early dive in to accrue the early-bird advantage.

DoubleClick Acquisition

Microsoft and Google fought for acquiring DoubleClick like business rivals in mafia movies. Anyways, I doubt if anyone was abducted or murdered. In the end, Google God managed to snap DoubleClick for $3.1 billion (shocked? “Hah, its just pocket change babe!” – Google).

DoubleClick is also a jumpstart for Google in its display advertising business (like Teracent).

What does this mean to small scale advertisers like us?

Essentially, the small-time advertiser or business can now buy targeted display ads on thousands of DoubleClick ad-serving websites. Currently, Yahoo holds 14% of the Display ad network and Google only 2%. This will mean that advertisers will get highly targeted ad spots to market themselves. Implying they will pay more to Google, which in turn makes Google richer.

So lets see if Google acquirement spree will make blogging more profitable for us.

As if PPC  advertisers like Google Adsense, Adbrite were not enough – QueryAds has made an entry into a highly competitive market. Query Ads puts live search engine traffic keywords to work for advertisers – one difference being that they eliminate the usage of broad keywords, more specific keywords are bid.QueryAds has a minimum payout of $50. Another advantage I found was that they accept PayPal. If you are an advertiser or a publisher, you can add and withdraw fund from QueryAds with your Paypal account. Currently, they are not offering checks.

Interested publishers can sign up for QueryAds, although I really doubt the level of interest that webmasters may have. They do not accept each publisher site immediately. QueryAds review each site submitted within 1-2 business days.

One nice feature I find is that advertisers can initiate campaign in QueryAds with only $10 as their budget. This will allow small scale bloggers like me to take leverage – if interested in promoting a blog with ads.

The remainder of the features remain all the same, you can customize the layout of your ad and all your ads will be keyword targeted. If interested you can join QueryAds as a publisher or advertiser here.