Selling ad space for your website can be a great way to make money off of the hard work you put into earning the traffic which your website receives. As an aside, advertisers are not the only way to make money, so check out my 12 methods of how to monetize my blog. Still, many webmasters prefer finding advertisers for their sites over going the AdSense or similar routes because they have full control over the kinds of ads displayed on their site(s). In this articles we’ll answer the question of how to find advertisers for my website.
How to Find Advertisers for My Website
Before you use the tips below of how to find advertisers for your website, make sure you have some information about your site ready so you can better pitch to said advertisers.
Ideally this includes recent screenshots of your Google Analytics on:
- Traffic volume over the last 6-12 months.
- That traffic’s engagement on your site, meaning their bounce rates, return visitors, etc. These are all related to your site’s quality which advertisers will want to know about.
- That traffic’s acquisition channels, or what websites or search engines did they come from, and in the case of the latter, which keywords are bringing them in. If you’re inexplicably ranking for irrelevant keywords, irrelevant to the focus of your site that is, then you’ll likely have a higher bounce rate and this will scare advertisers away.
- Demographic information on your site’s traffic, so specific info on where your visitors live, their age, gender, which devices they use, etc.
The message I’m trying to convey is that it’s essential that you understand exactly who the audience coming to your site is, and that they’re relevant to yours and your advertisers’ niche.
Armed with proof of these (hopefully) strong metrics, you’ll have a much easier time convincing advertisers to pay you to display their ads.
You should also boast any impressive additional statistics about your site. If you maintain a regular posting schedule either daily or weekly, certainly mention that. If your site is a decade old and an authority in your niche, mention that.
Now that you have all of that, on with the methods of how to find advertisers for my website.
1 – Solicit on Your Website
Let’s start with a very important method of how to find advertisers for my website which a lot of webmasters overlook, which is simply advertising on your site that you’re looking for advertisers.
Creating a dedicated page and titling it “Advertise on This Site” or something to that effect will let any interested visitors to your site know that one can advertise there.
Obviously the more visible the space you mention this, the more eyes you’ll get, but it’s up to you as to how visible you want to make it. If someone is looking to advertise on your site already, then it’s not as important, but a more visible space might convince some webmasters who weren’t thinking of it already to advertise with you.
You can add this as part of your main menu, or you might include it as many webmasters do by adding a link to this page in your footer section.
On the page itself you should include a method of contacting you which is specifically for advertisers whether that’s a contact form or email address specifically for this purpose.
You can also include a screenshot of your website outlining the sections where someone can advertise. You can include rates if you know how much to charge for each area.
Alternatively, you can save both of these for when an advertiser contacts you and you begin a dialog with them.
You should also give a rundown on this page on the kind of traffic your website receives. This doesn’t have to be the aforementioned screenshots, but just have the relevant data to list on this page.
2 – Search Ad Selling Marketplaces
There are a number of marketplaces and services designed to connect advertisers with webmasters/publishers. Some of these go the extra step of even automating much of the process from finding relevant advertisers for your site to even swapping out ads as contract periods end with advertisers.
A few popular options are:
Some options like OIO Publisher even have WordPress plugins which automate your ad management like I mentioned.
There are also free options like AdRotate for managing the ads on your site.
While I argue that you’re better off tracking down your own advertisers to give you more control in finding the best fit for your site, these services speed and simplify the process significantly.
3 – Look at Your Competitors
A very easy way for how to find advertisers for my website is by looking at other competing sites and making note of the companies advertising there.
An easy way to find your competitors is to do a handful of search engine queries for keywords you’re ranking for or hoping to rank for based on the content of your site. The other search results are your direct competitors.
By doing this you’ll be able to find dozens of competitor sites and many of them will be leveraging their sites and traffic to display ads on their respective sites.
Once you have found a few leads, send each advertiser an email to pitch to them why your audience would be a good and responsive fit for their product or service.
Include the analytical information mentioned above as part of your pitch so that they very quickly can see proof of why your site is a great fit for them.
4 – Contact Companies Whose Products/Services You Use
Another obvious one which many webmasters overlook is looking at the products which you yourself use (and maybe even have mentioned on your site before).
The whole cold emailing process feels a bit warmer when you can genuinely say that you’re a customer and fan of their product/service and would like to share it with your audience via advertising on your site if possible.
If you can link to instances where you’ve mentioned their products/services on your site then that will look even better in making a successful connection.
5 – Affiliate Marketing
This one is a bit on the outer edge of what we’re talking about here, but to continue on that last point, you should also sign up for affiliate networks and search for products and services related to your niche.
When in doubt, you can simply devote your ad space to affiliate links for things which you know your audience would like.
One final word!
Remember that once you have advertisers paying to display on your site, you should double your efforts to drive as much quality traffic to your site as possible.
If you get lazy either and relax your posting schedule or anything which earned you those advertisers in the first place, it will be difficult to get them to renew the following month/term.
Bet on yourself and your content. With that in mind, you might even offer them a discounted introductory rate for the first term so that they can experience what a great impact your audience has on their business.
Keep it up and you’ll have advertising working to outbid each other to be featured on your site!