Here’s a tip that I shared with ProBlogger Newsletter subscribers a couple of weeks back (slightly adapted).
Those of you who use BlogAds.com ads on your blogs will probably notice that the service allows you to offer free ads using a promotional code.
This enables you to offer free ads to advertisers or to run some of your own ads on your blog.
The idea of running your own ads on your own blog might seem a little odd at first, but it has a number of benefits.
Firstly it gives the perception that your blog is in demand for advertisers – this could well entice other advertisers to sign up.
Secondly it gives you an easy way to highlight products that you might want to highlight. Particularly you might like to highlight an affiliate program that has relevance to your blog.
I’ve been doing this a bit lately on one of my blogs with some success. Here’s all you have to do:
- Find an Affiliate product/service that relates to the topic of your blog. You might do this on Amazon, Clickbank, Commission Junction etc.
- Log into your BlogAds account and in your ‘Manage My Adstrips’ menu click on the ‘Boilerplate’ link. This will allow you to put a password in the ‘offer code’ field.
- Go to the Blog you’re running BlogAds on and click the link at the bottom of your ads that takes potential advertisers to the sign up page of your ads.
- Make an ad by filling in the fields. Note that pictures work great – but that in these free ads you need to keep them to a small size. Make sure you include the affiliate link to the product you’re advertising in the URL section and in your Text (using thml).
- Add the offer code/password that you selected to the ‘offer code’ field.
- Preview the ad and if it’s right submit it.
- You’ll shortly get an email asking you to approve your own ad (just like you would if a real advertiser submitted an ad). Approve it and you’ll start seeing your own ads on your blog.
Here’s an ad I currently have running on my Digital Camera Blog that I made myself using one of my own images that I selected specifically because it draws the eye to the ad:
The conversion on this ad is significantly better than text ads in sidebars I’ve had for the same affiliate product.
Of course you could just make your own ad buttons/banners in photoshop and run them on your blog – but this is another way of doing it that has the side benefit of highlighting to potential advertisers the option to advertise with you using BlogAds.
The other benefit is that you can also track the effectiveness of the ads using the statistics that BlogAds give you. You can always cancel the ad if it’s not working.
PS: I’ve also used these free BlogAds ads to cross promote between blogs. ie if you have more than one blog you can go through the above process and instead of developing an ad that points to an affiliate program, make one that will promote one of your other blogs. This works best when the blog you advertise relates in topic to the one you run the ad on.
