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If you write and maintain a blog that’s popular with certain audiences, brands with similar target audiences may be interested in advertising on your blog. The benefit to those brands is that they can win more customers. The benefit to you is that you can earn money from selling ad space on your blog to those brands.
Here’s everything you need to know about selling advertising on your blog, from setting yourself up for success to making income from pay-per-click (PPC) ads and selling ad space on your own.
How to set up advertising on your blog
No matter how perfect a niche you’ve found, monetizing your blog through advertising will take some time. You first need to build an audience that engages regularly with your content, making your blog attractive to potential advertisers.
The amount of traffic your website receives is one of the main deciding factors to companies with similar audiences. If you have thousands of loyal followers who are likely to buy their products, those advertisers will consider your blog likely to attract new customers. The more monthly visitors you have, the more likely your blog is to catch the attention of potential advertisers.
Another factor will be the quality of your blog’s design—the more professional it looks, the more comfortable high-profile advertisers will be having their brand associated with it. Consider investing in a premium design tool, or customize a polished template made for bloggers.
It’s recommended for a blog to have allocated spaces for advertisements. For instance, although Squarespace websites don’t have integrated ad space built in, you can still include ads on a Squarespace blog using third-party services.
What is pay-per-click advertising?
PPC is a type of advertising that uses an algorithm to push ads out to the websites most closely matched with an advertiser’s target audiences. Advertisers bid for space on the most relevant sites, and the highest bidder wins the ad space.
For example, companies advertising sailing equipment, water vacations, or similar products will likely have their PPC pushed out to blogs about sailing, boats, and other nautical subjects. Popular blog owners can make money easily and with minimal maintenance by adding PPC advertising into their blogs.
If you want to add PPC advertising to your blog, set up space on its web page for third-party ads. For example, you can do this on Squarespace with a Business or Commerce plan. Then, relevant ads will start appearing on your site and, whenever someone clicks one, you’ll make money.
Selling your own advertising space on your blog
An alternative way of making money from advertising on your blog is to offer ad space directly to companies. The main benefits of doing this are that you maintain full control over the pricing of your ad space and you get to keep all of your clients’ advertising spend, because there’s no third party involved in the process.
Unlike with PPC, where companies bid for space, you need to reach out to companies yourself to see if they’re interested in running ads on your blog. Start by looking at your main blog competitors and see who’s advertising on their sites—this will give you some leads on which companies to contact. You should be able to find the relevant contact at each company by reaching out to its marketing division.
To get potential advertisers interested in your blog, show them your media kit, including your site analytics, to demonstrate how many people visit your blog, how many pages they land on per visit, how long they spend on each page, and how often they return to your site.
There are three main types of ads you can offer to businesses on your blog: display ads, banner ads, and pop-up ads. It’s worth testing them all to see which ones generate the best income for you.
Display ads
A display advertisement makes money based on how many impressions it receives. In other words, the more people that visit your blog and see the ad, the more you make from it. Display ads can be static images, animated, interactive, or include videos. They can be placed on different areas of the page, giving you as much design flexibility as you need. For instance, a leaderboard ad is a narrow horizontal ad that runs as a strip around the top of the page while a right rail ad occupies part of the right column of the webpage.
Banner ads
Banner ads are a common format for display ads. Like other ads, the more traffic your blog receives, the more you can charge to rent banner ad space on it. There are lots of different sizes of banner ads to choose from, so you can place them in places that fit your blog design. Be careful not to crowd your blog with ads, or you may put off your audience.
Pop-up ads
Pop-up advertisements can be successful for generating clicks, and therefore revenue, especially if the products are relevant to your readers. But, they’re more intrusive to your audience’s browsing experience, so we recommend being thoughtful about how many you’re including on your blog and where they’re placed.
Whichever way you go about it, advertising offers a potentially excellent source of income for bloggers. Make sure you’re generating plenty of traffic with regular, consistently high-quality content and marketing to your readers, and relevant advertisers should be happy to spend their money with you.