Blog Advertising Rates
Everything About Blog Advertising Rates
Studies show that because blogs are so much more targeted than other types of websites, blog advertising results can be up to 50 percent better than results for advertising on social media sites like Facebook. Keep reading this guide to find out more about the kind of law blog advertising rates that you can expect to charge for people wanting to advertise on your blog, and how to get the best blog advertising results when you start to use ads on your website.
A Word of Caution: Things To Avoid
When some bloggers hear that they can start seeing money from blog ads, they set their blog advertising rates and just accept anyone who can pay them as an advertiser. Law firm blogs need to be especially careful to maintain a professional image when accepting advertisements.
While ads from other law firms in different geographic areas might be a good idea, there are some types of advertisements you should avoid at all costs. Try to keep politics and political campaigns off of your blog, even if they are offering to pay your full blog advertising rates. Campaigns can see great blog advertising results, but will all of your readers want you to take a side on political issues?
You should also ask to see any advertisements that will be placed on your website. Your blog advertising rates should generally be set high enough that get-rich-quick schemes and belly fat advertisements stay off of your blog, but you'll also want to avoid any ads that could be potentially disturbing to the intended viewers of your website.
For example, if your blog is about drunk driving, you shouldn't accept any advertisements from liquor or beer companies. If your blog is about stillbirths or maternal death, your blog advertising results for maternity clothing could be not just dismal, but also generate complaints to your firm.
Setting Your Initial Blog Advertising Rates
Typically, the amount that you will be able to charge for blog advertising depends on the number of page views that your blog brings in in a typical month. The term that you'll see repeated a lot in discussions of blog advertising rates is “cost per mille” or CPM. This refers to how many thousands of page views an advertisement gets.
If advertising on your blog brings in great blog advertising results, you will be able to charge a higher CPM. Blog advertising rates on typical blogs right now are less than $10 for a thousand page views, and often less than $5.
Because blog advertising rates can vary significantly from blog to blog, you may want to ask other law bloggers in your area what kind of blog advertising results they've seen and what you should charge initially. The trend in recent years has been for CPM to steadily decrease, so you should make sure not to charge rates that will strike advertisers as too high for the level of blog advertising results they can expect.
Adjusting Your Blog Advertising Rates
As your blog grows, changes and becomes more popular with your intended audience, it's likely that blog advertising results for your advertisers will change. When this happens, you need to be able to adjust your blog advertising rates to continue making as much as possible from your blogging efforts.
Don't ever move your blog advertising rates too much at once, as this is likely to scare away your existing advertisers and make it difficult to find new ones. If you want to increase what you're charging, you'd better be able to show your advertisers blog advertising results that are really different—keep in mind that for many blogs, ad rates are currently decreasing.
If you're not getting enough advertisers at your current blog advertising rates, you may need to consider decreasing them. However, before deciding that your rates need adjusted, you may want to ask a professional marketer for help—they may be able to help you improve your website and make changes that can help you improve blog advertising results so that your rates can stay the same or even increase.
How to Improve Your Blog Advertising Results
The single best way to improve the results of the ads on your blog is to make sure that your blog and its advertising are relevant to each other. Does the same group of people want to read about the topics in your blog and the topics being mentioned by your advertisers?
If you're not having a mismatch, perhaps the reason that your blog advertising results aren't what you want is that your content isn't keeping people on your blog long enough. Consider using some new techniques to bring new viewers to your blog and keep them there longer. For example, you may want to get some new guest bloggers to write engaging posts about areas of the law you personally aren't as familiar with.
Analyzing Your Blog Advertising Results
If you want to be able to change your blog advertising rates for your existing advertisers, you'll need to start using analytics tools to make sure that their results have been great. Google Analytics allows you to look closely at web traffic, including the route that people tend to take through your blog.
Using analytics can help you decide which advertising positions are most valuable and which may need to be revised so that they aren't wasting your advertisers' money. Often, analytics will give you some valuable clues for redesigning your blog in a way that makes visitors more likely to stay longer and participate more—both of which are likely to improve your blog advertising results.
If you're not sure how to use analytics tools, it's a great idea to talk to a company that specializes in web analytics. These companies can analyze your traffic so you don't have to, and give you a report about your blog that helps your firm decide what it's doing right and what it's time to change.
