Selling advertising space?

Question

I am hoping that someone is going to be able to help me!

I run a website that provides revision notes and exam help to students. Currently there are 200,000 subscribers, who get emailed daily. My website gets very few hits as I have emailed schools who have very kindly promoted my service as this is where I have got my subscribers from.

This service is free and popular so I now would like to sell some advertising space so I can make some money, expand and make it my full time job.

I have tried email blasts and similar things but to no avail. I have tried emailing companies individually but have had very little response. As the service is free I have very little funds to play with so telecom companies are out of the question. If anyone knows of a company that takes a payment after advertising space has been sold or something similar I would be very interested to know their contact details.

Can anyone suggest anything or help out? If so I would really like to hear from you!

Answer 1

200,000 subscribers is a lot, but emailed daily? I'm just curious as to why you get "very few hits" when you send them emails daily. Have you checked:

- What is your email open rates? Given the frequency, you'd be lucky if you get 10% open rates. Do you think you may be emailing them too much?

- What is your click through rates from your email? When you send them these emails, are you sending them back to your website (e.g. showing in the email the 1st paragraph of the article and they have to click on the link to your website to read the complete article)

- Are these really opt in (better yet double opt in)?

- How many of your emails are actually landing in your subscribers inbox? Are you being blocked by ISPs? Are your subscribers reporting you as spam?

If you want to earn advertising from your website, there are several ways:

1. Join an advertising network. Advertising networks are organizations that aggregate Web sites that offer advertising space, and sell banner ads (and other advertising options) across them. Traffic requirement is often a minimum of 5,000 monthly impressions, although many do not accept sites hosted by free page services.

Burst Media http://www.burstmedia.com

Fastclick (ValueClick). http://www.fastclick.com

Advertising.com. http://www.advertising.com

Tribal Fusion http://www.tribalfusion.com

2. Participate in contextual advertising networks. Contextual advertising are text ads delivered based on the content of the web page using an automated system.

Google Adsense https://www.google.com/adsense/

Yahoo! Publishing Network (currently in beta and available to US publishers only) http://publisher.yahoo.com/

Intellixt http://vibrantmedia.com/site/web_01a5.ht...

Quigo Adsonar http://www.quigo.com/adsonarexchange.htm

IndustryBrains http://www.industrybrains.com

Commission Junction Evolution http://www.cj.com

Kanoodle Brightads http://www.kanoodle.com/about/brightads....

Clicksor http://www.clicksor.com/affiliate_progra...

Contextweb http://www.contextweb.com/

Bidclix http://www.bidclix.com/  

Bidvertiser http://www.bidvertiser.com/  

3. Sell advertising for your site directly. This is admittedly a more difficult route for a small business site wanting to earn advertising revenues. But hey, as they say: "no pain, no gain!"

4. Affiliate Programs - you sell other people's products that your audience may be interested in; and you get a certain commission after the desired action was done (whether a sale, a lead, subscription to email newsletter, or however this is defined)

Commission Junction http://www.cj.com

Linkshare http://www.linkshare.com

Some of the above have advertising programs for email campaigns. Check them out so you can place ads in your email. But if you have 200,000 subscribers, make sure you have a section in your website where you sell the ads for your email yourself.