Bloggin Ads

If I were to open up a company today selling coffee, I would probably not get that much customers. There are far too many coffee shops out in the world and with companies like Starbucks or Coffee Bean in the business, trying to sell coffee is not going to be that simple. Well, what would you be able to do now? The easiest way to get the word out about your coffee is probably by giving it out for free for a couple days or so, but that may not get far enough to people in other locations. The correct way to solve this problem is your advertise your shop’s product or should I say, your site. Trying to get the word out for a newly created site is just as hard as running a newly opened store.

The most difficult topic on marketing out your site is advertising. There are free advertising, which are usually site directories or sites that just wants to give them away, but there are also advertising for people that wish to pay. What is the direct definition of advertising anyways? Many that wishes to advertise on other sites already know that advertising means marketing out your “product” with the means of gaining more in return. That’s a pretty simple understading of advertising, but how in the world are you going to go about?

Advertising On Other Sites

So now you decide you’re ready to market your site out and advertising on other sites is your priority now. If you’re not organized or if you do not plan ahead, you simply will not know what to do. Time is money and money is time. Basically what I mean is if you waste your time, your money will not go anywhere, but if you waste your money, all your time will be wasted. Keep reading and I’ll teach you how to properly advertise on other sites

How Much Do You Have?

Having money is the first thing you need before you can advertise on sites that requires a monthly subscription amount. You do not have to be rich, but the more money you have, the more or bigger places you can advertise on. Money does not come easy to a lot of us including myself, so you better make sure you know what you’re doing.

Where Do You Advertise?

Choosing the best and correct site to advertise on is a horrible task because it is very difficult. You will not know what might happen because you could pay $100/month to advertise on a site that returns only 30 clicks, while a site charging $20/month is giving you 100 clicks. If you’re looking for impressions, then that is a different story because people may just see your ad image. The higher the impressions you receive is basically crap though if you’re looking to get real viewers.

• Actual Visitors - An actual visitor means that he/she is an unique or returning visitor. This means that this particular visitor has some sort of interest in your site, which results in longer durations on your site. Some of these visitors actually go through archives to read more.
• Fly-By Visitors - A fly-by visitor is basically like the ones that Entrecard sends out, but I’ll get to that later in the post. These type of visitors could careless for your site. They probably got to your site through a link that was posted elsewhere or with the infamous StumbleUpon. The time spent on your site by these visitors ranges from a few seconds (load time only) to a minute or so.

The whole point of this section is to inform you that although a site you advertise on may have more visitors, it does not always mean you will get the same results. You have to make sure you ask how much unique visitors they receive with the bounce rate. I didn’t get much in detail with those 2 terms because most people know what it means, but here’s a link to my bounce rate post.

Check The Background

So you see a site is over 1,000 RSS subscribers with advertising costs at only $20/month for a 125×125 ad, so you think to yourself that advertising on the site may be the best decision ever. Well, you are right and you are wrong. You’re right that a site with 1,000 RSS subscribers charging $20/month for advertising is a steal, but the counts may be wrong. RSS subscribers can be faked and A LOT of blogs are faking it. Many of these don’t admit to the truth either. This is where you should do some research and the best way to check everything is DNScoop. You will be able to check the Alexa stats, the duration online, and now the most important factor, backlinks. Please know that the Alexa Spikes aren’t worth as much now because it doesn’t mean anything. Backlinks are worth more because the higher the number, the more it means someone has a link to your site.

Buyer’s Remorse

After spending money on advertising, some of you may have buyer’s remorse. What that means is you will regret purchasing a spot and it is usually due to money. If you had $500, you would probably jump the gun and advertise on John Chow, but after paying, your balance will be $0 and that causes you to have the buyer’s remorse feeling (aka SADNESS). For the rest of you, you may not have buyer’s remorse right away, but you may have it after your ad does not receive any clicks. Well…TOO BAD, YOU PAID!

Recommended Sites

With so many sites offering advertising spots now, I thought I should give you guys a few sites that DOES return ACTUAL visitors. Just look at all the stupid Entrecard sites offering advertising spaces when they only receive Fly-Bys.

*DRUM ROLL PLEASE* The best returns for site advertising are:

• John Chow
• John Cow
• Tyler Cruz
• Zac Johnson
• Caroline Middlebrook
• Zedomax
• Garry Conn (ONLY $5.95 a month!!!)

I admit I have only spent $5 in my whole life on advertising, but it was also a mistake because of stupid Project Wonderful :(. I have not tried advertising on the sites above, but hey, I know how good they are compared to others. I have done a lot of research and reading, so do not worry.

That’s it with the first part of this 2 part series. At first I was going to have this post explain everything, but I decided it was too long, so you guys have to wait for part 2 for the rest of the advertising secrets and tips…including Project Wonderful and Entrecard troubles