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How you can charge premium prices for your ads

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First of all, Happy New Year to everybody! I hope the new year will be a year of peace, understanding and prosperity. Also sorry for disappearing for a few days, I was having exams in my MBA.

Everyone wants to charge high prices for their ads, right? Everyone wants to earn more money by selling few ads on their blogs. However, most of the time prices of your ads are determined by the blogoshpere’s economy. Economy that is based on demand and supply, just like a normal economy.

You may set a high price, but if there is no demand, if no one wants to advertise on your blog, then in the end you have no choice but to reduce your ad prices. You will reduce it to the point where you have enough demand for it. But this new price might not be a satisfactory one, maybe it’s too low for you, maybe you wanted a much higher price.

So is there a way to keep the prices high?

The answer is “yes”. But it’s not an easy thing to do. You can’t just set high price and wait for advertisers to come. It will require from you hard work, strong determination, continuous quality content and sometimes giving up on potential income sources (i.e rejecting some advertisers).

Blog positioning

Just like any other product, blogs too can be positioned and should be positioned, especially if you want to make money with them. Just think of different products from different companies. For example how Rolex watches compare to Timex watches? How Adobe Photoshop compares to PrintShop Zoom? How Lexus cars compare to Proton cars?

It’s very obvious from the above examples that the first ones charge high prices for their products, and the latter ones charge low prices. And we all know why the first ones can charge higher prices. It’s about brand, quality, lifestyle..etc.

Tips for charging premium prices

Same is true for the blogs, just like any product out there in the market, you need to position your blog accordingly. So, if you want to charge higher price for your ads, you need to avoid these mistakes, and on top of that, you need to do the following:

Have a niche blog - you have a better chance of charging higher price if you are running a niche blog. And it’s even better if the quality of your content is top-notch. Remember advertisers are (somehow) associated with the blogs that they advertise, and they don’t want to be associated with just any blog out there. They actually carefully pick where they want to advertise.

That’s why the ads on problogger.net is different from the ads on johnchow.com. Because they have blogs that are differently positioned from one another.

Be ready to reject some ads - depending on what strategy you have chosen, and how you want to project your blog to the people, you might have to reject some ad requests. Saying “No” to money is always difficult, but if you want to keep that “image” then you will have to say “No”. You should remember that saying “no” might actually bring you more income in the future.

This includes rejecting certain publisher programs too. For example, majority of big blogs are not using Google AdSense anymore. Some blogs like www.skelliewag.org has decided to go without ads altogether. Her blog is clean, usable, and ad-free blog to her readers. This is another way of positioning a blog, offering great content and making money not from ads but from writing skills. (Skellie had written few articles for AdesBlog.)

Your writing style matters - your writing style either attracts or chases away the advertisers. For example, if you like to swear a lot in your blog, it might not be a big deal for your regular readers who already know you and your writing style. But it might actually be a hindrance for getting new advertisers. Because not all companies want to be associated with a foul mouth blogger.

You also need to at least write in a grammatically correct way. Because writing in broken English can actually be turn-off as Ron from LinkWorth (he is the founder of LW) put it in this comment. I understand that this might not be possible for some bloggers for whom the English is a 2nd or 3rd language. And it might actually look like a discrimination, but that’s the reality. You just need to improve your English, if you want to make more money with your blog.

Note: But not being proficient in English grammar shouldn’t stop anyone from blogging. Rather, it should be improved over time.

Have a professionally designed blog - as the old saying goes “you can’t judge a book by its cover”. While this may be true for books, it’s not always true for blogs. Having a professionally designed theme for your blog can go a long way. First of all, nice design with quality content can convert new users into regular readers. But quality content alone (with bad design) won’t do wonders for converting new visitors into regular readers.

People might argue that there are blogs with not so good design, which have thousands of readers. While that is true, if only they could have implemented a nice design, I am sure their readership would be more than what they have now. So good design is always a plus.

These are some of the tips to help you position your blog in the blogosphere. You can be the Rolex of the blogosphere, or the Timex. Or you can position your blog somewhere in the middle, offering good value for money. It’s up to you to decide which strategy you want to employ.

My positioning of AdesBlog

As for me, I try to offer good quality, relevant content in my niche (blogging). I also try to blog in a consistent manner (was not so successful for the last few days though). As much as possible, I try to stay away from off-topic and personal things. I also try not to blog some things, just because they are the center of all the discussions in the blogosphere. If it is not of benefit to my readers, I won’t blog about it. So staying away from the hot topic, can sometimes be an advantage for you.

By staying on topic, and offering good articles I try to attract like-minded regular readers who value good reading. And of course, these readers of mine are valuable to my advertisers, as much as they are valuable to me.

And all these, allows me to charge higher price than other similar blogs to my blog. So far, I have been successful in charging premium prices for my ads. And I hope to continue this strategy for the year 2008, which will arrive in just 10 or so minutes. So Happy New Year!

PS: I think it’s a good time to thank my readers who have followed AdesBlog all these while. Thank you for reading my blog! I will try my best to keep writing things that are beneficial to you.

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