In this post Marko from How to Make My Blog takes a look at how to develop a Media Kit to attract advertisers to your blog.
Having direct advertisers is a very lucrative way of monetizing your blog. Ads are one of the few ways in which a blogger can capitalize on existing blog traffic without any additional work, such as developing products like e-books or providing services like search engine optimization. First step for a blogger to attract sponsors to his blog is to create an online blog media kit.
What is a blog media kit?
Your blog advertising media kit should give potential sponsors the chance to learn behind-the-scenes facts and stories to supplement the content on your blog. Think of the blog media kit as a resume for your blog. It is a package of information that introduces your blog to interested advertisers and answers their questions about it.
Why should I develop an online blog media kit?
A blog advertising media kit is a sales tool for selling advertising on your blog and it is a must-have for any blogger who wants to monetize his blog content via direct advertising contracts. Your blog media kit should be used to get potential advertisers excited about advertising on your blog.
I recommend developing an online blog media kit as a professional looking document that potential advertisers can download from your blog, that you can send out to companies that contact you, and that you can send out to companies that you contact directly.
How to write your own blog media kit?
Remember the key practices of writing blog content online. Employ scannable text by using these suggestions:
- low word count
- one idea per paragraph
- sub-headings
- highlight keywords and paragraphs
- bulleted lists
What should I include in the blog media kit?
The blog media kit should provide your potential advertisers with immediate access to advertising rates, key demographics, blog traffic information and your contact details. It should include everything a potential advertiser might need to know to help him decide to buy advertising space on your blog.
Make sure your blog media kit information is accurate, consistent and up to date. Update your media kit regularly as your blog grows and expands.
Blog profile
Start simple by tailoring your blog media kit to describe your blog, define your blog values, describe your blog content and you personally.
Blog target audience/traffic
It is important to show the potential sponsor what they are buying. Your blog traffic and your blog target audience are two primary motivators for the advertiser. Keep working to build your blog traffic and be ready to share your blog traffic stats, number of RSS subscribers, and number of email newsletter subscribers.
Add credibility
Add credibility to your blog by including external, third-party references. Include links from popular blogs to your content and also include links of your guest articles on other popular blogs. Also include third party rankings of your blog like Google PageRank and Alexa Ranking.
Be prepared to back up your blog traffic stats with graphics from your Google Analytics account. You may also need to grant the potential advertiser the access to your Analytics report. Google Analytics features a very safe option to do that without giving away your username and password.
Search engine rankings
When people search the Internet for keywords relevant to your potential advertiser and they end up on your blog, you have a key selling point. One of the most powerful strategies of selling advertisements is to show the potential sponsor how you rank in search engines for their product / service related keywords. Compile a list of keywords that you rank for that you can include in your blog media kit.
Advertising options / rates
Let the potential advertiser know what kind of advertising options you offer on your blog. Include the position of ads, the size of ads, show it by including a screenshot which has the potential ad position marked. Do not forget to include pricing for each of these ads.
Contact details
Finally make sure to include all the contact details needed to get in touch with you.
What to do when I have collected all the information?
Compile all the information into a nice looking PDF or DOC file and provide access to it from your Advertise here page. When potential advertisers look for advertising options on your blog, they will be able to request you to send the media kit to them and find out anything that they might need to know.
I would also add one big advantage having a direct advertiser is that this often gets around much of the ad blocking software like adblock plus. In many cases you may host the ad images on your site or at the very least they may not be from popular ad servers and avoid blocking.
This is a great post with a very helpful to-do list built in.
It would be good to have some discussion about ad rates vs. traffic to help us neophytes figure out how much we can reasonably charge and yet not undercharge. For example, if you’re getting about 3,000 page visits a month, what is the market rate range for particular size ads?
I really like the idea of including page rank and search result analysis.
Thanks for an outstanding set of ideas!
Nice tutorial. I also think before a blogger makes this resume, he should try an experiment. He should put an ad on the proposed spot for a month and track the amount of clicks the ad got. If it is a lot, he can put this experiment on the media kit telling potential advertisers the amount of clicks they are likely to get at that spot.
Excellent program indeed!
Is there any place that one might find some practical amounts to charge per traffic rate? I know that is hard to answer with specifics, but ball park numbers are what I had in mind.
I see 125X125 ads on make money online Blogs selling for as low as $25.00 per month. That hardly seems worth the effort for a Blog that has good ranking and traffic numbers.
Hmm. Good tips. From selling advertising I can tell you:
-Send a feeler first to potential sponsors, don’t lob all of your information all at once. Particularly traffic. It will immediately draw comparisons to other blogs in your space and how well their numbers are.
-When traffic does matter, you need to do about 30k a month with NO drop off, to be at the level you need to attract sponsors who care about traffic.
– Most are starting to view the Alexa rank as garbage. Just an FYI
-Thorough marketing and demographic information is helpful as well, when you have the time to compile it. The more specific you are the more likely you are to win over advertisers
-Please. Please. Please. Show the advertiser how you will deliver for them in your pitch.
This was on my to do list for my new blog, but I haven’t gotten around to doing it because I wasn’t sure what to include. Thanks for these great tips.
Brandon mentioned what I planned on saying about demographics. It’s very easy to offer a survey to your readers to collect that information. Advertisers love it and it’s a great way to find out a little more about who reads your blog/website.
those were definitely some good tips. I usually recommend people going out and writing letters to persuade them.
Great tips, especially for those that are new to blogging and/or trying to increase their presence.
One thing that I’m quite confused is how to start the initial ad rates so that I can get more advertisers interested to put their ad in my blog?
Finally something new Darren, nice :)
… and if you are very lazy, you can create a MediaKit “automagically” :-) : http://www.pubmatic.com/publishers/mediakit.html
In response to the question asked by RAHUL- The most difficult task that a startup blogger faces is that he has to convince advertisers that it is worth to put money on their blog, that too with less traffic and reliability. 3 steps would do fine-
1. Show your rate of increase of traffic
2. If you use adsense or any other alternatives , write the amount you get paid and the CTR
3. Be prepared to start with low rates
@Rahul,
Do some stealth shopping of your own to see what the competitors in your niche are offering and for how much. Some sites have the information right on their site.
When first starting out, always sell for less than the competition. The rates can be adjusted once you demonstrate you can deliver and build a brand.
I’d echo what Brandon J. Mendelson says above. Start out charging rates below market value in your niche. The idea is to get a few sponsors on board, treat them VERY well, and then become more attractive to future advertisers as your blog readership grows. Essentially let your advertisers test the waters with you first, before you begin raising ad rates. And then do so with caution, and always make it a great deal for your current advertisers to stay with you…especially the ones who’ve been there since the beginning!
Matt
Good post, I will link to this from my blog. We have created a free tool and directory to ad your media kit (rate card) information see: http://www.ratecards.net we also have a great promotion going on, until year end ; http://ratecards.net/blog/2008/11/02/special-offer-for-magazine-publishing-group-members/
I agree with “Bill from wine for newbie’s”, I am but a drop in the ocean compared to Darren’s excellent ProBlogger. On average I get between 7500 & 10,000 per month, so what could I realistically charge sponsors to advertise on my blog.
Your advice and tips are as always top notch. Perhaps I could offer a batch deal for similar websites and blogs to the sponsors!
Thanks’ for the read
Darren,
can you share your media kit with your readers?
Thank for reply.
I 100% agree with you Darren, but the point when shall i create one? my blog is couple of days old yet, i think i need to raise it and then create a Media Kit & a Rate Card for it, right? what do you think?
Thanks,
Firas
Excellent article indeed!
Thank you for sharing this with us!
This is kind of in line with the question that Bill asked above. He wanted to know how price ad spots for a blog with 3,000 visitors a month. I’m wondering what level of traffic should you have on a monthly visit before you attempt to sell advertising space?
Thanks!
greats tips…..darren, thanks…..like resume about benefits of our blog. that’s good….to help when we do promotion…..
Now that this has been mentioned, it’s time to revamp my blog’s Media Kit.
My blog is pretty new so I wont be ready for this for a while, but this is giving me some great ideas to get started one my blog is ready.
Thanks for sharing excellent ideas , i definitely would start implement blog media kit to my website.. keep coming..
Thanks for this very informative post. A lot of brazillian blogs are creating media kits now, but I didnt know what to do. Your post helped me a lot with this matter ;)
This will trigger advertisers to at least open and inquire about advertising.
This is something I’ve been meaning to do for my blog but haven’t gotten around to yet.
I especially like the search engine ranking. I would suggest to also include in there information on where you social network at (to show that you are actively promoting yourself and your blog/site).
Great post!
Wesley
The Geek Entrepreneur
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/GeekEntrepreneu
Darren-
I was looking for information on making a better media kit last week. Then you wrote about it.
This is the third time that’s happened. Are you sure you aren’t doing some kind of white trash vulcan mind meld thing? Weird but cool all the same. Thanks.
Great info. Now I just need to implement!
thank you for sharing
Some of the commenters mentioned surveying the readership to get demographic information. I’ve been running surveys for a while now, and I’m interested in what demographics would be most interesting/useful to present to advertisers. Obviously some questions are specific to the blog niche, but are questions like gender or age – things you can’t determine from visitor hits – the type of demographics I should collect?
I will try it right away thanks
I would love to have an advertiser in my blog, as sooner as i get a lot of targetted traffic, i will put an offer for advertiser to advertise. Again, thanks so much for your big help Darren. I will surely follow that suggestion upon on SU
Great post, Darren. I’m working on mine now, but this advertising newbie has a couple of questions for you or any other reader who can help me out:
1) I know how to check Google page rankings but how do you check key word rankings?
2) What tools allow you to post a screenshot?
And here’s a trick I’ve started using recently. I hand-picked a few companies that are perfectly suited advertisers for my blog and offered them FREE 125×125 ad blocks for 1 month. Now I have 4 “sponsors” on my blog as I make my big push to reel in paid advertisers. Of course, the companies I’m now targeting for paid spots don’t know those spots were free, they just thik I already have some good paid sponsers. It’s also a great networking tool as the 4 free advertisers got introduced to my blog and may choose convert to paid advertisers when their free period is over and they see the click stats I offer them.
Time and time again I Google a subject I need information on. And time and time again Google brings me to Problogger and there are the answers! Should really learn to start here!
Great idea and a really informative post.
Regarding demographics, the site listed below can show you a website’s demographics (but only if there is enough data) and you can also check out your competition’s demographics.
http://www.quantcast.com.
This site does a similar thing – http://www.compete.com
You can install their toolbar and check out a site’s profile as you surf.
Thanks Darren, excellent stuff.
@ Jonah Lisa: Your idea should be a must try for every newbie.
@Madeleine: Thanks for the info.
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http://talk-english.blogspot.com
really a great blog. you can tell your really into this. I really don’t care about the advertisement, but I really really like to blog. But what I want is to be taken seriously, and to have the best minds in my field, keeping up with my blog… it seems though I am not the best in my field, but I am somewhere in the mix.
I have a bit of reading to catch up with on your site, and so I won’t be to critical at this moment..
Intuitively, I am guessing, a blog doesn’t need to be one person. I mean, I really don’t think I can pull it off by myself. Because I use wordpress, more than one author can blog… is it okay to have more than one person blogging on a site?
I think selling advertising space is a great way to help monetize your site, however you need to have adequate traffic in the first place before any serious advertisers will commit. That and also plenty of postings and a good layout.
Once you get to that point though, things should go from good to great. Very good advice.
Thank you for the information. I do have a Media Kit prepared and have been getting favorable feedback when I send it out. I found the information about providing information on bounce rates in it very helpful and will be revising it to include that info when I update my stats. Thank you so much!