Selling Advertising

Sometimes I cannot help but think that pay per click or ppc advertising as it's called is actually the reason why bloggers are not making much money. Sure, these programs do make copious amounts of money for some bloggers and website owners, but many of us only make chicken feed from ppc ads.

Think about ppc for a minute, if the process of getting paid based on an action, i.e. clicking a link or visiting a website advertised on the blog, didn't exist, advertisers would probably have to resort to paying a set amount to advertise on a website. There are blogs and websites that do this now, but ppc programs are the most common, and I suspect the most popular with advertisers. Gone are the days when an advertiser paid based on circulation or visitor numbers, happy to get the name of their company or product in front of readers, much like television, newspaper, magazine or billboard and radio advertising. For internet ads, advertisers don't want to pay unless we can prove, through their visitor statistics, that the visitor went to their site, they don't pay.

Think about that for a second....ok....finished? If a car dealership runs a television advertisement for example, the television network gets paid regardless of whether or not one or one million visitors visit the car dealership and/or buy a car. Traditional media publishers etc, are not easily held accountable for whether or not their advertisements are working. Sure, the advertiser can monitor their sales, but it can be difficult to say for sure that business has increased because of an advertisement. Particularly if ads are running in several different media at the same time.

Website owners and bloggers don't have this luxury. We are relegated to trying to get our readers to do something, hoping they visit our advertisers or buy something because that is the only way we get paid.

There are some internet advertising companies, like Adengage and Text Link Ads, which do have a provision to allow the advertiser to pay a fixed amount to run an ad on a specific site, but it's still not the same thing. Advertisers have the ability to monitor clicks and measure the exact effectiveness of the ads, dropping those publishers who don't deliver. However, lots of advertising is not about an end result in terms of visits or sales, some of it is strictly to get the name out there, to make people aware of them.

That is the kind of advertising that prpbably makes the most money. All you as the publisher has to do is make sure you get decent traffic and you should be able to make money for each space you sell on your site. Think about it, if all internet advertising worked like that, we might be in a very different business....

That said, I am seriously considering changing my advertising to this kind of process, selling space myself, keeping all the money, and cranking the price up as my visitor statistics go up.

So....wanna be the first to advertise on Jack Parkers Make Money Blogging???