Archive for July 5th, 2010

Is it possible to add banner advertising to your blog? Is it worth it? Should you or are they a waste of resources? I take a look at the possibilities and the effects.

Can you use a banner advertisement on your blog to generate an income? By that we mean can you use one to increase your income? There’s a big difference between something that adds to the total income you make and something that makes an income itself, but costs you more visitors and income from elsewhere.

Free blogs
So, can you add a banner advertisement to your blog? Of course you can, usually! If you are some free services, such as WordPress.com (but not the WordPress.org that you host for yourself) then such forms of advertising are banned, so the answer is “No” and the debate ends here!

Other blogs
But for other systems you are allowed to add banners, either in the sidebar, the footer or within the actual post. However, do you really want to?

At first the answer must be “Yes!” and there is a chance of earning an income, whether from an advertiser’s payments of from affiliate payments. But now look deeper into this and whether they are actually effective. That is, whether you are actually making a profit. If you use that space for a banner advert, what are the effects?

Too much is never good!
Well for a start, too much advertising around the page is going to put people off reading your blog. It makes the blog look like you are just interested in your readers for what they can do for you – earn you money. This makes them less likely to subscribe to your RSS feeds and newsletters and less likely to trust your writing and come back.

Using valuable space.
It is also taking up valuable space. To get the best from a banner advert you want it high up on the side bar – so that plenty of people can see it and click on it. But this will mean that you have to shove the important pieces of navigation further down the page. These are the navigation elements that will be used by readers to come back again or find more to read now, such as most popular posts lists, RSS feeds, ebooks as incentives to subscribe and so on. By having the banner advert above these elements, your readers are likely to explore your blog less now and in the future.

Reducing the value of other advertising
Lastly, if you are wanting to take part in sponsored posting then the value of these is reduced because of the other advertising on the page. An advertiser is less likely to pay you for an advert if you are also showing competing adverts on the same page.

The answer?
For my own blogs, I prefer to just include any banner adverts where they are relevant in key posts. For an affiliate product, if I want site wide coverage I will create a key post, link to that from the navigation and put the banner link into the post itself.

But yes, you can quite easily use a banner advertisement on your blog, at potentially the cost of reducing your readership and advertising from other sources. It is up to you what works best.

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Getting The Most From Paid Posting

Many bloggers earn an income through paid posting and others spend money promoting their blogs the same way. So I thought a piece about getting the most from paid posts would be useful – for advertisers to get the best and bloggers to be aware of some of the checks.

Home Page
It is not enough to just create a post that is hidden from archives, categories and the home page. You want a paid post exposed to the home page, so when you check the post also make sure that it is on the home page of the blog.

The problem – well 24 hours on the home page is considered to be fair game. So you must review all posts within this time. If the post isn’t there then you can reject it or ask for it to be placed there. After 24 hours this is a lot more difficult.

If you find a post not on the home page for 24 hours, maybe even raise it with the network.

Making It Found
Getting your paid post on the home page means home page visitors see it, but what about search engines? On a PR0 blog, Google might only visit once per month. It doesn’t take many posts to make sure that hardly any are found there. So it can be better value to pay for a PR2+ blog, where Google should come visiting at least most weeks for a guarantee that the post will be found.

Be Social
You, the advertiser, can help the blogger and your post! If you haven’t already done so, sign up to stumble, digg and other such sites.

For a couple of very good posts use social bookmarking techniques of stumble, digg, facebook, Twitter and so on to share the post. This can increase the exposure of your post as well as helping the blogger’s traffic.

Especially if the blogger displays most popular posts this could even ensure that every page of the blog links to your post giving it plenty of PR, whilst making your post seen by many people.

Link Saturation
The reason many bloggers try to hide paid posts is that they are afraid of Google punishing them. But in my experience of guest posts on blogs, you can easily get away with 2 or 3 links per post. But, there is a condition.

There has to be plenty of content per post. A 30 word post even with 1 link will be highly saturated. In my guest posting experience the posts were all above 450 words, giving a lot lower saturation.

Uninterested Search Engines
Another problem with 30 word posts is that they do not hold search engine’s interest. Some people say 200+ words, others 250+ words are required to make sure a page is cached.

So buy buying even a 100 word post, you are probably not going to see the post cached on the search engines. It might cost more to pay for 200, 300 or even 400 words, but if it means that the post is cached and the link saturation is reduced, the value is increased many times over. It is well worth paying more.

Off Topic
Does a marketing blogger really want to write about bridesmaid’s dresses? Worse still, do the readers want to read about them?

Choose blogs that are remotely on target, or at least where the blogger has a chance of being able to weave your theme into their theme.

This reduces the number of eligible blogs, but these will have readers that are interested and if you pay them to write 300 – 500 words, the search engines will love the posts.

Is The Blog Worth It?
Before you make the offer, glance through the blog and look at the writing. Does it look as though they will have an audience that is relevant to you?

Favourite good posts and maybe ask them for another post in a month or two.

Summary
In summary, social bookmark the best of the posts; check within 24 hours that posts are appearing on the home page of the blog; pay for less posts on higher ranking blogs with longer posts (at least 200 words) and stay roughly on topic.

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