Blog Advertising – Understand Your Blog’s Real Estate

Blog Advertising – Understand Your Blog’s Real Estate
by GOBALA KRISHNAN on DECEMBER 14, 2009
in BLOGGING TIPS


Not all space on your blog is created equal. How much you understand about your blog’s real estate will ultimately influence the results you get.

That being said, which parts of your blog are more valuable? Where should you put your main money-making ad, link or Aweber optin form?

I’ve broken down a typical 3-column blog layout (like the one we use here) into a few profitable areas:

Content Area – No matter which type of layout you use, the content area is by far the more valuable spot. People visit your blog to read content, not to look at your ads or design. Sure, a jaw-dropping design is cool the first time, but it will not get people to stick. Ads, links and optin forms within your content is the most valuable, as it is guaranteed to reach the eyeball of your visitor. It’s even more effective if your ads are tightly related to the content itself.
Left Navigation – If your blog has a left-column navigation (like ours), then this is the second most valuable spot. People in most countries read from left to right, and on the way to your content their eyeballs have to pay at least some attention to the navigation area.
Right Navigation – Unlike the left navigation, your visitors don’t have to pay attention to the anything after the actual content area. Since they don’t have to, they rarely will. People are quite accustomed to grid-based website layouts and they know (almost instinctively) where to look for content, and what to ignore.
Header Area – Although the header area comes before everything else, it’s too detached from the actual content, which makes it the second least valuable spot on your blog. I will almost never pay an advertiser for placing banner ads in the header area. The more frequent someone visits your blog, the most invisible the header area gets.
Footer Area – It’s almost worthless to even consider the footer area as a possible most maker. Detached from content and navigation, and too far from eyeballs, the footer is best left for things than don’t really require attention.
Yeah i know; your results may be different. However, in most cases this simple grid-based logic works well. The real question though, is what should you do with this information?

If you want to squeeze more money from your blog, you need to reorganize certain elements to work for you, instead of against you. Here are a few ideas:

In-Content Ads – If you’re selling banner ads on your blog, create a spot in the content area itself. Savvy advertisers are willing to pay much more for an in-content ad, and you can easily increase your advertising dollars overnight.
Affiliate Links vs Affiliate Banners – If you’re promoting an affiliate product, forget banner ads. It’s much better to use affiliate links weaved into the content. Plus, having less ads frees up important real estate for other purposes.
Reorganize Your Navigation – Are your navigation links eating up valuable advertising space? Move them away to non-profitable areas like the right sidebar, header of footer so you can make more money from the profitable ones.
Footer Dump – Anything else that your readers don’t really need, but which is essential for your blog (privacy policy, disclaimers etc), has to be moved to the footer. The footer area is the universal dumping ground for all non-profitable stuff.
The next time you decided to get a new theme for your blog, ask yourself an important question- “What do I want to achieve with my blog?”

Always put function above form. Understand the main objective of your blog.

Is it to communicate your ideas? Then move your content to the left, followed by navigation, and use minimal ads. Is your objective to build a mailing list or get more subscribers? Then put your optin form in the profitable areas instead of hiding it beneath meaningless ad