Selling Adspace Directly To Adwords/Adsense Advertisers

[Calamari]

I have a site that does well with adsense, but I'd like to try contacting some of the advertisers directly and offering them ads on the site in place of the adsense/adwords ads.

Before I start tracking down advertisers, getting their contact info, and firing off emails, does anyone have tips to help me get a "hell motherfucking yes" out of them.

I'm hoping that at least one of my BuSo bros has some direct experience.

 

[lion1978]

Gather as much data as possible such as ctr etc. unfortunatly you probably don't know the conversion rate of your audience, but you can do with out.
Look for relevance between your site and their site, but maybe even more importantly look for audience correlation does their site and your site fit the same audience.
have multiple adspots avilable for them at different price points, consider if you want the ad spots to be in a rotation or fixed, you would probably get more $ with rotation, give them the option of buying a entire adspot without rotation at a later point, once they have seen the value your ads brings. to keep the price point at a fairly high level make it appear exlusive, in other words don't have to many ad blocks and rotations avilable.
Also consider selling email ads if you have a list that is, if you do not have a list start building one ASAP.
And finally start thinking about native ads, the type of ads that looks like an article or blog post preferably a case study that promotes their product.

When reaching out to your prospects or actually before ask your self "wiifm"(what's in it for me) from your prospects point of view, play the devils advocate about your own site.
Remember that people buy on emotion and justifies with logic so cater to both of these as you want them to be continous buyers, since you allready know your average traffic ammount as well as your ctr you could simply put up a simple calculation of how much they would turn over based on the price on one of their products.

to find the right price point you can look at google keyword planner, allthough it in't very accurate, you can also get an idea of what others maybe pricing from buysellads.com.
consider giving an introduction offer limmited in time and availability of course.
and don't forget to create a "special" list for advertisers using it also to make surveys about your ads remember knowledge is power and power is money.
ultimately your price should reflect what you belive your site, your audience and your ctr is worth.
When pricing I suggest you start with "the awesome price" this is the price you would love to convinse your prospect to buy but that maybe just pushing it alittle, then set a realistic price, the price you would idealy want them to pay, and then in the back of your head have a acceptable price, this is the price whre you start generating a small cashflow but it is only just to get the ball rolling.

On a later basis you can if you feel like it offer them an occasional discount in return for a review or something like that.

Just my few quick thoughts and allthough I haven't gone down the exact same rout that you are planning of contacting adwords buyers, I have sold ads on sites directly using both emails and cold calling with an average conversion rate of 75%.

 

[Justin Cooke]

Before contacting those advertisers directly - are you sure you'll get a better ROI going direct as opposed to sticking with AdSense?

Keep in mind that Google's constantly testing and split-testing new advertisers, relevant personal ads, etc. While you might be able to cut out the smaller % that's going to Google you may lose out on the value they're providing. My guess is the advertiser would want to soak up some of that benefit too if they're going to go direct, so there's less for you there too.

Also - is the site really earning enough to make it worth your time?

Any time spent shopping for advertisers is going to take away from time spent adding content, building out the site further, etc. What's the better use of your time - shopping for advertisers or expanding the reach/traffic to your site?

Sorry, I know I'm not answering the question, but trying to get to the underlying question behind it. Are you sure shopping for advertisers will A) make you more money B) be worth your time.

 

[Calamari]

oh boy @lion1978 you gave me some good feedback and ideas. I like the native ads tip too. Thank you.

I'm not sure if the ROI will be better going direct @Justin Cooke. The ROI is pretty good with just adsense but there's only one way for me to see if I can add another comma to it or not. Don't apologize, I appreciate what your trying to do with the questions you're asking.

 

[lion1978]

@Calamari yw. thought just crossed my mind though in regards to what @Justin Cooke mentioned about ROI, maybe it would be an idea to keep the adsense on the site and then reach out to the companies advertising on your site via adsense and pitch them on the native ads and email ads, I belive it wouldn't breach adsense TOS but of couse you should make sure before implementing this.
possibly run both native and email campaigns with an affiliate offer before contacting the companies that uses adsense, in that case you would have data on ctr for them as well as examples of conversion rate.
And if you choose to go down that route remember when you contact them to casually mention that they allready are advertising on your site(through adsense).

Oh and dont forget you can also monetise social profiles like G+,facebook,twitter and so forth if you have an audience there as well, as long as you make sure your audience doesn't think you are spamming.

If you choose to utilise all methods then pitch the companies on a marketing plan that goes a little something like this:
week 1. native ad article (this article of couse stays on your site for ever so it should be rather costly, if they want a price reduction, then only allow the link to them to stay for certain ammount of time)

week 2. Email blast 1 solo mail either as a direct ad or maybe even as a native email ad.

week3.no activeity

week4. social media blast spread out on different days on different channels.

before you run another campign with the same company have them wait at least 1 month, otherwise people will start ignoring the ads.