Do you sell text ads?

Most people, if they have a website, have some kind of ads on their site.  Not everybody, but I think it would be safe to say that most do.  There are a number of different types of ads that you can include on your site.

Of course, the biggie when it comes to advertising on websites is Google AdSense.  But, there are certainly others too.  One that I like, for the right sites, is Chitika.  I say for the “right sites” because Chitika mainly does well on product related sites, not general sites.  I have a few sites that are “product-centered” and I use Chitika on those, where it does nicely for me.  There are other ad companies too, of course, and I am a big advocate of advertising your own products on your site.  Thinks like eBooks, services that you offer, etc.  Additionally, lots of people advertise affiliate products and such.

What I want to talk about today, though is selling text ads on your site.  There is a company called Text Link Ads (TLA for short) who does this.  I use TLA on some sites, and I do pretty well with them.  But, I found a different way to sell Text ads that make a lot more money.  I sell the ads myself and cut out the middle man on many sites.  Why can I make more money by selling myself?  Well, TLA, as the middleman takes half of what the advertiser pays.  So, for example, if somebody pays $30 to put a text ad on the site, TLA gets $15 and I get $15.  Well, if you are not a big publisher, that’s OK, because TLA has a lot of customers willing to pay for links, so they earn their money because of their ability to put the buyer and the seller together.

However, if you have big sites, and are well known in your niche community, you don’t necessarily need TLA to do the ad selling for you.  You can do it yourself.  I have about a dozen sites where I do the text ad selling myself.  I started doing this about 2 years ago.  Today, I sell enough text ads on those sites (two sites in particular) where I make over $1,000 per month just on text ads.  Are you listening?  Yes, I said $1,000 per month just from text ads.  If I let TLA sell those ads, I would be giving up more than $500 per month to a middleman.  I’d rather keep both halves of the ad sales, wouldn’t you?

So, how do you sell yourself?  As I said, firstly, you need to be big enough in your niche that people will want to advertise.  If you are not at that point, you need to spend some time building up your site first.  Perhaps during your “site building” phase, TLA can supplement you with a little income from text ads.  Later, when you reach the right level of fame within your niche, you can start doing the ad sales yourself.  When you do get to that level, what I recommend is to set up an “Advertise” page on your site where you list different types of ads that you can sell on your site.  On that page, in addition to graphic advertising, offer text links as well.

How much should you charge for text advertising?  It depends on the standing of your site.  If you have a site that is the leader in your niche you can charge more.  If your site is an also-ran in the niche you will be able to demand much less.  For my particular sites, I have a range of prices depending on the site and how much traffic it generates.  I have two different sites where I charge $50/month for a text link.  On my worst sites, I charge $10/month for text links.  If you have a lot of sites, a strategy that I find to work well is to offer package deals.  For example, I have like ten sites that are all related to the same niche.  If I added up what I would charge to put a text ad on all of the sites it would be about $300/month.  However, I offer a package deal where people can put ads on all ten sites for just $225, saving $75 per month by purchasing the package deal.  Try to do something like this if you have multiple sites within the same niche.  I promise you can make it work – I know because it works well for me.

Tune back in, because in a coming article I will tell you how to set up the payments for such ads in a way that you don’t have to work much, just sit back and let the money roll in.

Good luck with your text ads!