Blog Advertising Basics

Blog Advertising Basics

There are two basic ways to advertise on blogs, but first it's necessary to realize that demographics and statistics are very different than traditional media and advertising. Even an extremely popular blog may have 50,000 readers which is quite small by many traditional advertising demographics. However blogs, and their audio equivalent, podcasts, are fantastic ways to reach very  targeted audiences, i.e. niches.

Targeted niche blogs for blog advertising can be found via blog search engines such as Technorati.com or Google Blog Search.

Want to reach hard core bicycle racers, female marketing professionals, or French speakers interested in backpacking in Southeast Asia? These and just about every other niche are accessible via blogs. The audiences may be small by traditional media measures yet they are highly targeted AND passionate.

1) One tried and true method is to give bloggers free copies of whatever you'd like to promote and some of them will blog  about it. Jim Curtin, CEO of software company Win4Lin.com couldn't get the main stream media remotely interested in writing about his products, but bloggers in the appropriate technical niches are generally ecstatic to receive promo copes and usually blog quite favorable on them. It works for him and many others.

A few book publicists send me new books, and I often review them as all. And I've used the "free review copy" method successfully to get coverage (and increase sales) for my books as well.

2) Paid advertising, which falls into two categories:

a) Paid reviews. Some bloggers will review your product for a fee. In general you have little control of what they'll say, but you can get reviews for perhaps $25 to $500 and up. Most bloggers believe they ethically much specify that the review is a "sponsored review."

There are some sources for getting paid reviews, most notable PayPerPost.com. Another extremely effectively technique is to directly approach individual bloggers in the proper niches directly and offer them a few dollars for a review -- a surprising number of bloggers are willing.

b) Traditional paid advertising, but on blogs. There are companies that can run advertisements on  many different blogs for you, like CrispAds.com and b5media.com.

It's also very possible to contact advertisers directly. I recently was contacted by an advertiser and was paid a few hundred dollars for short ads on BloggingForBusinessBook.com -- a win-win all around. I'm currently negotiating with another advertiser who approached me last week.

Blog advertising is very much in its infancy. It's starting to grow pretty quickly, although it's hampered somewhat by a lack of understanding of how blog advertising does and doesn't work, and often a focus on the wrong metrics -- mas media metrics which do not apply to niche media, e.g blogs and podcasts.

We've got a long way to go, but blog advertising works. It works differently from traditional advertising, but it works!

Comments

[Ken DiGregorio]

Hello Ted,

Your article on Blogging Basics showed me a way to try to promote my Blogs more effectively.

Targeting Niche for my Blogs was something that I was not doing.

I thank you for your input. I am sure I will see a greater response

Ken DiGregorio

[Ted Demopoulos, Blogging for Business]

Thanks Ken, glad to hear it was helpful