How I Do Blog Ads

Yesterday, Karen asked me to tell how I do blog ads. So I figured I'd do a post on it.

First of all, the way I find blogs is probably not the way it should be done, but I'm a very, very poor woman, so I can only do free stuff, which generally isn't quite as effective as a well placed paid ad.

If you can do picture ads, do them! the best text ad will never be as good as a bad picture ad, in my opinion-I know I don't notice them!

Step 1: know the size of your ad. I use Project Wonderful for all of my blog ads. They have a few preset sizes, so this makes it a lot easier to design ads. You will need a good photo editing software for this (I use GIMP, which is, yep, you guessed it, free!)

Step 2: have a nice bright picture that showcases what you make. crop said picture to size (in Project Wonderful, if I'm off a little bit, it'll re-size it for me), then add text

You want your text to be large enough to see, covering a little part of the object you have photographed if you have to. Text should be a color that doesn't clash too much with the rest of the photo, but still stands out. You are also going for branding here.

Have an action word, like click, or buy now. This part's all about psychology.

On Project Wonderful, there is also hover text, text that pops up when you hover over the ad. This is also important. Even though the text itself is nothing special, the wording can make a difference.

Step 3: Choosing your blog. If your going through the blog itself, then you've already done this, but if your going through PW or something similar, you will need to choose which blog(s) you want your ad to run on. This depends on many factors, budget, size of the ad, and most importantly, your target market.

When I advertise my goth stuff, I advertise on blogs targeted to goths, when I advertise my soap savers, I pick a soap maker's blog.

Only doing the free ads, I can't afford to be picky, I do them all.

Step 4:  how long you want to run your ad-depends on your budget really. doing the free ads, I'm only allowed 2 days at a time, so have to constantly re-do ads. Generally, a person needs to see an ad several times before it clicks for them.

Here's the picture from one of my ads. I'm thinking about changing the font to something more frilly

Finding advertising that works....

While Karen's been looking into SEO, I've been on my continuous hunt for advertising.

I'm keeping them for now, but the usual route of advertising for a small business (and even for a lot of larger businesses), Twitter and Facebook, are not working for me. But I think it's partially because I do not go around following everybody and anybody, which I refuse to do.

So I've been doing small, inexpensive targeted ads. Things like advertising goth stuff on goth sites, soap savers on soap makers blogs, etc. So far, I'm not even getting many clicks.

I'm thinking maybe the targeted advertising isn't working because my ads are not so good. A high possibility, as I'm not a marketer by any means.

Experiment #1: Make new, brighter ads with words on them instead of just words that pop up when you run your mouse across them. Run on the same blogs as before to gauge the effectiveness of new, brighter ads.

Wish me luck!
Stephanie