*Be sure to read to the end I am offering a great prize*
Before any business is successful an investment has to be made. Money has to be spent to make a business profitable. Today I want to introduce you to one very popular way you can invest your marketing money - Blog Advertising.
| What is a Blog? |
A blog is usually short. A blog can range anywhere from a couple of sentences to a couple of paragraphs or even pages. When someone posts a blog it is open for comments. People can then visit that website, read the blog, and post a comment about the writing. Anyone can ask the blogger ( or person who is writing the blog) any question that they deem necessary.
Blog advertising is becoming the choice for online advertising because of its many advantages such as link building and generating more visits to your site and, therefore, higher chances of your products and/or services being known.
| Planning A Campaign |
Honestly, one ad on one blog for one month is not really going to get you the results that you are looking for. Keep in mind the more times your banner is seen the more times it is clicked. The more times people visit your store the more likely they are to buy your product. Here are a few steps to help you plan your online campaign.
1. Determine how much money you want to spend.
2. Determine your target audience.
3. Make a list of your favorite blogs and other places you would like your banner to appear.
4. Contact the list and get price quotes and traffic statistics.
This information is vital to planning a successful campaign. Once you have these 4 items you can sit down and determine where you money is best spent and then budget it out so you can get more bang for your buck.
| How To Get The Most Out Of Blogvertising |
1. Make sure you ad pops. Why even advertise if your banner is going to get lost in the crowd. If you have no Graphic Design experience I strongly urge you to contact someone who does and hire them to create you some online banners. Be sure to get a varitety of sizes, one animated .gif, and a couple of design styles. The most popular sizes are 150px x 150 px, 150px x 60px, and 150px x 200px.
2. Make sure the audience fits your goods. This goes beyond who reads the blog. Yes that is a very important factor to keep in mind but make sure the content of the blog addresses your target audience. You may not necessarily want to advertise on a blog who provides tutorials on how to make your product, or lists where to get the cheapest supplies. Those readers may feel as if they can do it themselves.
3. Know the lingo. Make you sure understand what the terms unique visitors, pageviews, page rank & more before you go asking for stats. You need to know what the numbers mean, so spend some time researching these terms first.
4. Get the facts. Any blog worth advertising on will be more than happy to provide you all their stats. If they don’t NEVER be afraid to ask for them. This is your money!
5. Barter. It never hurts to ask if someone will trade a month of banner space for a piece of jewelry or a gift certificate to your shop. Just keep in mind that if it’s a popular blog then most likely they get that offer a lot and may not be willing to trade.
6. Free Advertisement. If you have a blog of your own put your own banners on your ad and ask your readers to spread the love by placing them on theirs.
7. Track It. Note when you kick off your campaign and keep track of your sales that follow. If you really want an accurate count of where your traffic is coming from have your banner advertise a special for those readers only with a code just for them. When they make a purchase they will use that code and you will know just how much ban you are getting for your bucks.
| Where To Advertise |
There are so many great blogs out there and it could be hard to find some that work for you. Here are a couple of ways to find the best ones.
1. Your favorites. What blogs do you follow and read daily.
2. Bloglovin.com This site allows blog owners to register their blog and then allows readers to search blogs by topic, popularity and they even tell you often the blogs update!
3. Blog Advertise Store. This site will actually allow you to pay some of the top bloggers to review your product. They even offer a directory for you to research blogs and costs first.
4. Ali Edwards. I love Ali Edwards! The last time I heard she gets over 10,000 hits a day to her site. While she is mainly a scrapbooking blog keep in mind that she has a huge following. What I love about her is she does sponsor giveaways and at least once a week she tweets about her advertisers. PS - she has close to 6000 twitter followers.
5. IndieFixx.com Indie Fixx is a lifestyle blog and is partly a personal blog with a very healthy mix of indie design love, crafting and diy, some gardening and cooking mixed in with plenty of commentary and a healthy dose of joie de vivre.
6. EverythingEtsy.com Readership consists of both Etsy sellers and those who just love all things handmade, indie, and artsy! As such, Everything Etsy is a great advertising opportunity for a wide variety of businesses and organizations.
I hope this information has been helpful to you all. If you have any questions about anything mentioned above please feel free to comment or email me. Please keep in mind that marketing is truly a trial and error process. There will be some that will generate hundreds of dollars of sales and there will be some that are complete duds. Never get discouraged and never be afraid to try!!
Now for the Giveaway
I am going to be giving away a custom designed banner package. This package will include 3 banners in the most popular sizes: 150px x 150 px, 150px x 60px, and 150px x 200px and 1 animated banner. Also in this package you will receive a month’s FREE ADVERTISING on my blog. The banners to the left were created by me along with my logo, header and of course all the designs in my shop. This is a good representation of my style and design skills.
I will randomly pick a winner on April 31st at Midnight. The winner will be chosen randomly from the comments to this post. The more comments the more chances you have to win. However there is a catch. . . . the comments have to be one of the following types of comments:
1 | feedback on the blog post
2 | link to where you tweeted about this - comment on the blog post at Wild Blueberry Ink everytime you tweet it for more chances
3 | link to where you posted this on facebook - comment everytime you post it for more chances
4 | you followed this blog - I have 3 ways to follow this blog choose all 3 for more chances
5 | you fanned me on facebook
6 | you followed me on twitter
7 | you blogged about this post
*please limit your tweets and facebook posts to 4 per day*
Thanks and good luck!!
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