I'm not an expert at online advertising, though I do play one on my blog.
We've already touched on Google Adsense, Adbrite, Feedburner, and BlogHerAds -- they're the big companies who take care of all the legwork for you. But sometimes, an individual or smaller company may contact you directly and ask if they can pay you to put ads on your website. And at first you think, "Heck yeah!" because, hello, free money! But let's examine this, OK?
A year or two ago, I was approached by a guy who wanted to pay me to put a handful of advertisements on my sidebar. I quoted him my own ad rates, a little confused that he wouldn't just go through Adbrite, and I gave him a rate that was on the high side, since I would have to hand-code the links in, and then mark my calendar and try not to forget to delete the ads when they expired. He took my offer, and I placed his ads.
It was sort of weird how he wanted them set up: He wanted the links to go to a subdomain on my domain (like this: his-ad-name.my-blog.com). His sites were sort of link-farmish -- lots of keyword phrases and keyword text on plain sites absolutely covered with Google Adsense for Content ads.
All was well and good for a few weeks. And then I got one of those screaming letters from Google, telling me to remove the ads or I'd be kicked out of the Google search engine. They were trying to weed out those sites with dummy text that you sometimes land on while searching for bacon flavored potato chips. Nice. I got punished, but my advertiser did not -- because he used my domain name.
I kicked his ads off, told him what had happened, and he said something to the effect of, "Oh, we don't care about Google, we're running tests for MSN." I responded with something like, "That's great for you, Buster, but I'm going to lose ad revenue now because my site has been punished." He didn't care, he knew this would happen.
In my last article, I warned you to beware the ads that pay very little. Here's why...
I received this letter recently:
Hello webmaster,
Our advertisers are interested in sponsoring your blog kerflop.com. We are offering you $5.00 for each posted links on your site. You will be paid 15.00 for these 3 links. Your due date will be a 3 days after the links will be given to you.
Simply mentioned the keywords anywhere within the body of each post and write one post in every keyword. It should be not less than 100 words and must be a unique content. You can write it on your own journalistic style but don't give negative comments about the keywords given to you. Hateful or rude review will be declined and please don't mention that the post is a sponsored one or placed it in any category that is called sponsored paid. The anchor text or keyword, where you are to direct the link through should be used in its exact given form.
About the Author:
Jessica is an entrepreneur raising three noisy children in the middle of potato country. A self-taught freelancing web designer, Jessica also owns and runs a business with her husband, Very Baby.
She likes dark chocolate, dislikes most forms of housework, and writes about her daily life at Kerflop.com.
Dana - eek! Yes, steer clear!