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Depending on the audience your app attracts, it may make sense to sell advertising. But don’t just slap some AdSense code up on your site and see what happens. Selling advertising effectively — and actually earning money from it — isn’t exactly that simple. Most sites with ads on them may manage to cover their hosting fees in a good month, but they don’t go much further.
You need to understand what advertisers are looking for and how to ensure that you’re an effective option for them. Advertisers need clicks on their ads, along with the resulting sales, in order to be willing to continue paying you money each month.
The Traffic Issue
Because the goals of most advertisers are to get as many eyeballs on their own sites as possible, they’re going to pay higher rates for sites with more traffic. If you don’t have a respectable amount of traffic, it’s going to be harder to sell ad space, let alone at a price to make it worth your while. Before you even consider selling ads on your site, you need to focus on getting more traffic to the site.
Beyond simple numbers, advertisers want to know that you have focused visitors — that they can reach specific demographics by buying space from you. A good analytics package can help you determine some information about your visitors, but if you can dig deeper, you can get a better pay rate. A survey of your visitors can help you determine whether you’re going to be able to even get them to click on ads in the first place.
The Advertising You’re Willing to Accept
Once you’ve got a clear picture of your what you can offer an advertiser (i.e. your audience), it’s time to think about what ads you’re willing to show that audience. The wrong ad can drive users away from an application, making it harder to get future advertisers. Ask yourself these questions:
- How much space are you willing to give up to ads? What sorts of standard ad blocks fit in those spaces?
- How hard is it to change out one ad for another on your site?
- What type of ads will be really relevant to your site? Can you think of complementary applications or services that would really interest your users?
- Are there any competitors of yours that routinely advertise to promote their projects? Can you ensure that their ads won’t show up on your site?
- Are there any taboo or controversial subjects that you don’t want showing up on your site?
- How much work are you willing to do to line up ads for your site? Are there any ad networks that can line up the right type of ads for you?
You need to know exactly what you’re looking for in terms of advertisers before you can go find them. You may need to change your site design, integrate tools for advertisers, and collect data in order to be more attractive to advertisers. It’s better to take care of all of these tasks long before you’re actually trying to land advertisers.
Image by Flickr user tomcensani
