To deal with the money going out of my account to pay bloggers, I have decided to hit the streets and contact companies that I think would do well to advertise on this site.

I started by looking at my competitors. Most of which seem to be using affiliate banners, or cost per action banners on their blogs. A few seemed to be using AdSense or something similar, and so only a very small amount of advertising positions seemed to be direct advertisement placements.

I have advertised this site on a few other sites, of both friends and competitors to try to build up my brand, and I think it worked masterfully, but finding companies to now advertise on this site hasn’t gone as well.

So What’s the Problem?

The reason companies aren’t seeking out this blog to advertise on it is because of a variety of reasons. One issue that might be limiting the number of private ad sales on this blog is that Xfep still isn’t a thought leader in the niche it covers, despite placing fairly high up in the Top 100 list for making money online blogs.

Another issue that might be hindering the number of advertisements on this site is that my advertising page is all text. Most people are very visual in nature, and despite describing advertising positions, all they see is a jumble of text and move on. This is something I am planning on fixing in the very near future.

One of the final reasons I will throw out there is that advertisers don’t see the value in advertising on this site. There are so many other competing blogs, and there aren’t many products that would fit with the type of visitors that this blog brings in. Things like blog design, search engine optimization, coding, and other blogger related products or services will work well, but outside that focused group, the type of audience just wouldn’t match.

I have priced the advertisements on this blog fairly aggressively for the amount of traffic I get, and have slowly built up a list of products, services, blogs, web hosts, and whatnot that would benefit from advertising on here. The revenue that is generated with this blog goes to pay the salaries of other bloggers that I employ (so now you all know that I am not getting rich off this site or anything).

The Big Question

So, I guess now the big question is, will I be successful in finding advertisers for the open inventory I have, or will I have to fill it with affiliate banners and CPA advertisements like most of my competitors?

Originally posted on April 30, 2008 @ 9:59 pm