Create A Media Kit To Attract Advertisers To Your Blog
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.
5 Tips for Making Widget Ads Perform Better on Your Blog
In my last post I talked about 4 Widget Ad options that bloggers should test in the lead up to Christmas - in this post I want to give a few quick tips for beginners to keep in mind as they test and optimize these types of ads.
1. Keep Ads Relevant to Content
To make any kind of product ad or affiliate program work the product that you advertise needs to match what you’re writing about as closely as possible.
Most of the widget ad units mentioned in the last post allow you to choose what product (or at least category of product) that will be featured in the ad - so make sure you choose products carefully to match your blog (and individuals posts) topics.
2. Position Prominently
These Widget Ads work best when your readers see them. Now there’s an obvious statement if I ever heard one - yet I see so many ads on blogs that are likely to go unseen. Make sure your ads are in a part of your blog that will be seen by readers.
This means putting them above the fold, as close to content as possible or perhaps even underneath posts (people pause at the end of a post and look for something to do - an ad can work well there despite it being low on the page).
Avoid putting them in sidebars unless you have no other option to do that.
3. Multiple Ad Units Per Page
A logical way to increase the earnings of these types of ads is to show more than one per page. If you have one high on the page include a second one lower on the page also.
Don’t fall into the trap of stuffing your blog with too many ads - but don’t be afraid to have more than one on a page.
4. Blend Your Ad Units
Each of the widget ads can be customized in terms of size and design so don’t just let the ads sit on your page in their default appearance.
I find that ads that blend into your blog’s design a little work best. Try making the colors of links in ads the same color as links on your blog, remove borders (or at least make them the same color as your blog background) and where given the choice use fonts for the ads that don’t clash too much with your blogs font.
5. Track Your Results
Most of the widget units mentioned in the previous post have the ability to be tracked in one way or another. Utilize this and work out what works best for your blog. You will find that some ad positions, design and products will work better than others - once you work out what works best stick to it.
What tips would you ad? What have you found works best with Widget Ad Units on Blogs?
4 Widget Ad Options To Make Money On Your Blog This Christmas
Remember - this is a time of year where those using the web are in a buying frame of mind and are more likely to click on product ads that they might see. Here are four options that present products visually:
1. Shopzilla Publisher Program
This program has been something I’ve experimented with more and more of late and it’s producing quite good results. It presents publishers with a variety of widget type ads with a large variety of options in terms of design, sizes and types of ads.
2. Chitika
Regular readers know that I’m a big fan of Chitika. It’s my second largest earner from blogs (2nd only to AdSense) and performs brilliantly on product related sites - particularly at this time of year.
As with all of these types of ad units it does best when you can make the ads show products that relate to what you’re writing about (using the ‘keywords’ feature that they’ve built in). Payment for these ads is on a CPC (cost per click) basis (although premium publishers also get an impression based bonus).
Chitika offer a variety of ad units including their eMiniMalls, Linxx (in text ads), Multiple Product Units (pictured below) and more.
Also check out their ‘premium ad unit’ that shows special ads only to those arriving on your blog from search engines. The ads that these premium ad units show are contextually relevant to the keywords that people are searching for in the search engine - they are doing very very well for me.
3. WidgetBucks
This is another CPC based widget ad unit that many publishers have found to convert well. You again get a good range of options when it comes to design and sizes. Here’s how they look (I chose a Christmas theme).
The only downside of WidgetBucks is that not everyone will be able to see the ads - if your readers are not within geographic areas that they serve ads to they’ll get impression based ads instead.
4. Amazon Associates Widgets
The Amazon associates program has quite a few widget type ad units that will help drive people into their store and increase the chances of earning you an affiliate commission. Of course these differ from other ads featured in this list in that you only earn something if people make a purchase.
Some of the ad units include: Deals Widget, Search Widget, Carousel Widget
There are plenty of other types of widgets to choose from also.
When These Widget Ads Work Best
The above options won’t work equally for everyone. While this time of year increases your chances of earnings with all of them - they all work best when there is relevancy between what you’re blogging about and what is displaying in the ads.
Blogs with a product related focus (or posts with a specific product being featured) will always out perform putting these ads on a general focused blog.