For those unable to get to the Future of Online Advertising but wanting a bit more of a glimpse of what took place – you might be interested in seeing the powerpoint and keynote presentations from those presenting.
They have now been added to main page underneath the names of each speaker. Mine is here (pdf) – I hope you can make some sense of it! Here’s a short (ish) summary of what I said for each slide:
1. Title Slide – made a few excuses for my terrible flu-ish voice.
2. Dating Tips – I get asked by bloggers how to find advertisers for their blogs and get asked by advertisers how to interact with bloggers. Sometimes I feel like a dating consultant – hence the title of my presentation – dating tips for bloggers and advertisers.
3. How Much do Bloggers Earn? – to put the talk in context I thought it worth sharing this graph of how much bloggers earn (taken from a survey of ProBlogger readers)
4. Direct Methods vs Indirect Methods of Earning Money from Blogs – another slide to help put the tips that I share in context. Selling advertising on a blog is just one of many methods of monetizing a blog. Bloggers need to know that they have a variety of options open to them. Advertisers need to know that they’re not bloggers only option and that they might need to compete to get their attention.
5. Tips for Bloggers Looking to ‘pickup’ Advertisers – subtitle page
6. Tips for Bloggers:
- Build a Brilliant Blog – the best way to attract advertisers is to build a blog that they’d be proud to associate their brand with
- Be Contactable – I am still amazed by how many bloggers don’t have a way to contact them. It’s hard to ‘pickup’ when you’re not contactable
- Get Your ‘About Page’ in Order – many advertisers will do a little research of you and your blog before advertising with you. Make sure your About page has good information and consider making one specifically for Advertisers with relevant demographics and metrics of readership.
- Know your Metrics – you need to have basic information on your blog’s traffic on hand so that you can quickly provide it to advertisers. Many are working last minute on campaigns so to have a document that you can sent them quickly on hand is worth preparing.
- Be Selective – don’t clutter your blog with irrelevant or ‘cheap’ looking ads. Everything that goes on your blog will help sell it to advertisers – including the other ads that you have. Less ads on your blog helps ‘sell it’ to advertisers.
- Go with a Niche Approach – the more targeted the topic of your blog the more attractive it will be to advertisers in that niche.
- Know How Your Ads Convert – do a little testing to see how ads in different positions on your blog will perform (more on how I do this in the next slides).
7 – 10. CrazyEgg – one of the tools that can help you to analyse how ads work (or don’t work) in different positions on your blog is CrazyEgg. This tool tracks where people click on your blog. Not only that – the new ‘confetti’ tracking tool identifies where different types of traffic click (based upon where they come from, what browsers people are using, their window size etc). It’s a really useful tool not only for testing ad positions but anything design related (PS: Crazy Egg currently have some special prices for ProBlogger Readers).
11. Full list of tips for Bloggers – There were a few more tips for bloggers here:
- Position Position Position – key factors to consider with regards to positioning of ads include that above the fold is best – but other hotspots are often around comments at the end of posts.
- Offer Package Deals – sometimes advertisers will up their spend if you offer RSS ads, posts announcing campaigns, ads in newsletters, text ads etc.
- Start with Small Advertisers – while it’s worth approaching the big advertisers in your niche I find that it takes a while to grow a blog to the kind of level that will attract them. In the mean time approach smaller advertisers. This will help you monetize your blog earlier, get your readers used to ads and could even attract larger advertisers.
- Collaborate with Other Bloggers – if you don’t have enough traffic on your own, why not get together with a few other bloggers in your niche to approach advertisers.
12. Tips for Advertisers looking for Bloggers – Subtitle page
13. Why your next ‘date’ should be with a Blogger – a few reasons why advertisers should consider advertising on blogs:
- bloggers are connected, trusted and influential
- blogs are targeted
- blogs are conversational spaces
- blogs are read by bloggers – viral in
- nature bloggers are early adopters
14. Tips for Advertisers looking to advertise on Blogs
- Consider Blogs – for the above reasons
- Make it Easy for bloggers – some advertisers make bloggers jump through too many hoops to get ads up on their blogs. Advertisers need to keep in mind that most bloggers are working alone, don’t have backgrounds in advertising or marketing and are working part time. Consider the language you use and the demands you place on them.
- Add to the conversation – blogs are conversational and interactive spaces. Consider how to engage in this conversation rather than just slapping up a banner ad above it.
- Be Relational with Bloggers – bloggers will be much more open to interacting with you if you engage with them in a friendly, honest, transparent and open way.
- Be Relational with Readers – develop campaigns that are personal and engaging rather than ‘spin’
- Be Transparent – allow bloggers to disclose their involvement with you. Be open and honest with bloggers and their readers.
- Be Relevant, Honest and that Connects – (oops – bad grammar there) – in the ads that you run, don’t go for the ‘spin’/marketing/overly produced ads – but develop ads that fit with the blogging style on a blog. The more relevant you can make it to readers the better.
- Test the Trust Factor – not all bloggers are trusted and not all bloggers will have a voice that you’ll want to associate your brand with. Dig in their archives, check their comments section (comments are a great barometer of a blog) and research their reputation a little before slapping your ads on their blog.
- Think Outside the ‘banner’ – While banner ads can work on a blog perhaps there are more creative and effective ways to interact with blogs. Sponsor a series of posts, put up a prize for a competition, give some readers a product etc
- Be Playful – blogs are places that you can experiment, push the boundaries and get a little creative.
- Involve the Blogger – Personalize – Bloggers know their readers best. Involve them in the designing of your campaign.
15. Contact Details
I hope that that has conveyed something of my presentation. It’s always hard to write up something that you’ve said a few weeks back but that was the main gist of what I covered.
D presentation has no doubt summed up the utmost information for bloggers, especially, d new borns like “Dmedicines”, appreciate you sharings, and keep up d excellent work, Cheers!
thanks for sharing, my friend asking for steps this page realy help to cover all aspects.
Hi Darren, in point 11 you mention going for the smaller advertisers. We recently had a bloggers’ convention here in South Africa and this was one of the issues debated in length. Most small advertisers do not offer much and we have a scenario where one small ad company has shut down. I would like to ask you a question I was asked although the answer can be very broad, what are they important points in your view. The question I was asked was What type of revenue model works best for blogs in terms of sustainability and profitable growth?
Now those are qualities my dude (My Blog) has and needs some polish or as to say learn the ropes of the dating game.
Thanks to Darren and ThinkVitamin
Vijay
Thanks for the tips
Thanks for the helpful, specific information on bloggers courting advertisers. I like the idea of a specific page for advertisers that contains information relevant to their needs in finding outlets. The FOOA site looks like a good place to find related info, as well. Good stuff!
thanks darren for providing us with a summary of your presentation. quite an insight from the problogger for amateur bloggers.
don’t know about the placement above the fold. i have my leaderboard google ads above the fold. they do pretty well as they are also mostly really displaying what my hawaii blog vistors look for.
too bad that my blog description and title in blogger template + google ads are already taking up all the space above the fold. definitely have to move some ads to the side bar. only have one with blogger, which is another limitation, unless i change my blogger template. will give ad placement some more thought. thanks again, pua
Thank! Great advice! =)
Good reading. Would be great to earn some weekend cinema ticket with help of blog :)
I was about to ask about the possibility of videos of the presentations but I see now on their site they’re selling those for a rather steep price. It’s too bad, it looks like a really interesting conference and pdfs never really do these kinds of things justice.
Regardless, thanks for the info, but next time smuggle in a camcorder!
i’m now thinking whether to incorporate adsense into my blog or to just depend purely on contract advertisers. From what i’ve researched, adsense does not contribute too much unless you have a blog like this, which I will eventually ;)
Darren, have you ever contacted advertisers directly asking them if they want to advertise on your site? Or do you wait for them to come to you?
Gal
60 in 3 – both. In the early days the only way I could find advertisers was to approach them directly. I ended up targeting smaller advertisers at first. I was lucky in that my first blogs had a large Aussie readership as they were on a .au domain so I could target Aussie advertisers.
As time went on I started approaching advertisers less and they started approaching me more.
Lifuchi – “What type of revenue model works best for blogs in terms of sustainability and profitable growth?”
Great question and one I get a lot. My answer may not satisfy you though as I’m going to take my trusty ‘it depends on the blog’ answer out of my answer bag.
Every blog that I’ve had has had a different mix of income streams and they vary quite a bit.
Some blogs do much better by selling ads on them, others are more suited to affiliate programs, others are more suited to selling an ebook from, others will do better by having a paid members forum and others will do better by having no actual direct income stream but instead will ‘sell’ the blogger and enable to sell themselves as a consultant or speaker. See slide 4 for the range of what bloggers are making money from.
Most bloggers currently trying to make money through their blogs are using advertising – it works well in some niches but most bloggers struggle to get the traffic needed to make it a lot of money.
The key is to experiment and see the mix of income streams that works of each blog.
Thanks for sharing good presentation. I have not problem to download your doc (PDF).
Hi Darren,
How about putting your presentation on Slideshare.net? There’s even code to put the presentation back on your site again.
Here’s one I did recently (if the code works in a post, which I doubt…)
Nope, didn’t. Anyway, here’s the link:
http://www.slideshare.net/oyvind/trends-in-mobile-tv
The “How Much do Bloggers Earn” graph
Are those figures per month or total earned?