What is the best way to advertise, well advertising?

I want to market a piece of ad space on my front page, I figure its worth something as the site is only just over a year old and the front page is pr4 now - but it is a very niche subject. Apart from using that space to advertise itself what is the best way to promote it? - with minimal to no money?

 

I'm not sure what your question is. Do you want to sell the ad space? If so, then I don't understand the "with minimal to no money" part.

 

Yes I want to sell the ad space - the space is a hyper linked 690x340 area, embedded in a flash slider, that appears above the fold. I want to advertise that space for free.

 

You can create a page that says "advertise" on your blog that explains the terms of advertising, i.e. how to do people pay you, the banner size, how people submit their banner to you, is it on a monthly basis? Look at Yaro Starak's blog at entrepreneurs-journey.com and Alan Liew's blog at moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com to see how they set up advertising terms for their blogs.

Write a press release and submit to free-press-release.com announcing that you're offering advertising on your blog. Make it newsworthy, meaning it sounds like its news, not an ad itself. You can also let people know in the forums. If you want other ways of monetizing your blog with ads, consider Google Adsense, Kontera, Chitika, etc. Sell affiliate products. Sell your own products on your blog.

 

I have created a page explaining the process of payment. We are using marblejars.
the press release sounds like a good idea though....

 

from where i am I think the thing I am trying to get at is when the adspace is sold its not just going to googleads or whoever (I have google ads hidden inside the site) this is the home page where there are no ads, I am looking for an advertiser thats edgy - has a certain look that would fit well with the site - maybe become long term partners etc

 

This is a tough thing you are asking. If you want to advertise for free then the only thing that comes to mind, aside from a Press Release is social networking sites, maybe commenting on forums but in the marketplace or services area some forums offer.

 

I guess your right. I will follow your advice also

 

Writing good press releases is one good source of advertising and I'll agree on that. There are lots of free PR sites such as Newswire, FreePressRelease, FreePressIndex, PRLog, etc wherein you could also put backlinks to your website provided that all contents will be written relevantly and not only to advertise. Most of these PR sites do require moderation before they have to publish the submitted PRs so you have to take note on that. Otherwise, you could also outsource your PR writing with some of these cheap and reliable services from freelancers in the Philippines that could do the submissions for you.

 

do you want to sell something?