What i would today if i had a product or service to advertise on the web
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Why advertise on a blog?
Besides that its the hip “web 2″ thing to do, advertising on a blog has other posssiblities. Bloggers have relationships with their readers that no banner ad will ever manage and the buzz that a well done review will raise is better than all the banner ads in the world. Most bloggers will be gracious enough to get an ad deal that will be more receptive to write a positive review for you.
Will i be penalized by Google for advertising on blogs?
It depends. There was a lot of talk lately about Google penalizing paid link ads. A link for “premium flower arranging services” on a make money blogging site will stand out as a paid link for Google’s crawlers. Make the linking organic, not just a bunch of links on different niche sites on one day. Reviews have practicly zero chance of being penalized.
What to do with $100 USD a month
PR - search positioning: Buy permanent links from decent PR blogs directly from the bloggers themselves. Just look at some of the less prominent bloggers in your niche (not the ones charging thousands of dollars a month for ads), the guys with decent, but not top pagerank and traffic, and contact them directly to buy a text link on their web site. After a couple of months move to ‘review my service’ type of links. For one month, spend 80% of your budget on one, relatively high cost review with keyword links to your site. Since you will not be getting so many links, always watch your keywords for the best combinations.
Traffic: Target the same high rank/less than prominent bloggers again, but this time buy reviews of your product/service. A few months later see who drove the most traffic to your site and buy sidebar/banner ads from him. Devote a month’s budget to a StumbleUpon campaign, but not the first month. Backlinks will benefit you for more than the month they are posted, while SU is a one-off traffic surge with very little backlinking. You’re looking at generating talk about you and your products, not direct traffic.
What to do with $300 USD a month or more
PR - search positioning: Buy more permanent links from similar pages. Spread these links between each month, some from blog main pages, some links from specific posts. Make them look as organic as possible to avoid being penalized by Google. Don’t just buy 10 links on the first day, then sit back and do nothing for the rest of the month. After you have some permanent main page links move to ‘in context’ links with the best possible keywords.
Traffic: Buy more reviews at blogs with higher visibility. Search for sites with high number of comments per post. On the first couple of months, spend $100 or more on a Stumbleupon campaign and focus on keeping that SU traffic as returning visitors.
Pros to advertising your service or product on a blog:
It’s better than banner ads and traditional web advertising
It’s cheaper than web and print ads
It’s more engaging that traditional advertising techniques
Cons to advertising on a blog
It might backfire if your product is bad.
You can’t control the output. If a blogger decides to bash your product, you can’t stop him.
Some final thoughts:
Never stop adjusting.
Like everything else, there’s no golden rule that will always work with everyone. Keep moving ads around and getting reviews from different bloggers.
Contact bloggers directly. Or don’t
People are strange when you’re a stranger. If you have a small business or service you want to promote it might be better to contact bloggers directly to find out what they think about what you’re selling. Big corporations are better off keeping it formal and sticking with TLA and similar services.
Haggle for position
If you’re buying a banner ad, haggle for position of the ad. Just ask the blogger to move the ad on a more prominent place on the page. If buying a review, haggle about how much the review will stay on the main page of the blog.
Focus on people, not sales
When advertising on a blog, keep in mind that it’s the blogger that is pushing your product and his readers that are listening. It’s a world of difference away from a newspaper ad or a banner on a website. You will have very little control on what the blogger says and what is audience will listen. If what you are selling is a bad product, even if the review is positive the readers -will- make sure that it is heard when they did not like it.
Resources for advertisers
ReviewMe.com - Browse a marketplace of bloggers willing to review services and products
Text Links Ads - Buy links on blogs or specific blog posts
SponsoredReviews.com
Text Link Brokers