Selling Ad Space and Creating Banners

I recently received an email from a new member of Black Business Women Connect- the Social Network, and she had a few questions for me about creating software and selling ad space on her site. After responding to her email, it occurred to me that these questions might be on your mind as well. After all many of us are looking to get the most profit potential from our websites so in addition to creating content, we open our digital world up to advertisers interesting in connecting with our viewers. This is a great way to supplement your primary source of income, or even I viable source of income in and of itself. However, it’s not just as simple as ‘If you Build it they will Come’. There is more to Selling Ad Space and Creating Banners than just setting up your site.

Now before I get to her questions and my answers I wanted to post a few questions of my own? If you have a website and you are selling ad space, with little to no success have you thought about the following:

Are you marketing your Advertising Services or is ‘advertising’ just one other link for a viewer to click on?
How much does your advertising cost? Are your prices comparable to your site stats, in other words will your advertisers get as many viewers/clicks as it costs to advertise on your site?
If you have a small developing site, how do you go about enticing ad clients to choose your page? What is so special about it? Do you reach a strong niche market? Do you have a regular following of viewers/readers? Do you have a mailing list? Do you offer great ad packages at can’t beat prices? Why is your page ‘The page’ to promote on. These are things to think about.

In the email , my fellow Entrepreneurial Sista asked the following questions:

1.) What is the best/industry standard software package for creating web banners? I desperately need to create my own and for persons seeking to advertise on my site but who don’t have their own banners already.

Answer:
As a graphics designer myself I tend to do all of my designs from scratch and I use Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Flash 5, and or Adobe Image Ready. I find these programs give me the best graphic images. [Extended Answer: I’ve created logos and banners for several small business owners at very reasonable prices – click here for more details. And for those who want to take a more hands on approach at creating their own Banners I always recommend Photoshop because the image quality is great! I also recommend istockphoto for those looking for quality clipart or photos for promotional ads, stationary, graphics, banners, etc. ]
How did you create the beautiful mosaic photo on the front page of the network–which is almost like a magazine cover?

Answer:
I basically used Photoshop to combine all my images and I generally come up with the design on the fly. Keeps me creative!

3.) I’ve seen online mag web sites that do in fact have a splash page that looks like a magazine cover. What software can I use for that effect?

Answer:
Because I do all my designs manually, (cutting, pasting, cropping, etc.) I don’t really know of programs that help you create that type of look with like I guess a wizard or something along those lines. [Extended answer: In my experience, when you have a very clear idea of the type of concept you want to create, it is always impossible to find a user-friendly program or plugin that will quickly create exactly what you are looking for. This is why you either have to invest the time and money into either finding a designer who can really capture your idea or do it yourself. After years of practice, more often than not I design it myself or get paid to design for others.]

4.) I have found it very challenging to secure advertisements for my site. Folks seem to want everything for free–or to do link exchanges rather than to purchase ad space. What have you found in this regard? What strategies have you found to be best in winning advertisers from indie buzz owners to larger corporate sponsors/ads?

Answer:
Having been online for several years I’ve found that on one had many of my advertisers solicit my sites like msoyonline.com for ad space because they like the space. This could be because I’ve worked hard on getting noticed in the search engine or because they check my page rank/stats. Whatever your web content is, make sure if someone does a search on say – google, or yahoo your site comes up. This helps those who are looking for a page like yours to advertise on, to find you. [Extended answer: If your site is a Black Magazine for Black Women, and I search google and you don’t come up, that’s a big problem! And I don’t mean searching your site by your site name. That’s search doesn’t work if no one types in your name unless your site name includes your site content like your page actually being called www.blackwomensmagazine.com] People don’t want to advertise on a site they can’t easily find. This means you got to work on your own exposure before you want to help promote others. Make sure you have keywords in your web content, quality text is more text. Read more about the Key to Keywords. Also, submit your site to relevant directories, join groups, and yes take advantage of a few link exchanges to get your site out there first!]

I do know what you mean about most folks wanting things for free or wanting to do link exchanges. I generally only do link exchanges with sites of equal or high rank than myself. [Do you know what your page rank is? Do you know what page rank is? Click here to read more about google and page rank.] Most times when I get link exchange requests I direct the sender to my advertising service pages. I also think it helps to regularly do discount promotions, plug your ad packages on relevant business sites, and regularly plug your advertisers in blog posts, news groups, etc. This helps their business by giving them promotion beyond what they paid for, which is a good way to keep your ad customers happy. This is also a good way to show viewers and potential advertisers that you are dedicated to promoting quality, relevant ads which they can either benefit from, or consider a worthwhile marketing tool to invest in.

Ultimately, I try to make everything I do low in cost, this doesn’t always keep my pockets plump, but it allows me to provide the quality services I want to provide to an audience of entrepreneurs and small business owners looking for services they can actually afford. Not to mention the fact that I want to charge people for what I believe the service is truly worth in my moderately sized niche network rather than overcharge when I know I have yet to reach my target exposure, which is to generate the type of traffic that is comparable to sites like Essence, Black Planet, Black Voices, etc.

Ultimately I believe that you charge based on the value of what you produce, and the better your site becomes the more you can charge, keeping in mind that you always want to create services that are affordable to your target audience. This means asking yourself, who is my target audience, what am I trying to sell, what kinds of exposure/promotional value can I realistically produce on my site, and how do I plan on getting/retaining ad clients?

[Extended Answer: As my network of sites grows larger, I’ve been fortunate enough to do promotional contests or ad campaigns for movies like Phat Girlz and the Perfect Holiday, but these are opportunities that don’t come every day and generally are limited to sites with high traffic. I find that in addition to putting in the effort to promote my site and patiently watch it grow, I also have to utilize sites like amazon associates and google adsense. Finding affiliate programs that actually work for you is a good way to regularly generate income, to balance out those dry spells. It’s also great when you find great businesses to work with, one of my favorite clients is cocoaprints.com.

In my case, most of my sites tap into African American Online viewers with a particular focus on Black Women and Mothers. And though we are quickly taking the internet by storm, this isn’t exactly a market that big or small advertisers are jumping to tap into So its up to us, the pioneers of Net Ethnic Marketing to step up and start by strongly soliciting our peers, our aspiring entrepreneurs and giving them quality spaces on which to market. Once we put more effort into supporting, creating, and promoting our quality products/content, I have no doubt that others will take notice. That’s what I’ve been doing all these years and I don’t plan on changing my formula any time soon!]

Black Business Women Connect
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