How to Sell Advertising On Your Website


Thousands of people make money on the Internet simply by selling advertising on their site. But don’t fall for some of the banner ad gimmicks touted by these get-rich-quick scammers. In this video, Eric Spellmann explains the online advertising model and how you can easily add it to your site.


Note from Eric: Below, you will find a word-for-word transcript of this video. I provide this as an aid for the hearing-impaired and for those who might just want to read it rather than watch the video. This conversational style is not reflective of how I write. Be nice! Hey I am Eric Spellmann with EricSpellmann.com. And today I’m going to teach you about advertising on your website. I mean you built a website and maybe you have great content and you want to make some money from it. Maybe you’re not selling a service or selling a product but you just want to sell information and if you can get enough people coming to your site, maybe you can sell some advertising on that site. So, I’m going to tell you all about it and how to get started in a minute.

Basically the key is to understand banner ads because the banner ad is the way you’re going to do the advertising. Do you have traffic? In other words are people coming to your site? If you just started a site and noone knows about it, then trust me you’re not going to be able to sell advertising. Advertisers are looking for eyeballs. They want to make sure that if they buy a banner ad on your site, then theres hundreds if not thousands of people going to your site on a regular basis they might see the ad, they might click on it and they might go to their site and might buy something.

So the first question you have to ask yourself is do you have the traffic? And you’re saying “Well Eric I’m working on it. I don’t know how…” You need to check your web stats. The way you know if you have any traffic on your website is to look at your web stats. And one of my favourite ways to do that is Google Analytics. If your web guy hasn’t installed some sort of statistical tracking system, you need to ask them about that. And Google Analytics is one of the best. So once you get enough traffic, then you can start selling advertising.

Do you have the right audience? I mean think about it. If you’re going to be selling advertising for a specific type of information then you want to make sure you find advertisers (companies) that are complimentary to that. For instance, if I have a site that talks about dogs, I would not want to sell advertising to a car company. You want to stick with the audience. You want to make sure you have the audience that they are looking for.

Then decide how you’re going to be paid. Because believe it or not, with banner ads and with advertising on a website you can be paid in a variety of ways. Basically theres 3. You can be paid on the impression, the click or the sale. Now let’s talk about those.

An impression is simply someone seeing your page. Specifically someone seeing the ad. And they’re usually sold in blocks of thousands. A good example. Let’s say you do have a site and you are an expert on dogs and you are posting all this information about dogs on that site and so all these people who love dogs are coming to your site to read your blog. Well if you want to get paid on impression that means you will get paid by the advertiser for say every 1000 times the ad is displayed on your site regardless of the action the viewer performs. And that’s an easy way but it requires traffic.

The second way you can make more money is called pay per click. In other words, the advertiser only pays you when someone actually clicks on their ad and goes to their website. So if you have this dog site and it sells books on dogs, if someone clicks on their ad going to their page talking about books about dogs, then they will pay you for that click.

The final way you can make the most money of all is pay per sale. So for instance in the same example of selling dog books, if someone is on your site and clicks on that ad and goes to the advertiser’s site and they buys some books, then the advertiser will pay you some commission, as much as 10% of the sale value!

So there’s 3 ways to get paid. Number 1 is by the impression (how many times their ad is actually seen). Number 2 is by the click (how many people actually click on the ad and go thorough to their site) and number 3 is the sale (how many people click, go through and actually buy something). And they go in increasing orders of what you can make. Impressions can be sold for pennies on the dollar. A thousand impressions for 25 cents maybe, a thousand impressions for a dollar! Clicks, it depends on the cost of the item and what a prospect is worth. Could be a dollar or could be 50 bucks for a click!

You just never know until you figure out what’s going on in that market by actually talking to an advertiser. Sales can be astronomical. If what they sell is a 1000 dollar item, and someone actually goes to their site through your site and buys the item, you might make a 100 bucks just on that 1 person going through.

The key for banner ads and whether they work or not is location, location, location! Theres different types of banner ads and where they go. Some banners are across the top, some are down the side, some are on the bottom, some are embedded in the content. It just depends. Also you need to understand that there’s different types of banner ads. The ones that go down the side, the very popular and very tall ones are called sky scrapers. Buttons are more square type of ads and they can go on the sides. And then of course there are pop-ups. These are ads which basically show up after a certain thing.

They show up before someone can go to a website or they hover over something and it pops up. I’m not a huge fan of pop-ups because a lot of people think they’re pretty annoying. So understand the types of banner ads there are. These days banner ads at the top and sky scrapers down the left and the right tend to do very well.

And draw the line. When we’re talking about banner ads you need to draw the line on what’s acceptable. Think about your audience. You don’t want to sell ad space to an advertiser that might put a banner ad that’s inappropriate. You always want to preview their ad before you just let them put it on your site. Make sure you don’t scare your audience. If theres kids coming to your site, you got to be extra careful about the type of ads that show up.

Next you got to choose your method. In other words theres 2 different ways to sell advertising on your site. First, find your own advertiser. Second, use an ad network. And we’re going to talk about both.

First let’s talk about finding your own advertiser. Realize that if you’re going to go out and find someone to advertise on your site, make sure you find someone that is complementary and not competitive to what you do. In other words if you are a dog groomer, and you have a dog groomer site and you’re giving expert ideas on dog grooming, you would not want to go and find another dog groomer to advertise on your site. You want to find someone that’s complementary.

So in your case, you may want to find someone who sales dog grooming supplies or obedience handbooks or something like that. So number 1, you have to find someone complementary to what you’re doing but not competitive!

Heres a big one. I personally never want to use an advertiser that I have it, checked out their product. In other words, if I have a specific advertiser on my website, I’m going to actually go buy their product and see what it’s like to work with them. Because think about it. What if you get an advertiser who is just awful. And what if they have a product that is awful. People go to your site, click on the advertiser and get this terrible product, guess who gets blamed. YOU! So you don’t ever want to go after an advertiser, if you don’t know what their reputation is like or what their product is like.

I know a lot of large bloggers and large websites where basically to advertise on their system you have to send them a product so they can test it and make sure that it’s something they really want to advertise. I know a lot of bloggers who say they only allow advertisers for products they actually use! So consider that. Your reputation is tied to that advertiser.

What’s it worth? I mean if you’re going to go out and look for advertisers what you’re going to charge em? This is the biggest question I get and it’s a tough one to answer. Basically, you have to try to find out what the range is. And one of the best ways to do that is go to a site similar to yours and send a short email on if you were to advertise on their site, what they would charge? And it’s a great way to find out kind of what the market is showing. But in some cases, maybe what you do no one else is doing.

And so selling advertising is up to you. And some of the best ways to do it is to simply come up with a rate and see what happens. In other words, throw out a number and give it a try and they will determine whether it’s worth it. And then you can “up” it and “lower” it as you need it to be. And I know that’s not a scientific answer and not what you’re looking for, but really there is no specific guideline for what you charge for advertising. And remember a lot of times those rates are based on whether you are giving them impressions, clicks or commissions on sales.

Use an ad network. And this is actually one that I use quite a bit. The reason I like it is because it’s so easy. You don’t have to go out there and find people to advertise on your site. Basically you plug in a set of code from this ad network and ads just start showing up there. Now the way most ad networks work is to pay per click and pay per sale. And the rates are pre-determined though, so that’s good and bad. In other words, you don’t get to say it’s going to cost you extra amount per click.

They’re going to determine that and you just kinda have to take it. But, once again you didn’t have to go out and find these things. The biggest one out there is Google AdSense. I actually use it on my Computer Tips 101 site and I make a good fair chunk of change with it, I’ll be honest. The neat thing about Google AdSense is that the ads that are shown up for one person are different to those shown up to another visitor to the same site! This is because Google actually kind of knows through your cookies where you’ve kind of been. Good example.

So if you’ve been searching through looking for a new car to buy, Google kind of knows that and the ads that come up on my site for you will be about cars! I didn’t have to do that, Google did that. And that way you’re more likely to click it, and I’m more likely to make a nickel or a dime or a dollar, depending on what the ads are going for on the Google network. So, the advantage of an ad network is you have to do no work really. If you have enough traffic coming in, you can have your web guy plug in some code and BOOM!

Ads just start appearing and then as people click, Google drops money in your bank account and it’s no fuss. It’s just very easy. And like I said, that’s the one that I use. But remember, you have less control over what you charge on that, practically no control. So keep that in mind. And Google AdSense like I said is the best way to go. You can go to “adsense.google.com” and it will pull right up.

Well as always, if you have questions on any of this please don’t hesitate to give me a call or shoot me an email or visit my website. I’d be happy to help. I have a number of customers who are using Google AdSense and also just selling advertising and I can kind of explain what they’re doing and what’s working. I look forward to hearing from you. I’m Eric Spellmann. I’ll see you in cyberspace.