Five Reasons Why Your “Advertise Here” Button Sucks!
Everyone wants to make money with there blog, but sticking a big ugly “Advertise Here” 125×125 block on your web site isn’t always the best method. Once you establish your blog and have your own brand, you’d be amazed at how much of a demand for advertising you soon may have. There is nothing wrong with placing advertising on your web site or blog, just make sure it’s done right.
Before you go ahead and stick a big “ADVERTISE HERE” box on your blog, here are a few reasons why you should reconsider, and instead how to approach your blog advertising from a different perspective.
1.) It’s Just Ugly
Right off the bat, most of these “advertise here” ad blocks are pretty ugly. If they aren’t just a white section with a text link inside, they are usually a hideous design. Your blog is important, and if you’ve spent a lot of time and money building it, why mess it up with a nasty ad box. Remember, the majority of people to your web site are not interested in advertising, and if you have something like the atrocious ad block to the right on the design, that’s pulling their eyes away from your real content.
2.) It’s Doesn’t Look Professional
Depending on your blog type, you may be trying to establish creditability or a brand for yourself. It’s one thing to have one ad block, looking for advertisers, but if you have 2 or 3 of the same ad block, it just doesn’t look professional and maybe even desperate. You don’t want to look like you are begging for advertisers, or that dependent on trying to make a buck. If you are using a plugin to manage your ad spots, this can usually be fixed by limiting your open ad spots available. Another option is to temporarily add your own banners to other sites or offers til you sell out.
3.) No One Wants to be the First Advertiser
In most cases, no one wants to be the first advertiser on a blog or web site. If you are searching out a place to advertise your product or site, you want to be where others are advertising, which gives you the feeling they are seeing results. Think of this just like your RSS feed. No one really shows their RSS count until it’s in the hundreds. People like to join, flock and participate where others are.
4.) CPA Over Nothing
Why are you wasting time and money with open ad space on your blog? Instead of that ugly “Advertise Here” button, you can simply replace it with a link to one of your own sites, or find a CPA offer that’s relevant to your audience. If an advertiser is that interested in advertising on your web site, they will contact you directly. It’s likely you won’t lose much business if you remove your “Advertise Here” 125×125, just make sure you always have a text link for advertising on the site.
5.) Non-Creative Blank Ad Spots
If you just have to have an “Advertise Here” button on your web site, you might as well make it look good. Not only will it blend in with your web site, but it shows creativity and may actually draw in more advertiser attention vs. not. TutorialBlog has a few great examples of what you should and shouldn’t do with your “advertise here” ad spots. The banner ad designs below blend in much better than your average “Advertise Here” button.
For anyone looking for a better ad management solution, or currently without one, I use both UBD Block Ad Settings plugin (free) and OIOPublisher (great for selling ad space, $47) on multiple web sites and wordpress themes.
Yeah Zac, I do wonder why a lot of bloggers prefer to leave their ad space empty when they could easily add their own affiliate ads..
As someone who looks at and purchases advertising on blogs, I definitely agree with a lot of the points you made above. Another thing I'll add is that you should make it EXTREMELY easy for advertisers to see what your advertising options are, the current traffic on your site, as well as clear way to contact you.
I always recommend creating and Advertising Page on your blog (which you have had for quite sometime) and include all of the pertinent info on that page. The easier you make it, the faster you will see results….trust me.
Oh stop being so negative. Just put some nice pics of someone you know on there. You don't have to have it point anywhere. But you could have it point somewhere fun. The point is there is a lot you can do with them other than advertising. Paul
I think it's funny that a lot of bloggers have a heap of the same 'advertise here' banners in a block. I would have all my ad's as affiliate links and just one 'advertise here' – just to let people know that opportunity is available!
Hey Zac, great post. I agree, 90% of them are pretty bad. But having just one of them will vastly increase your chances of selling the open ad spot. Also great suggestion to put up affiliate banners in empty spots.
@Eric Clickbooth I totally agree with you also I would like to suggest one service that bloggers can use to sell their ad spaces https://buysellads.com/.
A revelation of a post…. 8 years I've been making $0 until I followed Zac's one simple rule.
NIce blog post. I agree and I will try to test what you have said, also thanks to Eric Clickbooth for the extra tips.
I totally agree with these statements. We are currently working on a better advertising page in order to get all the spots that are open. We had advertise here buttons for about 2 days and then took them down. They just looked bad.
Currently the sole purpose of web site to make money by publishing ads web site carries a different purpose is very little always spam!
@Gbell – Ecommerce Made Easy:
thanks for the feedback, we've created 20 new advertise here banners that you might like
.
Wow your just dropping gold nuggets here.
i agree with you zac, it's look not professional blog….great share, thanks zac
Thanx…that was very helpful.
@Eric Clickbooth:
While I agree that doing this would improve the chances of you selling ads, most of us simply do not want to share this kind of info. Most people like to keep their traffic stats to themselves.
Just out of curiosity, why would you want to keep your stats to yourself? I'm in no way passing judgement or anything, I'm simply curious. I have pretty lame stats right now because my blog is new, but I display them on my advertising page. Is there a reason I shouldn't?
You need to make it attractive and engaging to catch the eye of potential suitors.
Great post Zac.
Very True
As an advertiser I am always looking for blogs to advertise my product on.
I often wonder why they have lots of white space down one side of their blog.
(my problem is finding blogs with good pageviews and low cost ad rates ! which is probably an oxymoron !)
Oh GREAT. I was just about to put up one of those things on one of my blogs. No lie. Now I am going to wait and think about it a bit. Have to get the creative juices flowing on that one. Google adsense has simply gone downhill as of late and I am looking at every option I can for more advertising dollars. OK, so "Your ad here" block… scratch scratch… off the list.
I quit using "advertise here" buttons long ago. I think that if your blog is well known, the advertisers will find you.
There is just nothing worse than those ad blanks. I personally am going to use them to point to offers on internal pages, awa to other relevant websites in my portfolio for a wordpress based project I am working on.
As someone who has purchased ads on blogs & network sites, I'll exclusively look for an "Advertising" or "Advertise Here" link in the footer or header nav elements and go to a specific advertising page to learn more about the site metrics. I personally will ignore a site with an ad block that has an "Advertise Here" block in place of an actual ad, as it just leads to additional banner blindness on part of the site visitor.
"1.) It’s Just Ugly" Or extremely ugly, I have never had an advertisers on one of my other blogs, I am sure in no small part to my ugly banner ad. Thanks for the tips Zac.
i agree with you zac, it’s look not professional blog….great share, thanks zac
I hate to disagree with you Zac, (by the way, we have the same name) but I don't mind being the first advertiser.
I've been the first advertiser on many networks, and it has really paid off. It's hard to find a good investment, but if you can get the first ad on an emerging website, you can get locked in at low prices if you form a friendship with the owner. (Of course, if you don't, they'll not have a problem asking for more money when they get more popular)
I can not beleive that anyone in this day and age would still leave advertising boxes empty. If they do then they have been stuck in a cave for the last decade. I think an important part to mention is that advertisers will not advertise on new blogs and websites. Till you build your traffic and ratings up then affilaite marketing is the best course of action
i agree with you zac, it’s look not professional blog….great share, thanks zac
An interesting article, but I don't agree that nobody wants to be the first advertiser. As a new blogger, I hadn't yet started to sell ad space, wanting to build up my site first. I actually had a company approach me about selling ad space before I even had ad information on the site. It can definately work out for everybody. They got a great CPM rate locked in for the next year because of my site's youth, and I got some guaranteed site revenue right off the bat.
Banners are good. I like to think outside the box. Wisdom is my thing…
You have done a marvelous job! I am really inspired with your work.
The inscription on the headstone: "Advertise Here!" .. That's a sad fact of life ..
My recent post Párazáró-és vízszigetelÅ‘
I am SO glad I stumbled on this post. I have an advertising page on my blog and a spot on my sidebar for advertising that I'm currently filing with some affiliate banners. I was going to put up some "advertise here" buttons, but now I am definitely NOT going to do that. If someone wants to advertise with me they'll certainly be able to find my advertising section as easily as some ugly banners on my sidebar.
Thank you! A new thing I learned here is to not have too much empty ad spots on my blog.
Thank you for your suggestions.