You’ve asked for it so here it is! I’ve posted a few earning updates lately where a huge portion of the money I’ve earned has come from direct advertising and I know you want to know how these deals happen. The bad news is that people get in touch with me, so I don’t have any super secret tip to reveal. The good news is that I have some ideas and information about the process that I’m going to share in this post.

The People Who Contact Me

I generally get contacted either by individuals like me who run some sites on their own, by the in-house marketing department of larger companies, or by SEO companies that are representing those larger companies.

The person who contacts me and the site they represent is important because I generally treat them in different ways. While I would like to charge top dollar for advertising on my sites, I don’t. If a small-fry like me approaches me then I’m not going to quote my highest price as it will scare them away. I know they’ve probably got a small budget and will try to work within it. Of course if I look at their site and it looks pretty successful, I might push that price higher.

Likewise, if I’m contacted by someone from an SEO company representing a major hotel chain, I know that hotel chain has set aside money not only to employ an SEO company but also to buy enough ads to justify it. I assume they’ve got a big budget and I’m going to quote my highest price and hope for the best.

How They Find Me

I asked one of my recent advertisers who works for an SEO company how he goes about finding links. He told me that one way is for them to decide on topics that are relevant (in my case it would be travel) and then start searching for authoritative sites on the subject and approach them to advertise. From there they can either look for further recommendations from the site’s owner (their online firends, sites they like etc.), or they can just follow the links on their page until they get to more sites of interest, and then contact that site’s owner.

Another way is to do what he calls ‘competitive backlinking’ where they will look at the site’s competition and attempt to get the same links. The idea here is that if one site has the same links as their competitor’s, they have a chance at achieving as high a ranking with Google. So if my site links to their competition’s sites, then they might get in touch with me to get a link as well.

What Advertisers are Looking For

When I’m contacted by potential advertisers they almost never ask about my traffic stats or my PR (a ranking used by Google that is popular for gauging the success of a website… look it up if you want to know more). I assume they figure out my PR before contacting me, but I don’t know this for sure. I think advertisers are looking for quality websites that are an authority in their niche. They don’t need to have a million readers or a high PR but I think they do need to have a strong focus and quality content.

I don’t think companies are interested in advertising on sites that were built to make money with Adsense or affiliate programs. Those kinds of sites do their thing and make money, but I doubt they have much appeal to advertisers. Quality content, a decent PR, and a focused niche, and a position as an authority are things that I think are important.

Of course it helps to be in a niche that has potential advertisers. Travel is a good one and can be broken down into all sorts of niches from specific cities to styles of travel to modes of transport or whatever. If you have a site that has information about obscure widgets that has a very small market, it’s less likely you’ll have advertisers knocking at your door.

Why I Do Well With Advertising

I think that I do well because my sites are of a certain quality: the information is good and well organised, the sites look pretty good, and they’re not spammy. Adsense and affiliate links are incorporated into my sites but they’re not plastered all over the place and it’s clear that the site hasn’t been created just to generate revenue through Adsense or sell a product. They’re there to give people information on a specific topic aimed at a specific niche and that fact that this is clear, I think, makes them appealing.

I’m also able to maximise my revenue through advertising because I have several websites across a small range of topics. I have city-specific websites for London, New York, Sydney and Beijing and these are very appealing to accommodation websites, I’ve got a few more general travel sites that seem appealing to lots of different advertisers and I’ve got a travel insurance site that sells ads because it’s in a competitive niche that people need links for. Plus I have Nerdy Nomad which (my only blog, all the rest of my sites are static) has a good number of readers and lots of links back from other related blogs which means that advertisers can find me easily.

Recommendations

I’ve had a few people recommend my site to advertisers and I’ve done the same when advertisers ask me for recommendations. One person in particular has sent several lucrative deals my way and I’ve tried to do the same. I tend to recommend sites that pop into my head first and these are usually owned by people I’ve dealt with over the years and formed a relationship with. Whether it be exchanging ideas on writing a travel website, advice on how to monetize it, general travel tips, tweeting each other (that sounds kind of dirty) or whatever. If I’m friends online with someone, it’s more likely their websites will be the ones I suggest to a potential advertiser.

This means that building relationships online is very important. I think I’m in a good situation because of the nature of my website. Nerdy Nomad has a combination on travel stuff and making money online stuff and I know that I’ve helped a lot of people over the years… whether it be with tips on travel or on how to build and make money from a website. Being transparent is important to me and I like to think I offer some good advice. Plus, I’ve been told over and over that posting about my monthly earnings is inspiring to people. So when they make it big, there’s a chance that my site will be one of the ones that sticks in their heads when it comes to recommending sites to advertisers.

Searching for Advertising Deals

If you’re not the type to sit around waiting for potential advertisers to find you and want to get more aggressive, there are a few things you can do. I don’t really do them so I can’t tell you how well they work, but here are some ideas.

Looking at advertising deals other sites similar to yours is a good way to find some leads. Head to any popular site in your niche and you’re bound to see advertising in the form of text links or images. They can usually be found in the sidebar and will always link out to another site. Look under headings like ‘recommended sites’, ‘sponsored sites’, ‘friends’ etc. People often put links down in the footer as well. You will often see the same ad deals across many popular websites so if you think your site is up to scratch, you might have luck. The hard part is finding the right person. Often companies use SEO services which means getting in touch with the person who calls the marketing shots will be pretty difficult.

Looking through offline magazines in the same niche might also work for finding potential advertisers. You’ll have to do some cold calling and that’s annoying, but if you can get a few deals out of it then it’ll be worthwhile. As an example, for my moving to London site, I intend on looking for possible advertisers in TNT Magazine which is aimed squarely at the same niche. One of these days I’ll do that.

I’ve been contacted on occasion by people wanting to swap contacts with me. A ‘you give me that contact and I will give you this one’ sort of thing. but it’s not something I really like to do. It makes me feel a bit sleazy and I don’t really like giving my advertiser’s contact details out to people. But just because I don’t like to do it doesn’t mean that others won’t.

Some Final Notes

I think we’re in the early days of the online advertising game. I feel like more and more major companies will see the advantage in advertising on smaller, independent sites who are an authority in their niche, whether that be travel or something else entirely. I also think that, as more and more advertisers jump on board, the price us website owners can charge for our ads will go up and up. Suddenly we won’t be accepting every deal that walks on by, we’ll be a lot more choosy because more companies will be vying for our limited ad space. That’s the dream, at least!

I hope this article has shed some light on how those big advertising deals seem to appear out of nowhere for me just at the right time. They don’t actually come out of nowhere and I think it’s a perfect example of how a lot of work in the past is paying off for me now. I really do feel like this is the tip of the iceberg for the online advertising world and that quality, authoritative, popular websites on any topic will be able to sell advertising well into the future.

I would love to hear comments on this topic. It was fun typing this all up and putting all of my thoughts on the topic down on paper, so to speak. What are your experiences with finding advertisers? Do they find you, or are you more aggressive about making deals? If you have any questions not addressed here, ask away!

(Oh and one more small thing… always check your spam folder. I don’t know how many times I’ve looked in there to find either a new inquiry about advertising or a followup email sealing the deal.)