How to Sell Advertising on Your Popular Website

If you’ve got a successful website, blog, or social media channel then you’ve probably wondered how you can use it to make some extra money. While not all types of online success lend themselves well to monetization, there are a few ways you can make money by selling various types of ads on your popular web pages. So here are a few ideas on how you can sell advertising space on your successful site.

Banner Display Ads

The most common form of internet ads are banner ads. These are basically just images or videos that appear as a block somewhere on your web-page. When clicked on the ad link will normally open in a new browser tab or window.

These are a great way to sell advertising if you have plenty of blank space on your web-pages to show the ad. You can put wider banner ads at the top of the page either above your navigation menu or above your content. Taller ads and boxier ads can be placed into the sidebar area of your page.

For square ads on a blog, you also have the option of placing the ads in-line with the post text so that the text wraps around the ad. These are the most engaging form of banner ad placement, but they can irritate your blog readers if you use animated ads in this location. It’s best to either use static images or text-block ads. The latter works well with blog posts as the visitor is already geared up for reading text.

Text Display Ads

If you have less space to work with and need a bit more flexibility in how the ad works with other page elements then text ads might be the way to go. These are normally just text that is hyperlinked so that if the visitor clicks on it they will be taken to the advertiser’s site. Often the styling of these ads is different than the styling of other text links to indicate that it is an ad. Having the same styling for both your standard links and ad links can cause trust issues with your visitors.

The good thing about text ads is that you can also use them on text-based social media sites. Not all social media sites allow you to post material with ads in it though, so be careful of this.

Things to Consider With Display Ads

Something to bear in mind with display ads is that your web-page is broken up into sections that have different values for advertising purposes. The two main sections are above-the-fold and below-the-fold. The above-the-fold section is the area of the page that is visible on the average monitor without the viewer needing to scroll down the page. Below-the-fold involves anything below the above-the-fold area. The above-the-fold area has high value for advertisers because their ad is visible without the visitor taking any action. The further you scroll down the page the less chance that the visitor will ever see the ad, so the less value for the advertiser. This makes below-the-fold ads progressively of less value to the advertiser.

Overlay Ads

If you don’t have any spare advertising space on your web-page then you can still squeeze an overlay ad on there. Overlay ads float over the top of your page content and come with a close button for the visitor to make them go away if they are not interested in the ad.

These types of ads can be annoying for your visitors and may alienate them, so it’s best to be cautious when using display ads. Pick ads that are obviously useful to the average visitor. You can also use display ads to give away freebies in order to encourage the visitor to sign up to your newsletter or mailing list.

Finding Businesses to Buy Ad Space

There are a huge number of places online where you can find companies willing to advertise on your site. The most well-known is Google Adsense. Signing up for Adsense is easy and incorporating their banner ads into your page is just a matter of copy and pasting some text.

You can also find affiliate offers on places such as Clickbank. These allow you to earn a percentage of any sales that your ad generates for the advertiser, but you usually need to do more work to get the ad working with your website.

There are plenty of ways that you can sell advertising on your website or media channel. These are just a few suggestions to get you started. Do some research on internet advertising forums and you will discover a moneymaking bonanza for your online success. So start finding ways to incorporate ads into your site or social media account today and you will be able to reap the rewards in the not too distant future.