Day 20: Creating an Ad System and Putting Up Advertisements!

16 Jun 2009

Day 20: Creating an Ad System and Putting Up Advertisements!

Author: Jim | Filed under: 30-Day Blogging

Today is a very exciting day for our new blogs. That’s right… it’s the day we finally start to turn a profit from our efforts! Last time, we discussed the positioning and pricing of our advertisements. Now, we need to put our efforts into real-time results by adding a few things to our blogs to help us better manage our month-to-month ad efforts.

There are two ways to set up ads for your blog: manually or automatically. The manual process involves taking orders manually, and going out yourself and slapping in the images & text ads with links to the advertisers websites. This method is really starting to die off as ad systems increase your revenue in the long run and are cost-effective. For this reason, I recommend that you use an automated system.

Downloading an Ad Platform

I am going to recommend to you all what I feel is the best WordPress plugin ever created: OIO Publisher. This is an ad system that you can slap right on top of your blog and literally manage everything. It will generate custom reports for all of your customers, utilize every ad format imaginable and create an automated purchase system for advertisers to put their ads up without you having to get involved. There is no other plugin to my knowledge that does this, and it is a real time-saver. Unfortunately, there is a small price tag that goes along with it… but you can download and use OIO Publisher for $47, which I highly recommend. When you recoup your loss within a month, you will feel the same way.

Naturally, I don’t want to come off as a paid service peddler. I truly believe that OIO is miles ahead of these other platforms… but if you need a free solution there are services available! Again, I highly recommend just buying OIO now, as you will probably only be delaying your eventual purchase by saving a little cash now, but for simple ad serving and rotating you can try these three: WP Ads, PhpAdsNew and Max Blog Ads.

Promoting Your Ads

There are many ways to get advertisers, and while you can eventually just let things sit and the ads will come to you… I recommend actively going out to seek advertisers when you first start your blog. Heck, you are probably only charging $5-$10 a slot per month at this point, so a lot of people will be interested but won’t know you exist! I would set up an account immediately at DigitalPoint forums and Warrior Forum if you have not already, and you can post in the exchange sections! Check out a post I made on Bloggeries.com for a template you can use.

For a blog focused on content (and not 100% profit), you will actually make a lot more money by promoting affiliate offers than by pushing Google Adsense or a similar contextual ad system. This is not to say that you cannot mix and combine, but I feel that Adsense looks quite tacky compared to an ad from HostGator or another niche blog that wants to see some traffic. Keep this in mind when you seek out offers.

Finally, you can create a dedicated “Advertise” page to list your rates. Most advertisers will look for an area on your blog where they can see your stats (use Google Analytics or another stat tracker to list your pageviews, etc.) and monthly ad block rates. You can view my ad page here. Remember to keep these updated when you change around your rates!

With your new ad system installed and running (very easy with OIO Publisher!), you are well on your way to pulling in lots of money by just making consistent posts on your blog and maintaining a decent reader base.

-Jimvesting