Call it the Text Ads dream!

May 4th, 2007

I woke up to a pleasant surprise this morning, I guess I must be doing something right. I never had this much ads to approve before, not until I made some changes to my blog design, structure, codes, etc.

More specifically these ads are from my Affordable Website Review blog. Briefly, here’s some of the changes I made.

Change the blog layout to a 2 columns structure. If I use a one column layout, I will be restricting the information that can be placed in the blog too much. But if I used a three columns blog layouts then there will be too much noise in the blog. So two columns is a good mix, plus if I keep it center aligned, things look more web 2.o
Organize your information. Your ultimate goal is to have an unique slot where you can sell text ads, before that could happen, you need to organize your information. Rss feed subscribe buttons are a must and should high up in your blog. Tell something about yourself or your blog to your readers, so a bio is necessary too. Recent posts and archives links will help readers glued to your blog, include those too. All others items are optional, it really depends on the focus of your blog, take mine for example, I will be accepting payment for my review via Paypal so it helps to include a Paypal verified logo in my blog. (it’s true of course!) And I also like my readers to view my website statistics so I included that too.
Limit your advertising options. There’s quite a number of advertising channels available out on the internet, but you really can’t put it all in. Readers are interested in the content, and the ads should complement those contents. Google Adsense are good, I use them too, but just in single page so that the ads are more targeted and focused for my readers. Adbrite is my main advertising channel on the front page, it help me manage and run my ads slots, and by limiting it to just one channel on the main page, it provide a certain element of exclusivity to it.
Tag it and make it SEO friendly. Unless you know a specific url, chances are you are going to search for a few keywords on Google and hope to find something useful. That’s a fact so it pay to tag your blog; in your meta tags, in your ads description; in Technorati, etc. Be sure to tag your blog so that we can find you, if we can’t find you, we can’t buy your ads.

If you follow these few pointers I’m sure you will be able to get at least 50 ads that needs to be reviewed.

Added on 13 May 07: I repeat these pointers in a 10 Questions Interview blog, and the result. (see below) I guess it works for any kind of theme blog! Give it a shot, if I can do it you can too.