Advertising on Blogs

Everything About Advertising on Blogs

Once you've started a blog for your law firm, you may start to hear family members, colleagues, and friends start to talk about other ways to monetize your blogging. With over 156 million blogs currently operating, though, you may wonder how to get advertisers on your blog, or whether you can really differentiate yourself. Keep reading this guide to find out ways to encourage advertisers to advertise on blogs for your firm.

How to Get Advertisers on Your Blog: Critical Mistakes to Avoid

Many companies now advertise on blogs every day. While it can take months to get advertising on blogs working for you, you need to know right away that it's much easier to scare advertisers away than it is to attract them. The first thing to remember when you're considering how to get advertisers on your blog is that you're not the only game in town: with so many other bloggers eager to have companies advertise on blogs, one major mistake can wreck your advertising strategy for a long time.

The biggest gaffes related to advertising on blogs involve bloggers who aren't thinking about what kind of advertising content they're getting. You can't let people advertise on blogs that your law firm is sponsoring if they're advertising unethical products or products that seem very disconnected from your practice. Political advertising should also usually be avoided when you are accepting advertising on blogs, because not all of your readers will agree with a political message and this can turn viewers off.

Any discussion of how to get advertisers on your blog would be incomplete without a few words about transparency. While the line between advertisement and organic content has blurred on a number of websites, you should always make sure that advertising on blogs for your firm is clearly delineated. If someone wants to advertise on blogs without divulging that their product is being given paid placement, you should turn that offer down—transparency is key to building a loyal audience.

How to Get Advertisers on Your Blog: Setting Your Own Rates

If you're a do it yourself kind of person, you may want to let people advertise on blogs you own by selling your own ads. Because blogging advertising rates are changing all the time, you'll need to research current average rates for advertising on blogs like yours.

This is really only a great way to get advertising on blogs if you already know how to get advertisers on your blog. If, for example, you already have people who have asked to advertise on blogs for your firm, or if you have an email list of people you suspect would be interested, you might try setting your own rates and placing your own advertising on blogs for your site.

How to Get Advertisers on Your Blog: Using Networks

Not everyone knows how to get advertisers on your blog just by soliciting ads directly. If you are having a tough time getting companies to advertise on blogs by your firm, you can use advertising networks that will find advertisers for you. Ad networks are responsible for most advertising on blogs today, because they take away ad billing responsibilities and let you focus on running your website.

Every blog network varies in how much you'll be paid per thousand impressions of an ad. Advertisements on blogs can usually be vetted so that you can ensure no ads would appear that make your firm appear unprofessional.

How to Get Advertisers on Your Blog: Use E-Mail Lists and Social Media

If you have a list of clients or any other mailing lists for your law firm, you may consider sending those email addresses a brief email about advertising on blogs for your site. This is usually only effective for B2B advertising on blogs.

You can also post to your Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn feeds that you now have space available for advertising on blogs for your firm. You should have your rates ready before you ask for people to advertise on blogs—uncertain rates or last-minute changes can cause potential advertisers to look elsewhere.

How to Get Advertisers on Your Blog: Adjusting Your Prices

If you've been trying to get people to advertise on blogs for your firm for several months without much success, you should probably focus first on developing content and a larger reader base. It will always be easier to find people to buy advertising on blogs that have a great deal of traffic—if you're only receiving a few visits an hour, it may just not be worth it for most advertisers.

Once you've built your readership up by presenting great content and getting your name out in any way you can, you'll have an easier time asking people to advertise on blogs for the price you want. You may want to start with promotional pricing to get advertising on blogs initially.

How to Get Advertisers on Your Blog: Keeping Your Advertisers

Once you have learned how to get advertisers on your blog, the next step is keeping them! This next section doesn't apply so much if you use ad networks, but if you're personally approving advertising on blogs, you should keep communicating with your advertisers. Just a quick phone call with some questions about how a campaign is going can make a big difference to whether an advertiser stays or goes.

If your advertisers aren't getting the kind of results they want from advertising on your blogs, you can dig into the meat of your analytics. Analytics can help you figure out whether it's the content of your blogs or the design or placement of an advertisement that is leading to less than optimal performance.

When campaigns are going well, don't just settle for “good enough.” Keep up with trends in advertising—consider allowing targeted video ads to run on your website, for example, to bring in more conversions and more value for your advertisers. In an increasingly competitive blog market, you can't afford to lose the advertisers you've already developed a business relationship with.