What do you think of when I say the word “ad”? do you get a picture in your head of something you recently saw on sale? Do you have a negative reaction to ad sales? Or are you sort of “ad” blind?

Ad hosting for building an extra income

Let’s say that you’re a writer whose written a good amount of books. On your Amazon page, you get some followers, sell some books, and get traffic to your Facebook page. Anyways, you are revamping and see that you don’t really use all of your website space. There’s a big bite of real estate in the sidebar that you know has really good potential, but you don’t have the wherewithal to put anything there yourself. If another writer came to you and asked, “Hey! You have a great site. Can I use take advantage of some of your sidebar to promote my books? I’ll pay you and you won’t have to do a thing.” Would you let her do it?

Well, sure you would! It’s free money, and as long as her books don’t spoil your books, there’s really no reason not to. The best part is – you both benefit! Ad sales is like that.

This is what I want to happen to this site. I want someone to come up to me, or email to me and say, “Hey, I want to advertise on your site.” This kind of advertising on my website would be the difference in what I am currently doing and what I want to do in the future. Right now my only form of income side from book sales is Google Adsense ads, and Amazon affiliate sales. And those two adverts take care of all the details including depositing the cash for me. I have never dealt with advertisers directly, and so I’m not sure where to start. It’s a cool kind of scary, to be honest. I’d like to make out about an extra $250 a month for hosting other’s book ads.

Here’s what I am thinking:

SELLING PRIVATE ADS FROM YOUR WEBSITE

The most important thing to think about is: what kind of content would you feel comfortable with hosting? You wouldn’t want to host anything questionable or illegal for sure! And hosting anything that looks or feels spammy might do your site harm rather than good. So that is something to consider as well. You want to make readers feel like they are at home at your site, and you don’t want them to say ugh, and click off never to return. I am with the making money thing, but not to the exclusion of all my friends.

So, alternatively, you can find some adverts that are helpful, useful, or interesting to your readers, fans, and followers. You want to host stuff that adds value to your content. I think maybe services that are interesting and helpful to readers and writers might do well here. I would likely want to use those products and services first myself to make sure of a good fit.

HOW TO GET THIS GOING

Well, first off, you have to have some stats to show a potential advertiser that you get enough people surfing in to make it worth the money. I mean, anyone can offer to host your ad, but if it isn’t going to net you a sale or two, then why do it? And why PAY for the privilege? So in order to show stats, you gotta have a stat counter of some sort. I use Google Analytics and WordPress Stats. They break it down into lots of interesting tidbits that might help convince an advertiser of who comes to my site and what they are interested in. And most of all, HOW MUCH traffic my site gets.

Finding Victims … er…Advertisers

Hopefully, they will find you, but if not, then by all means get out there and toot your own horn. Stake your offer out in general writing groups, FB groups, and forums. Don’t be a bot, though, nobody likes spam. You can email people that you know, and ask them to tell someone else about your ad space. You can also check out other sites like yours and talk to the site owner and see what they have tried and what worked.

I also recommend posting a widget on your sidebar like the one I have up now. It advertises space for rent! If you click on it, it will take you to a page where you will get info on the space you can buy.

Well, this post turned into a short story. Sorry! I will be back soon with more info on ads and how to use them to create a bit of static salary for you. Don’t forget about the money-saving tips I am bringing you. More on those next time too. And the big sale is this weekend! You know I will have info on that!