Wednesday

5 tips for offering advertising on your blog

This month, I've decided to break my blog tips post into two parts: Advertising and sponsorship. Although very similar, there are some differences between the two so it made sense to create two posts. Today will be all about how to start offering advertising, and be sure to check my advice on offering sponsored posts.

Let's start with my definitions, so we know what we're working with.

Advertising
Charging brands (including other bloggers) to display their advert somewhere on your blog, usually the sidebar. This may, or may not, include other benefits such as sponsor spotlight posts and shout outs on social media. 

Sponsorship
Writing about a brand in a post in return for compensation, whether money or a product. This includes reviews of products, featuring a product in an outfit post, or being paid to include a specific link in a post.

1. When should I offer advertisements?
There is no magic time to start offering advertising space on your blog. As simple as it would be to say "You need to have been blogging for 6 months and have at least 500 followers", it's not that easy. However, my advice is pretty simple: Start when you feel ready. Whether you have 50 followers or 5000, whether you've been blogging for 3 months or 3 years, when you feel it is time, go with it! Just don't expect wonders to begin with! 

2. How much should I charge?
This is a complex issue because it depends on a lot of things: Your follower count, your statistics, the packages you offer, how long the blog will be up for etc. Before I started offering advertisements, I did a lot of research. I checked out every blog I followed, wrote down how many followers they had and how much they charged for advertisements. Then I used this information to see what blogs around my size were offering. 

As a very, very rough guide, the averages I recorded were as follows:

150- 300 followers*:    $5- $15 (£3- £9)
300- 500 followers*:    $10- $20 (£6- £12) 
500- 1000 followers*:  $15- $30 (£9- £18)
1000-2000 followers*: $20- $40 (£12- £24)
2000-5000 followers*: $20- $60 (£12- £36)
5000-10000 followers*$25- $80 (£16- £51)
10000+ followers*:       $40- $100 (£25- £64)

*Follower count is the total across GFC and Bloglovin'.

As I said, these are extremely rough guides that show the average of the blogs I follow. Of course, you should do what feels right for you, so please don't take these as gospel! 

3. What should I include?

Most blogs have several sizes of advertisement available. The most common is three or four and they are usually wrapped up in a package. Of course, the smaller the advert, the lower the cost. 

As part of a package, you may want to include some, or all, of the following:

An advert in your sidebar, banner or another part of your site
A blog post dedicated to the advertiser
A blog post featuring several advertisers
Mentions on social media such as Twitter, Facebook or Instagram

Most bloggers display the advert in the sidebar for 30 days and are displayed with the larger, more expensive options higher up. Some bloggers rotate the adverts within each "group", if you like, so that each advertiser gets a chance to be higher up, although others choose to work on a first-come, first-served basis. 

4. How do I go about offering adverts?
There are two main ways to sort out the adverts: You can either self-host them, or you can go through Passionfruit Ads.

Self-hosting
If you self-host advertisements, you will insert the advertisement buttons, invoice the advertiser and delete the button at the end of the agreed period yourself. You will also be responsible for reminding the advertiser when the end of the advertising period is coming up and ask if they want to renew. This is a lot of work but you benefit by receiving 100% of the advertisement fee.

Passionfruit Ads
With Passionfruit, brands can see the packages you offer and choose to place an advert through the website. You can then choose whether to accept or decline the advertisement. If you accept, everything is taken care of: The advert is automatically displayed on your blog (and taken down at the end of the advertisement period), payment is made, and advertiser's are reminded when their time is almost up. You barely have to lift a finger. The downside of this is that Passionfruit charge a monthly fee of $9 (or $89 annually) for their services. Worth it if you are selling a lot of ads, otherwise you're better off hosting your own.

5. What should I expect when I first start selling ads?
Or should this be, what should I not expect? Naively, I thought I would have people flooding my inbox, desperate to throw their money at me. Needless to say, it didn't happen. Adverts will probably come in very slowly at first- Maybe one or two a month at most. Don't be disheartened! As your blog grows, so will the interest. Just be patient and keep blogging! 

Phew, that was a long post! I hope it helped though. As always, please ask if you've got any questions. I'm always happy to help people and look out for my tips on sponsored posts tomorrow! 

27 comments :

  1. Thank you for this post - I was thinking about advertisements and sponsorships the other day, and although my blog is small - I might stick to blog button swaps for the mean time!

    I Took Part in Nivea's #DareToDip Campaign!

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    1. That's a good way to build up to paid advertisements!

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    2. Thanks, I found this very useful as I just launched advertisers on my blog this month :)

      Bec Boop
      http://becboopfashionistaworld.blogspot.ie/

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  2. Becky this was super helpful! I've been wondering if it's time I started with paid ads/sponsors on my blogs and it was good to get some information! xx

    www.poptartsbeauty.blogspot.co.uk
    Check out my MAC giveaway: http://tinyurl.com/nwstlnc

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  3. This is so helpful! Was thinking about starting for October but wasn't 100% sure how :)

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  4. Thanks so much for writing this post, I've been looking into how to go about advertising for a while now and you've summed it up so simply and clearly. This will be a huge help for when I decided to offer advertising. x

    www.stylepatchwork.wordpress.com

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    Replies
    1. I'm really glad that it's helped you. Best of luck with it!

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  5. Great post!
    I found this very useful as I don't advertise or have any sponsorship yet and I was wondering how you start.
    This information will come in very useful so thank you.

    Jodie x
    www.retrococktail.co.uk

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    Replies
    1. Thank you, Jodie! I'm really glad I've helped!

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  6. Nice and simple, thank you so much x

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  7. Nice and simple, thank you for putting it into English x

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  8. Such great advice and so well written Becky! Am starting on the ad route myself this year so this is so useful for me right now :) xoxo

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  9. Great post! I just put up an advertising/sponsorship page the other day. I'm using Adproval which is really similar to Passionfruit except it's free. They take 10% flat rate of whatever you're paid and swaps are free forever.

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    Replies
    1. Ooh, I hadn't heard of Adproval! Thank you- I'll look into it!

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  10. I wonder how many people will stop using Passionfruit now that they are charging, it's a shame because it was a really good system but I know they have their own bills and such to cover. Great helpful post though, I never knew how much to charge for ad space so I can imagine that being a real help!

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    1. I think a lot will. I understand why they've changed it but it is a little frustrating.

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  11. I found this really helpful. Thanks for the info!
    Xx

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  12. That was REALLY helpful. It realised me that I still need some time to start having stuff like this on my blog.

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    Replies
    1. It's good that you're thinking it through! Hopefully one day, you'll be ready for it.

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  13. I've been thinking about setting up advertising so this was quite handy :)

    Hayley
    Water Painted Dreams
    xxx

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  14. Advertising your blog can be hard work. I remember when I started blogging about a year ago. I felt guilty posting my blog entries on Facebook. However, using social media was all I knew. Maybe some of these tips will help me out. I never thought about how beneficial it could be to have an advertisement on the page. http://www.rowlands.tv/services.php

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