Welcome back to the third part to ‘How to Sell Ads on Your Blog Despite It’s Size’. In part one, I told you why you should cut out the middle man in order to make money online. In part 2, I broke down the three main ad spots on a blog. Now, it’s time to reveal the most important part about tossing adsense to the curb and going on your own- actually selling the space.

Here are ways you can efficiently and quickly sell advertisement spots on your blog.

Make an ‘Advertise’ Page

Devote an entire individual page on your blog to selling ads. This allows interested advertisers to always have access to information regarding ad space. If advertisers have to search to find out, they won’t!

On your Advertise page, be sure to include:

• Stats: (pagerank, alexa, technorati, rss readers) Even if it’s not impressive, you still have to let them know.
• Ad Types (sidebar, links, header, in post)
• Availability of Ads (how many of each ad, if it’s available in a few months or immediately)
• Price: Very important, duh!
• Contact Information: Provide a link to your Contact page, an e-mail, or a contact form right there. How else are you going to sell those ads?
• Testimonials: If you have had previous advertisers, make them give a testimonial and show it off!

Write a Post

This is the best way to get immediate exposure to anyone that visits your blog. Write about it! The information you provide should either include similar information to what would be on an Advertise page, or you can just give a quick overview of the ad type and price, and link to your Advertise page for more information.

Buy a Review

Well it’s like they say: you’ve got to spend money to make money. If you’re ad prices will cover the cost and make a profit from what you spend on the review, and the ad prices are reasonable, then buying a review could turn out to be really helpful in getting those ad spots sold in a hurry. You might even gain new readers! Exposure, and money. Sounds good to me.

Find the Advertisers

This is the most effective way to sell ads, regardless of what anyone else says. Unless of course your blog is like John Chow/Problogger popular, than just skip this part. But, if you have a small blog than this is what you have to do. Don’t sit and wait for the advertisers to come to you.

This method is so unbelievably useful, I have some tips to include for when you have the balls to go and get the money advertisers.

• Remember your manners. You can (and should) use the same things you’d use with forming a good blogger relationship.
• Do not fear rejection. There are tons of people that get a crap load of e-mails each day. And there are plenty more people that are just plain rude and won’t respond. Don’t be afraid. After at least two days, give up on them and move on. This will happen a lot!
• Offer a one time deal. If you seem to have someone who’s like “eh, I don’t know, I’ll think about it” than you have to make a move. Don’t just accept it and wait. Give them a discount or offer them extra time if they purchase the ad now.
• Ask more than you can hold. If you have 6 ad spots available, contact 10 people. This is because you will have people that won’t reply, or say no. If you actually get replies from more people than you can give ad space to, give the spots fairly to the first ones that replied back, and let the other interested advertisers know that the spots have been taken, apologize, and tell them you will let them know when the spots become available again. This will make it easier to sell the next open spots.

And on that note, this concludes the ‘How to Sell Ads on Your Blog Despite It’s Size’ series. I really enjoy speaking from experience, and I have used/am using all of these ways to sell advertisement spots on my blog. I hope that after reading this series, you have gained a better understanding of, well, how to sell ads on your blog. I also hope that it inspires you to not let “The Man” bring you down and make more money online by privately selling ads.

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