Riayn made an amazing comment on Lightening’s monetisation post:
Online advertising is really geared towards the advertiser, they are the big winners here. The publishers (ie you) really lose out in monetary terms. Most advertising for blogs and small publishers work on a pay per click or CPC basis. This is because whilst a large number of viewers will see the ad, a very small number will click on them - the industry standard is 0.05%. Therefore, for roughly 5 million impressions, there will be about 3,500 clicks. The advertiser still gets eyes on their ads, but don’t have to pay out as much as they would if they were paying per thousand impressions (CPM).
The industry is now moving towards paying per sale or CPA. This means you (the publisher) does not get paid unless someone who clicks on the ad shown on your site goes ahead and either makes a sale, signs up for a credit card or registers an expression of interest.
Back to my example, an ad which will register 5 million impressions and 3,500 clicks will only register about 50 acquisitions (sales, signups etc). The advertiser will only pay the publisher for those 50 sales.
It is a very poor way to make money especially for a blog that has a small readership. The big blogs do make some money from it because they are generating tens of thousands if not millions of views per day.
For those of us who are not A list bloggers, we might earn just enough to cover hosting costs and that’s about it.
Wow.
So , the question arises: is there money in advertising for we prebloggers (would-be probloggers who haven’t quite made it yet)? If you search technorati on advertising on blogs you’ll get more than 33,000 results - it is a popular topic. What follows is not a comprehensive guide to advertising for bloggers - but it does look at some of the alternatives.
Isn’t Google Adsense wonderful?
Possibly not. A lot of people dislike CPC (cost per click) advertising programs. While Google Adsense does do CPM (cost per thousand pageviews) advertising, their main claim to fame is virtually cornering the CPC market. But the public’s love affair with Google is slowly dying - they have screwed over non-US/Canadian/Japanese referrers and some people have left Google behind altogether.
The CPA (cost per sale) or affiliate advertising run by the likes of Commission Junction is worth trying for bloggers in some niches. I’ve looked at Commission Junction in the past and found it to be fairly US/UK centric - I do have some US/UK readers but the majority are Australian, and targeting ads to overseas suppliers is not ideal. There is a local variant - Commission Monster has an Australian program. I can’t recommend them personally - their application form doesn’t acknowledge the State/Territory I live in (ACT) and it took them 5 days to respond to an enquiry about the application process the first time. I put in my application a week and a half ago and I’m not confident of any response.
So, if Adsense and other centralised CPC/CPM/CPA advertising doesn’t really work for us, what does?
Leo Babauta from ZenHabits credits concentrating on advertising as one of the factors that allowed him to go pro. He manages his own ads directly and will sell you a 125×125 ad at the moment at $1 per CPM (thousand impressions) - see his ad page for details. Selling ads at a fixed rate per CPM is good value for Leo - he gets paid whether the advertiser gets a clickthrough or not, makes a sale or not. Applying Riayn’s hypothetical 5,000,000 pageviews a year to Leo’s blog at the stated rate would give him $20,000.00 from that source alone (multiplying 5,000,000 pageviews at $1.00 per thousand views by the four 125×125 ads on Leo’s blog) . This is definitely into small/home business territory.
Just on “advertise with us” pages - it is interesting to compare the advertise with us page at Problogger with Leo’s - Darren’s discusses the benefits of advertising with him (which look great, he has an astonishing readership) but no figures. There is also a thread devoted to advertise with us pages on the Aussie Bloggers Forum.
So what do we mere mortals with sub-four-figure-per-day readerships do?
Swollen Pickles recently discussed Scratchback Top Spots on the Aussie Bloggers Forum. Scratchback Top Spots is a do it yourself sidebar link ad widget - basically, people pay a small amount to be on the list, and as you get more money from other people the original ones move off. You can see it in action on Swollen Pickles’ blog.
Those of us who don’t believe that Google is Satan can pretend that we’re pros by having Adsense ads. While it doesn’t make much money, the ads are there. I can see where Darren Rowse and other big names are coming from when they bag Google (because it is costing them real money) - for me, a few cents here and there don’t mean a lot.
And while it isn’t about the money, there is always Entrecard. Entrecard has given amateur blog promoters like myself a hobby - and if nothing else, it has widened my readership over at On Blogging Australia.
The Answer
I’m not sure that there is a definitive answer to this one even for me alone. I run ads because it amuses me rather than any great income earning potential. There have been times when I could have used the money in recent months. If I was getting thousands of pageviews a day I would take a more active interest in which was the best deal for my particular circumstances (niche/target audience location/my location/my readership size). Until then, I will continue to play.
But there does need to be a record somewhere that this once-great blogging platform has started to go down the tubes owing to zero acknowledgment of issues - stay tuned for more details.
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