You all have about the expression “ad blindness”, right? It is that phenomenon where people see so much of, that they no longer care or bother clicking on them. This is why many top bloggers will tell you to have your content, as ad free as possible. Content comes first before anything else.
Now, bear with me as I tell you why, at least about an hour or so a week, I dedicate myself Ad Hunting or simply, visiting websites and do nothing but looking at ads and clicking on the most compelling ones. This is one of my ways to find business opportunities.
I consider myself an entrepreneur or at least have that entrepreneurial spirit in me. One of the steps for being a good entrepreneur is to know how to detect business opportunities and use it to your benefit. Re-inventing the wheel is no longer possible, but making different kind of wheels is. Sizes, designs, materials used, colors, etc., are just but a few ways to make a wheel, with a twist. This obviously does not rule out the possibility of a completely new idea and if you have something in mind, by all means, go for it :). That’s how FaceBook and Twitter started.
What is Ad Hunting?
Most advertisers, big or small generally advertise for several motives. Sales, Brand or Product awareness, Traffic, etc. Some are very creative and design their ads in a very compelling form. Some are just down right ugly, no call to action, not compelling enough, and whatever else you want to call it. When I am on my Ad hunting season, I visit my favorite blogs and top marketers sites and pay attention to their virtual real estate spaces. This is where you would normally find banners, links, or any other form of advertising (exclude AdSense – there is a different tactic for that).
On one of these Ad hunting ventures, for example, I found out about GumGum and Pixazza (not aff links), two networks that were totally new to me. You might have heard of them before but I have not, and I discovered that they have an interesting concept for publishers to make additional income, by leveraging on existing or future images that you publish on your website. Think of it as an in-image type of advertising. Really cool, specially for image heavy websites. Currently taking it for a spin.
Another example is looking for those “advertise here” ad slots. Premium advertisers sometimes prefer buying ad spaces via a network such as BuySellAds (BSA). BSA however is not easy to get approved, and searching for alternatives, via search engines, is sometimes just not good enough as you can easily get confused with so many possibilities. Clicking on those “advertise here” anything (include text links), will take you somewhere, and this could be on advertising networks or a specific advertising page by the owner. Using this method allows you to identify similar networks to use whenever appropriate.
In addition to the above, ad hunting is also an excellent form of doing a market research for pricing your own ad spaces. While there are many methods to calculate your prices, getting an average price from your competition is an easy start and from there you can set up yours, with a twist :).
Finding Products or Services
In certain circumstances, I will literally get blocked when trying to search for products on digital marketplaces such as ClickBank, eJunkie, Plimus, etc., to promote. Many of the top bloggers and marketers I normally visit have already their own products and services. Going back to the trust issue, I say it is pretty safe to promote, for example, Kikolani’s Ultimate Blog Post Promotion and Problogger’s First Week Of Blogging guide (aff links). While it is always recommended to have your personal experience about products you wish to promote, this is also a good form of detecting business opportunities.
One final example (I promise). On one of my hunting spree, I landed into Alex Whalley’s website and saw an ad about WPZonBuilder, a powerful WordPress plugin that makes building niche sites to promote Amazon products a breeze. Found out that he had a post about it, so I read the article. Minutes later I purchased the plugin and today, I have already seven niche sites and counting on the roll. If you are interested to know the full story, please read my article about building an Amazon niche site with WPZonbuilder. Does it work? Oh, YES. I built a Kindle niche site last week an saw that already I have three confirmed orders, a Kindle DX, a leather case and an eBook. Every bit counts :).
As you can see, there are opportunities out there. You just have to take the time to find them and implement accordingly. This will not work on its own and action is required. If you find this idea interesting, go ahead and try it and let me know how it goes for you.
That’s it! Hopefully you now know the reasons why I spend some time ad hunting. One of the best steps one can take towards achieving success, is to learn from experienced people who are already there. And that is what I do when I hunt for business opportunities, learn from top bloggers and marketers, that made and still making it happen. To your success!
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Kristi Hines
I’ve had a lot of good luck so far in having advertisers come to me, but I’m sure my advertising income would be far better if I started seeking out advertisers. Great tips on how to get started!
Hi Kristi. In the beginning it is sometimes necessary to “hunt” for advertisers until they get to know you. I guess in a way, once you establish a certain level of popularity, they do come on their own and it is obviously much better this way 🙂 Thanks for stopping by.
Jane | Find All Answers
Building niche websites is not really my thing, although I am curious since I am listening to a lot about it these days (a good portion from Alex Whalley). Well, if there is money in it, why not give it a try.
Getting approved by BSA is a challenge, but if approved it really works out well.
Jane.
Hi Jane. Oh yeah! There is money to be made on niche sites, you jsut have to find the right niche and work on it. Just for you to have an idea, as far as affiliate marketing is concern, iblogzone is no where close to my Amazon powered sites. Alex has a “nose” for niche sites and he does manage them well. He’s got great tips o his blog and it is just a matter of putting it in practice.
I agree with you on BSA, it really works well, once you get approved. All the best
You could also register in ad meta search engines where you can search and browse for relevant sites and pages that offer different ad types and formats.
Hi Andreas. That’s seems to be an interesting idea, although I have to admit that I am not familiar with “ad meta search engines”. What are they and is there a specific good one that you can suggest?
bbrian017
I’ve failed over and over trying to market the right products to my audience and eventually gave up! I removed all the ads from my website and started my own RSS Service!
I’ve worked with many affiliates without luck. However with that said it’s been almost a year since I’ve tried any new ones. I might have a look around soon and see what I can come up with.
Hi Brian. In your case, perhaps you have made the right move by choosing a different business model. Problem with certain products is that they are niche specific and do not blend well on “social sites” like BlogEngage. However, on your blog or any future website you decide to build, then things can change 🙂
BTW, did you try selling ad spaces? BE should be a good candidate for that.
Hi DiTesco, I’ve used buysellads in the past but I’ll be the first to admit they are far too expansive for the service being offered 25% is a huge cute when your selling ad spots for 100 – 200 USD!
Right now I’m done with ads on blog engage. The one I have left is in the sidebar and it’s the last one. Once that contract is up I’m not doing ads anymore! Right now my goal is to remove all ads from the blog engage website! The only ad I’m going to keep is the Google ad on the story page for our members Adsense Sharing.
It’s obvious now with the rss service i need to make a more enjoying environment for my visitors so they stay longer and visit my customer’s website! That is my priority during the next few months!
I hear you Brian, BSA just like other networks do get a pretty huge cut on your earnings. Then again, it would probably be more difficult to find advertisers directly, at least in the beginning 🙂
As for having your site ad free, that is an awesome goal. I am sure that if you keep up with you are doing, you will reach that objective in no time. Your RSS service is great as most of your “customers” want to leverage on your massive community to attract, why not, some added traffic 😉
Melanie
Hey Ditesco, I like your post. It has great information. I like the idea to build niche sites with WPZonBuilder because you can cover lots of products easily. Thanks for sharing this info 🙂
Thanks Melanie. ZonBuilder is great and does its job extremely well. It is probably the best I have used so far. Unfortunately it ain’t free, but given time and applied tactics, it should not take too much time to recover your investment. Let me know how it goes for you in case you decide to use the plugin. Thanks for stopping by.
steve micheals
I really do not know much about ads and advertising. This article is an eye opener for me.
Thank you for writing such an informative article.
You are welcome Steve. Hope to see more from you here. Best
Dennis Edell@ Direct Sales Marketing
Very cool, I’ll be an ad hunter! I’m off to draft up my post. 😉
Looking forward to reading that post 😉
Dennis Edell@ Direct Sales Marketing
It’s partially drafted (forgive the title), look for the trackback soon. 😉
Will do Sir 🙂 Be keeping an eye for it…
Tammi Kibler | Buy Quinoa
These are great tips I will use to expand my search for advertisers.
Another suggestion: when you do your keyword research, watch who is advertising on the search engines for your keywords. Do any of them look like a good match for your website? Sometimes you are competing for the same keywords with someone in a complementary businesses. You may be able to strike a deal to sell them advertising space on your website.
Hi Tammi. Your suggestion is definitely a good one and I have tried doing this some time ago with very little luck. I would look at the advertisers “URL”, head over there, find their contact forms, present them with all the arguments in the world as to why advertising on my site can provide them with more exposure, better ROI, conversion and the whole hulabaloo 🙂 I have abandoned that method at that time, due to poor results, but come to think of it, I believe that I am in a better position today than when I conducted this campaign. My “stats” are way better now and might be more compelling for them 😉 Thanks for reminding me. I have just noted that down on my never ending to do list, but under the priority section of it 🙂 Thanks for stopping by.
Now there’s a new and novel approach.
Thanks for sharing Francisco.
ANd thanks for the mention and link love too, appreciate it mate.
Nice to see you getting such positive results so early.
Any particular link building method you used inthis case, or some old same old?