How Much Would It Cost You to Advertise on Blogs?

Advertising costs money, even online where the cost of
promoting a brand can set you back by a few hundred
dollars to a few thousand. John Chow’s blog, for
example, one of the most popular blogs currently
active, sells 125 x 125 sidebar ad spots at $500 a
month. The same ad placement will cost around $1,500
with Copyblogger. If you’re wondering how much it
would cost you to advertise on blogs, consider the
following:

Traffic and popularity Blogs thrive on the number of
traffic that visits their sites and on the subsequent
popularity this generates. This is also a major
consideration for advertisers. More traffic simply
means better exposure. Targeted traffic means you’ll
be selling to more people who are likely to buy.

Between a blog that has only 50,000 page views and
another that has 100,000, who would you choose? The
latter obviously offers a wider market and more
potential buyers.

The mille matters. Traffic or the number of page views
a blog page receives also determines the cost of
advertising on a particular blog. If a blog generates
about 100,000 page views monthly, for example and it’s
fairly new, you might have to pay as little as $50 a
month for a 125 x 125 sidebar ad.

To understand how the price of ad spots is computed,
consider the mille. Bloggers will generally use the
unit cost-per-mille or CPM. One mille is equivalent to
1,000, a unit you will be able to use later to compute
for the cost of placing an ad based on the number of
page views it generates.

Bloggers will consider the number of page views their
blogs receive and use that as a basis for coming up
with the cost of advertising. As a result, a blog with
a higher amount of traffic will charge you a higher
price than a blog with a lower number. That means
placing your ad on blogs with sufficient traffic can
range in cost from about $50 to a whopping $10,000 a
month. The bigger number, of course, means your ad
will receive millions of page views.

In conclusion, remember that to determine whether a
particular ad space is worth paying for, consider the
cost of the space versus the traffic it will receive.

Size of the ad The bigger the ad spot you require, the
higher the cost of advertising on a blog. A 125 x 125
ad spot, for example, will be cheaper than a larger
300 x 250 ad. Placement will also affect the ad price.
Header ads, for example, will cost more than sidebar
ads or footer ads. Below the fold ads will cost
considerably less than those that will appear above
the fold or integrated with the blog’s content.

Test periods You might want to consider saving a few
bucks by asking the blog owner if he/she is offering a
test period of ad runs. If your ad will be placed on
test period, that means the blog will display it for a
limited time but won’t charge you for it.

After a specific period, you can then decide whether
to continue with the placement (at which point you’ll
have to start paying) or to pull your ad, depending on
how well it performed in the blog. This usually works
on blogs that are relatively new and are still
building momentum.

Look for blogs that offer renewable ad placements you
can pay for on a month-to-month basis. This will help
you manage the cost of advertising on blogs and help
your bottomline in the process.