In this video Gary Vaynerchuk answers how to monetize your blog or video blog with a practical illustration.
Of course you need to have at least some traffic to pull in advertisers – but once you do, if the advertisers are not coming to you yet – go to them.
PS: this actually works. When I started my first camera blog I couldn’t attract big advertisers like Canon and Nikon – so even in the early days when I just had a few hundred readers a day I began to contact local and online small businesses with a photography focus. I was amazed at how many of them were willing to buy advertising. The money wasn’t massive but land a few of them and it adds up.
The beauty of this is that as your traffic grows you’re able to charge more to these advertisers (give them traffic and many of them will stick with you). It also shows other advertisers that you’re attracting advertisers (which can stimulate new advertising).
Great video Gary Vaynerchuk really Rocks.
I contacted all sorts of companies for all my blogs. Not only when I started out but also when I was on a role.
I made a ton of money via ads, reviews and campaigns and what I did is contacting the networks on clickbank, Shareasale, CJ etc.
There is so much money out there, the only thing is; it isn’t coming to you!!!! You have to get it yourself!!!
Gary is great – who else on the web could bring this kind of streetwise practical advise with such panache?
And – from experience – everything the PS says in this post is true as well.
Great advice! I think my blog’s numbers have grown to the point where something like thise would be feasable and it doesn’t hurt to try right?
I wish Gary would use a video service other than the absolutely terrible Viddler. Vimeo and Blip.tv are both far more reliable, in my experience. They have great quality video and don’t clutter the video screen with controls.
Oh, I hadn’t seen this. Thank you for passing it along
What a team – Darren and GaryVee. Great onsite demo of how to pull off gaining an advertiser.
Gary kick’s ass! =)
This definitely does work.
When I first started my blog and wasn’t in a blog ad network yet, I would contact company’s that were close in my niche. I gained about three sponsors in the first month from reaching out to them.
I found this link on Twitter, this guy is awesome and his advice is killer.
This is great, sometimes just reading does not help, visual learning for some, helps them go far. Thanks Darren.
proactive. nice.
Simply excellent advice. Still, if you don’t have those numbers floating through your site, you might even still get local brick and mortar shops to advertise too on a more focused, local level.
Not sure what I might be able to do given my blog’s personal nature. Typing in my targeted keywords in Google results in no advertisers on the right side….what to do…what to do.
Great post, Love the GaryV video too. An encouraging post that a lot more people should look into capitalizing on.
Awesome, thanks for posting this Darren. I’m having problems with the video, but will try again first thing in the morning.
This is where it’s so important to be part of your local community and not just a social media one.
Getting out and about in your town, building relationships, remember this is about REAL people, ultimately.
Cheers
George
Awesome video dude!
I love the call.
great video. this is the way everybody should do it. if you want to help people , help them in a friendly , charismatic way. everybody is promoting themselves through videos today, but not everybody is ready for that yet. search youtube for howto videos and see how many of them are sooooooo f’ing boring. maybe some of those videos are giving people ( interested on that particular subject ) the “key to the city” , but…. nobody is watching them after 1-2 minutes. Look at Gary… he didnt tell me or you the secret of live in this video. everybody ( i think ) knew this ; but… he knew how to create this video, in order for you to watch it. And that is not a bad thing. some of us got something new out of this video, and he got some new fans. win-win :D
I completely agree that you need to reach out to your local community in more ways than one, you can use them for advertising resources but you can also utilize local news broadcasts, etc. to increase your visitor base. Everyone loves the hometown hero.
Very nicely done. I had actually started looking for ads on other sites that were similar to mine and the first one I contacted I got as an affiliate. I used to do sales so that always helps as well when you are selling your blog. Everyone is a salesman, no matter what you do. You just have to realize that one day and you have great success!
That’s sure good stuff. However, how much are we going to ask when they want to advertise on our blogs? Based on what? How do we know how much we will charge?
I’m getting some requests on my blog and unfortunately I don’t know the answer yet.
Any ideas?
Great advice! My advertising relies only on Google and Amazon at the moment, and I’d love to expand out and with more advertisers and skipping the middle man!
Thank you!
Thanks for this post, I’m in the process of looking for advertisers for my blog, very timely!
Nice! But you need to produce a lot of traffic first. The other thing is you need to have a specific niche on your blog. I found a lot of blogs that write about anything but produce huge traffic. I don’t think advertisers will be interested on this kind of blogs..
So the next question is how to price your ads??
This guy makes it all appear to be so easy. While I agree that he put together a great video, in the real world, it’s not always this easy. :(
I have honestly never even thought about this tactic before, and it seems stark-ravingly obvious. I’ll have to try this out on my blog and see how it works. Thanks for sharing this video!
Like you I just launched my new blog. Its all entirely new to me but I’m learning everything I can. Your pro blogger site has been my education on it. As well as Yaro’s sites. I only get maybe 10 hits a day now. Thanks for all your great content.
Wow! I’m a new fan of Gary!
And now, to figure out what niche I am…
awesome awesome…will follow asap
Yes,we come to the advertiser with some prove of traffic that we can give them….
Video doesn’t seem to be working for me.
I guess it’s harder if you have a blog/site that is not focused on one specific area
So true. This is exactly what I do for my Music Lesson Blog. Great advice Gary!
Nice post Darren/Gary,
I’m facing this challenge at the minute, I hadn’t spotted the POPURLS.com idea before, nice one.
Another thing I’ve found useful is to find people in your target audience or who contribute to your blog who are also on LinkedIn.
Look at their profile on LinkedIn and you will get contextual ads served from companies in your niche.
You can then go to the company and say:
“Hey, do you know you’re probably paying $1-$3 a click for someone to click on your ad in LinkedIn when someone checks out Joe Bloggs profile).
Wouldn’t it be more effective if you actually posted an ad to where that guy actually visits, hangs out and comments on a regular basis?
Wouldn’t it make sense to have your ads in front of that kind of community where not just Joe Bloggs visits but literally thousands of others like him/her?
Wouldn’t that kind of messaging – targeted, niche, specific and localised be more effective for you than LinkedIn?.
Why not switch off your Google spend for a month and try our site instead?”
I’ve tried that recently and it’s worked on at least two occasions.
Gary
You are spectacular! I think I’m in love :^D
So love this…create your future and make it happen. Huge fan of Gary! Thanks Darren…I’ll be tagging this one as I work to build traffic!
Some great info for us struggling bloggers. Never can have enough information no matter where it comes from.
Allen
http://www.allenwalton.com
Sounds easy, because it is! :) Thanks Gary, and Darren.
I might add that…
The problem is, and I was guilty for this too in the past, people are going to complain about the rejection because naturally human fears of getting rejected.
Gary was lucky he got a positive response on the first try, but it is important to know that some people are going to act rude when getting a cold call like this. Not about the caller, but more because of the bad day on their parts.
So, with a doable plan like this, the rest is up to the blogger.
In fact, I’m going to approach some potential bloggers who might be interested in running my articles. And yes, this tactic applies not only to get advertisers.
Gary is awesome and his advice is killer. Never ceases to amaze me.
Great video!
I was wondering if anyone has tips on how to negotiate with companies? After my initial contact with a relevant company, the usual response (if positive) is “we are interested, what do you have in mind?”
I find it hard at this point, especially in regards to pricing. I don’t want to give ad space away very cheaply but I am also afraid of losing the interested company because my asking price is too high.
Any experience or tips on this?
Marko
http://www.howtomakemyblog.com
LOL, why didn’t I ever think of that! Thanks for the awesome tip. As soon as my daily visitors touches 5k, I’m going to contact local tech brands :D
That was a nice way to get some advertisers. But that sort of technique might work only on certain blogs.
Wow! I never thought about it that way before. That’s why we all love Gary!
Awesome way ~ thank again
At first I didn’t like Gary but I am starting to warm up to him. He really has a way about him. His voice and his mannerisms remind me of Charlie from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. If I had a blog about making money online, I would surely be posting Gary’s stuff.
That’s a great video!! I’m impressed, Gary!
Wonderful, this is really a great help especially for us newbies. Thanks
OK, Gary, you make lots of sense. And cold-calling (damn, I hate it…) is a necessary evil.
With one or two advertisers already on board, I still have to put together some kind of pricing to charge them.
Admittedly, I don’t have a lot of traffic yet. Two questions, 1) what do I charge advertisers, and 2) how can I build more traffic without being ripped off by unethical SEOs?
Joel
Thanks Gary, great video.
I hadn’t thought of checking those google ads directly, i’ll have to try it!
Thanks for the popurls.com link too, i hadn’t heard of it before.
What a great video! Gary’s story is amazing. Getting traffic to a blog requires a little elbow grease and dedication, but once you’ve mastered that, you’re on your way to monetizing your blog! Thanks for posting this!