Private Advertising

Well over a year ago when I was into Entrecard a new advertising scheme came onto the scene.  Essentially this was advertising that you the blogger control every detail about the advertising.  It required you to host the script somewhere then use that script to run ads.  The idea seemed simple enough but at the time it seemed a lot more headaches than it was worth.  As my cooking blog got a bit more popular though I started getting requests inquiring as to how much it would cost to run a link ad on my blog.  Most of these went into the spam folder.  A few days ago I got another similar request.  The writer wanted to know how much I would charge to run a link ad for one year. 

The real problem is here I had no idea for pricin but for some reason I replied asking what they had in mind.  They wanted to run an link on my Canadian blog for $100 for the year and because their attention was drawn to my cooking blog thanks to my sig the offered another $100 for a link there.  I figured why not as I have nothing to lose and if they don't pay me I can strip the links.  I added the links, sent them a reply saying so and that afternoon there was $200 deposited to my PayPal account.  They asked me if I had any more blogs or recommendation to which I gave them the urls of the remaining 4 public blogs of which they bought 3 more links which totalled $300.  In the span of less than 2 days and the time it took me to add those links I made $500.  In the blogging world that is a rather good return if you ask me especially when compared to other blogging sources of income.

As a result I have decided to directly sell shorter term advertising on my cooking blog.  The ads will go in the top portion of the blog and there will only be 4 spots for a 125 x 125 ad.  The ad does have to be family friendly, approved and paid for before running.  I'm starting off at 30 day ad spots at a price of $10 per month.  For a graphic ad that is rather cheap.  If I like how things are progressing I will offer similar ad spots on my other blogs but in a very limited capacity.  For example I'd likely offer only one or two ad spots on my other blogs.  I am liking that selling private ad space on your blogs is quite doable.  It is a bit more work but at least you get the full amount.

Garden Gnome
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