I’ve been blogging for 7+ years and I’ve been offering advertising for bloggers for around 5 of those years. A lot of bloggers have started offering advertising packages for bloggers lately, which is great. And I can imagine the more that do, the more will want to. Offering advertising packages does require some level of thought and planning though, so for anyone who thinks they might be interested in offering them in the future, here’s some advice for you.
Photo by Uby Yanes on Unsplash
Research advertising packages + legal stuff
I don’t do anything without doing a shit ton of research into it first and this was no exception. You can benefit so much from not jumping into something and actually taking the time to learn the in’s and out’s of it first beforehand. Remember, if you’re going to be offering advertising packages for bloggers, you’re going to be earning money. So you’ll have to look into getting yourself registered as self employed eventually.
This isn’t a *if you fancy* point, it’s law. So don’t sleep on this. In terms of other research around advertising packages, I’d see what other bloggers are doing and what they’re offering. Perhaps even buy an advertising slot or two with someone else to see how it goes for you, make note of the results and go from there.
Know what you want to offer in your advertising for bloggers
Since starting to offer these packages on my blog, the actual package itself has changes multiple times. I started off with different priced “tiered” packages – which became far too confusing. I then scrapped that and came up with something else that again, didn’t work for me. What I have now I really like but it took me a while to get there. Really think about the package that you’re offering.
So don’t be scared to chop and change your advertising packages if you’re finding they’re not working for you. And I’d also HIGHLY recommend trying to offer something a little different from everyone else – make your packages stand out from the crowd! I recently started offering a premium packages, which includes a feature newsletter for each holder. Which I’ve not seen anyone do before!
Think about what is realistic in terms of pricing your advertising slots
Something you need to think about is your pricing in comparison to your stats AND other bloggers with similar sized blogs to you. Sometimes these don’t correlate; I’ve heard of bloggers charging a LOT for an advertising package with minimal stats or “bigger” bloggers charging very little. You need to do the math.
If they’re for other bloggers, they need to be affordable. But you also need to take into considering the amount of time it takes to plan and schedule everything for your advertisers on a monthly basis.
Have “just in case” procedures in place
Things go wrong in blogging. We all know that. So having some procedures in place in case of that is usually a good idea. For example, I had a bunch of advertisers on my blog around September a few years ago. But halfway in, I had an absolutely terrible month and I didn’t blog for weeks, therefore my blog wasn’t getting as much traffic so it wasn’t fair on the current advertisers at the time. So I offered them a free month to make up for it.
Ask yourself if it’s worth it
Having advertisers on your blog is cool and it has lots of perks but ask yourself before you start if it’s really worth it and whether it will really benefit you and/or your blog. It’s a lot of extra work. It takes quite a bit of time to get all the tweets, the posts, the Facebook shout outs and whatever else set up for the month ahead. Do you have time for that? Weigh it up before throwing yourself in.
Those are my tips for bloggers who are considering offering advertising slots on their blog! Have you found these useful? What tips would you add if you offer them already? Have you ever bought an advertising slot before and if so, did you find it beneficial? Let me know in the comments!
