In Part 1 of my Make Money Blogging Series, I talked about Affiliate Links/Programs. In Part 2 of the series, I talked about Ad Networks.
In Part 3 of my Make Money Blogging Series, I’m talking about Private Ad Sales/Sponsorships.
Have you ever been a blogger’s site and glanced over at their sidebar? Have you ever noticed advertising spots with other bloggers sitting in them? Those are Private Ads sold by that blogger. It’s called Blog Sponsorship. The gist is that I would buy an ad spot on Blogger X’s site. Blogger X would host my ad for 30 days on their site. Sometimes with a sponsorship, a Blogger would do x, y and z for me as part of my sponsorship.
So, how does this make you money? Well, you would be Blogger X in this equation. You would offer advertising spots on your own sidebar or an in-post ad (an ad that appears underneath all of your posts). You could offer other things to sweeten the deal for the blogger or small business wanting to invest in your blog (like social media shout-outs, offer up your blog to them for one post aka a guest post, etc). Whatever you choose to offer with your blog sponsorship spots, make sure you ALWAYS under promise what you will do and over-deliver what you will do.
How do you decide what ad spots to offer and how much to charge? That is totally up to you and based upon your reader base. Here are some examples of possible ad sizes: 300×300, 300×200, 300×150, 150×150
You would charge more for your larger spots and less for your smaller spots.
There are a couple of 3rd party apps that you can use to make it easy to sell sponsorship spots on your blog. PassionFruit Ads is one that comes to mind (and one I’ve personally used in the past). You could always host the ads yourself (install them yourself, etc) and invoice through paypal.
Read my Tips on Sponsoring another Blog.
If you have questions about Sponsorships or anything blog related, don’t hesitate to ask! I also offer Blog Coaching/Consultations.
Check out my other #bloggingedumacation lessons here.
Great series Taylor, thanks. I’ve been making notes 🙂
This is a great idea actually. I’ve started trying to sell ads on my book blog, but so far no bloggers have been interested. Probably because they’re trying to make money too, not spend it heh.