Blogging could be a rewarding career, especially for those who find their voice and get to make a living talking about what they are passionate about. Unfortunately, not everyone actually gets to make a good living out of blogging. The top guys do make enough money to be comfortable and enjoy life. The rest will have to find ways to just stay afloat. Many new bloggers think they should start making the big bucks right from the start. That could be why some of them add all kinds of advertisements at the top of their blogs, thinking that ads are the best way to get those “big bucks.” In reality, some of these ads are the ugliest way to make money from a blog (especially those that are inside your content). Just to be clear, they do get the clicks if you put them in the right place. But you don’t want to be too aggressive with them.

There is nothing wrong with having a “sponsor” or “ad” section on your blog. I have them on this blog and almost all other bloggers have them too. But when you start adding advertisements inside your content (and all over the place), you want to be careful they don’t take away from your readers’ experience on your website. As a blogger I understand that people need to make money on their blogs, but here are the main reasons I hate those ad-filled websites:

• Too many ads could compromise reading experience: that’s just it. I find those big Adsense blocks that some use at the top of each post very annoying. Not only they are ugly, they make it tough to read those posts. Do those get clicks? You bet. I am just not sure they are worth the headaches they cause for readers.
• Flashy ads are distracting: I am not a big fan of flashy ads inside my own content. They can be very distracting for readers. Besides, a lot of them are cheesy. If you must use flashy ads, use them in your sidebar or somewhere that does not bother your readers.
• Low quality of ads are upsetting: that is why you should work with ad companies that specialize in serving the right ads to your audience. Unrelated and obscure ads can really take away from your content. There are companies such as Google that work hard to show the right ads to the right people on blogs. Relevant ads get more clicks too!
• Ugly ads make your site look ugly: this is my main issue with those text Adsense ads. They just look ugly no matter how you try to dress them up. I do use text ads on some of my blogs, but I am very careful where I use them. There are many ad servers that specialize in serving ugly ads. These ads can make a bad impression on your visitors.
• Too many ads send the wrong message: let’s face it. We all can handle a couple of ads per each page. But if you go to a blog and see ads everywhere you look, that does not send the right message about the writer’s intentions.

Do you hate those annoying Adsense ads too?

• Are there enough players in your niche who are willing to spend money advertising online?
• What products could be attractive to your audience?
• How are you going to find advertisers for your blog?
• How much should your charge per ad?
• Will you be charging per click, action, or 1000 impressions?
• Where are you going to display those ads?
• Do you know how to measure the performance of each ad?
• Are you getting the best EPC from your ads?

There are plenty of other questions that you may have on the topic. While there are general ways to find out about how get advertisers on your blog, most bloggers won’t tell you how they go about doing it themselves. As a rule of thumb, you need to have a decent amount of visitors to your blog before thinking about selling your ads. Once you start getting 25,000+ unique visitors per month, advertisers will start finding you. But what if you have less traffic than that?

There are ways to get around that issue. First of all,  you need to have an action plan. If you want to make sales on your blog, you need to have a decent media kit. There are plenty of companies that will share their media kits with you, so you can always learn from them. You also need to keep building your online assets so you can use them to lure advertisers. For instance, you should keep adding RSS subscribers and building up your Twitter presence. These small little details do make a difference.

How Much Should You Charge and Where To Get Advertisers?

These are the main questions that I get from new bloggers. How much should your charge for your ads? You should always take a look at what your competitors are doing, but you should use those numbers as a guideline. If you get a lot of traffic on your blog, you may afford to ask for a decent amount of money. But if you are just getting started, don’t go for unreasonable numbers. You can always start with a fixed fee and then graduate to “per 1000 impressions” model as you get more visitors to your blog.

How do you find advertisers? There are plenty of ways to do that. You can always contact the ones that are advertising on your competitors’ sites. You can also get aggressive and start calling and e-mailing businesses that can get some value out of advertising on your blog. You certainly don’t want to be passive here. Waiting for advertisers to come to you is not a good idea either.

At the end of the day, everything you need to start selling direct ads on your blog is available on the Internet and through your competitors. By watching what others are doing in your field and comparing their strategies, you can pick up the positives and ditch the negatives. Of course, when you get your feet wet, you are going to figure more things out by experience.

Your take: how would you go about selling ads on your blog?