The advertisement page on your blog should serve two purposes: it should attract any potential advertiser with relevant information like site statistics, and it should provide contact information, prices, and other related information.  For those of you with the do-it-yourself mentality, this guide will be right up your alley.

Attracting Advertisers

The first thing that you should consider doing is writing a summary of your site's functions for the first introductory paragraph.  If your site offers additional services -- more than what what would be obvious -- than this is a great opportunity to inform advertisers of them.  This is also great for quickly informing advertisers that are scouring the web for opportunities and do not feel like investigating deep into your entire site.  In the end, it is a way to give your site a professional review.

While constructing your advertising page, your goal should be to highlight everything that is great about your blog.  This means using statistics to your advantage.  Impressive daily, weekly, or monthly visitor statistics are always something to highlight.  However, never mention statistics or information that would make your blog appear less worthy to an advertiser.

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Many of you probably know about WidgetBucks - the new ad-engine on the scene. I installed WidgetBucks on my blog about 1 month ago and now I am in a position to comment on it. A lot of people have claimed eCPM of $3-$6. Well, that's not true in my case at least, however, having said that, I still very strongly recommend WidgetBucks to anyone who can fit it in their blog. Reasons:

1. My earnings from WB during one month are more than my earnings from AdSense throughout the year (I have a low traffic blog).
2. Minimum I have got from a WidgetBucks clickthrough is $0.28 cents per click, while minimum on AdSense is $0.01.
3. There is a referral program. I am yet to see the results for this, but I do have some referrals, and so I should see some earnings soon. (in case you are interested in signing up, you might consider using the following Url (it gives me referral points): http://www.widgetbucks.com/home.page?referrer=476001
4. I can withdraw my earnings to PayPal, and the minimum I need to reach before I can withdraw is $50 (as compared to $100 for PayPal).
5. There is $25.00 signup Bonus.

All these reasons combine make it a very strong case for trying out WidgetBucks. Once again, I am making more in one month from WidgetBucks than I make in a year with Google AdSense.

If anyone has any questions, comment on this post, or mail me and I will answer them.

Advertisements are a vital (and often the most vital) part of a problogger’s monetization strategies. Thus, the choice of which type of ads to serve on one’s blogs is always an important question. You might be interested in the results of a study conducted by McCoy, Everard, Polak, and Galletta that appeared in the article The Effects of Online Advertising (Communications of the ACM March 2007). Yeah I know, it’s May already – the copy arrived a month late ;-)

The paper presents nothing new or radical; rather, it somewhat ‘formalizes’ what many web surfers have known/felt for long:

• Intrusiveness: Pop-under ads are the most intrusive type of ads, closely followed by pop-ups; inline (often banner) ads are considerably less intrusive than the two
• Return visits: More site visitors intend to revisit sites with inline ads than those with pop-unders and pop-ups (which are slightly worse than the pop-unders)
• Content retention: Visitors exposed to inline ads remember more of the site’s content rather than those exposed to pop-ups and pop-unders.

Unfortunately, I can’t quote exact figures or an excerpt, as to republish part of the work requires prior permission and/or a fee. Suffice it to say, the figures for pop-up and pop-under ads are neck to neck; the article seems to suggest inline (e.g. banner) ads are the most user-friendly among the three.

(For those interested in dissecting the paper more, access to the magazine’s online version requires ACM membership.)