Mar
20
I’ve discovered first hand that online advertising can be a great way to jump-start interest in a new website or augment traffic to already established websites. It’s quite easy to get effective ads up and running, and campaigns can be designed to match any budget. Since it’s an avenue few bloggers & webmasters currently use to expand their readership, it can give you an edge in a world of increasing competition over eyeballs. Companies are also finding success by adding websites or even blogs to their long-running ads.
I buy text advertisements using mostly the Google AdWords system and Yahoo!’s Overture network. These ads appear on the search engines when people type in search terms that match phrases I’ve purchased, and also appear on Google and Yahoo! partner sites that fit the profile for these terms.
The easiest way to get started in the online advertising game is to sign up for a Google AdWords account. All you need is a credit card and the five minutes or so it takes to fill out the online forms. Go to Google to get the process started. You’ll be prompted through the steps required to get your first ad posted. Since you pay only when someone clicks on an ad, you don’t need to worry about paying for ads that don’t generate traffic.
I’ve also purchased and traded for graphical banner ad space on a variety of sites. That type of buy is a little more complex than buying search text ads, but can yield effective results. Like a roadside billboard, many banner placements will cost you money regardless of how many clicks you get, so i advise clients to begin with simple text ads to get a feel of how much traffic they want to achieve per dollar spent. Worry about buying banner space after you get some experience with search ads.
Another kind of advertising system which is highly popular among bloggers is the StumbleUpon advertising network. With StumbleUpon, you can buy site visitors for only $0.5 cents each, and you can be up and running with your campaign within minutes. The good thing about StumbleUpon is you dont have to worry about creating an attractive advert. You simply enter the URL you want to promote, choose a daily budget and watch the visitors flow in. StumbleUpon also has a tracking system which shows how many people have visited your site and what percentage of those visitors liked or disliked your website. For more on StumbleUpon advertising, view Darrens post, Run A StumbleUpon Advertising Campaign.
Which type of advertising do you use to attract new users to your website? Which advertising networks have worked particularly well, or didn’t work at all? I would be interested to hear your views on this kind of marketing, and what experiences you have had using them.
Popularity: 13% [?]
|
| What Next |
|
||||||||
|
|||||||||
I much prefer word-of-mouth and building a community as I lack the patience and focus to tackle Adwords and the like. The Stumbleupon advertising does show promise.<br><br>I also use my various and sundry ezines I\’ve built up over the past 10 years as well.<br><br>Enjoy,<br><br>Barbara<br><em>Barbara Ling (aka Owlbert)’s last blog post..<a href=’http://www.askowlbert.com/about-the-topic/viva-the-easter-broccoli-bunny-gaining-the-edge-and-managing-your-blog-audiences-expectations-day-4-of-5/’>Viva the Easter Broccoli Bunny! Gaining the Edge and Managing your blog audience’s expectations - Day 4 of 5</a></em>
For beginners I would suggest using MSN Adcenter. It might be slow, seem to take forever for your ads to be approved and doesn’t have the volume but people who click on your ads are more responsive.
I use plenty of content to bring in the SEO.With ads I mainly use Adsense.
Hey Andy, would you be willing to share how large your advertising budget is for this site? You don’t have any adds on this site so how are you paying for the advertising? If you don’t want to share I understand. I’m just curious about how small you can start with this and what is realistic. Thanks.
Kyle James’s last blog post..Links of the Week March 21th, 2008
Thanks for the comment Kyle,
At present i don’t have an advertising budget as such; I do spend money on advertising, but only the money i make as a result of guest-posts at other online blogs, so i would say im spending approx $150 per month;
I said i don’t have an advertising budget, because i don’t spend any money out of my own pocket so-to-speak. I only ever spend the money i make in blogging for others. I also do a lot of marketing myself with social networking, inbound linking, guest-blogging, all these methods alone provide a substantial amount of traffic per month, but i think the advertising only aids in these efforts.
As for ads on this site. I opted to go without the ads because im not blogging to earn money, i blog because i am genuinely passionate about the topics i write on, and i really enjoy the whole ‘blogging’ scene. At one point in the future i might introduce ads, but at this point, that is highly unlikely.
What about you? do you have an advertising budget for your website’s, and do you do any marketing yourself?
Thanks for the response. No I don’t spend any money. I added some adds to my blog just to see if i could make any money (AdSense has made about a $2 in the last month). I do have a pet project The Tomahawk (it’s an aggregate site for some Atlanta Braves blogs around the net) that I’m setting up and have been thinking about buying adds for it. Right now I’m kind of just guest blogging on Baseball blogs and doing a little here and there to promote it but not spending any money. I guess I would just say that we are in the same boat. I blog because I’m passionate about it and have a niche of specialty that I feel I have something to contribute to the community. I’ve only been blogging for about three months and the rewards have been absolutely amazing with the relationships and knowledge that I’ve already learned.
Kyle James’s last blog post..Links of the Week March 21th, 2008
Yeah i must say i feel the same as you. Ive only been blogging for about 5 months, and im loving every minute of it. the best thing that comes out of it i think, other than the satisfaction of knowing your readers are benefiting from your posts is the online relationships you have with other bloggers etc, and all the additional knowledge you learn as a result of being in the blogging community.
Good luck with your sites. Hope they do well for you