Hi, I'm in the process of starting a blog that is effectively a SFW men's online magazine, focusing on Sports, Gadgets, Cars, Technology etc. Anyway, the theme I have has a few blocks for advertisements, and I want to know, should I give away these blocks for free until I start getting enough traffic to start selling the blocks? Positive: Makes the site look more padded out, and it's not as empty Negative: It's free Thanks, Simon
Yes if you want to do it-As it would be hard to sell add-spots on a none traffic site.But a soon as you start to get traffic i would set a price for those add-spots and increse the price every 3/6 months depending if your geting more trafic and higher pagerank. So you could give away the adspots for 1/2 months and if your site is geting trafic who ever has got the add-spots should make the payment if they are allso geting some trafic from there adds on your site
Well... I would try to sell advertising first. If there's no way you can do that, you can give it for free.
Well, if I did give away free advertising then it would be on the agreement that I could remove their ads at any time, which I would do, even if I wasn't getting any paid adverts, as it keeps the site looking fresh and updated? I repped you btw.
If you are going to give those blocks for free then use 'nofollow' tag for each advertisers IMO. DON.
Hi, what's nofollow tags? I'm assuming it's where it doesn't link? And if I'm right, why not? So that I don't lose returning traffic to other blogs?
The "nofollow" attribute is used to instruct some search engines (Google) that a hyperlink should not influence the link target's ranking in the search engine's index. You can read more about it at Wikipedia.
I will if I were you, but I think it's better if you hold a small contest and the price will be the free ads. I gave away free ads to my top droppers when I was still a member of Entrecard, and my virtual friends increased. Hope that helps.
mizaks - Thanks for the link - +rep GA - Not a bad idea: I was thinking of holding a contest, but wanted to make it so I was receiving traffic before I started the contest so it gave it a boost rather than a few people entering and never returning. So, would it be an idea to give away free advertising blocks up until the point of the contest? - +repped you.
Sure, why not? Everybody loves free stuff anyway. But I must remind you that getting visitors back needs a different strategy. Thanks for the rep.
Well, I plan to keep the blog updated very regularly so I should have no problems on that front, and I'm going pretty full out with advertising: this is going to be my main project so I am pretty desperate for it to do well and get enough traffic and more importantly revenue.
Well, good luck! But you scared me with the word very. I hope it does not mean more than twice a day. Sometimes, it can hurt too. I am updating my blog 2~3 times a week and so far I do not have much problem. I think the more important factor is the quality of the content and how you promote it.
Well, the blog isn't just going to cover one topic, it's going to have the latest sports news, the latest gadgets, sort of like a news site but for men's things, so I hope to make 1 post per day per topic, so, for instance, if I have 3 topics (Sports, Gadgets and Cars) then I plan to make 3 posts per day...
I wouldn't. why punish them? and anyway you will very quickly have real ads with no need for 'nofollow' tags so there's not much point Definately in the early begining when the site is just up. look professional and presentable on the get-go
Why not try putting affiliate link instead. I did with mine and forget about it until I started getting advertisers. Earned myself a few dollars
Banji, good idea, thanks for the suggestion. My intention was to eventually blog about products that I was going to sell, so, for instance, if I was going to sell PSPs then I'd blog about how good one is and put my affiliate link at the bottom, but I was going to wait until I had a decent amount of traffic beforehand so that I got more sales..
You can give special place of your site (ie. right side or bottom page) for free. And tell advertiser too the special price if they want their ads be placed at prime location of your site..