Are you wondering how to sell ads on your website? It is one of the best monetization strategies because it requires absolutely no effort on your part. Imagine receiving thousands of dollars just by dedicating a small space on your page to advertisements. It is an exciting proposition that’s worth exploring! If you want to learn how to sell ads and create a sustainable passive income from them, keep reading. We’ll cover everything you need to know about selling ads to help you get started.

Before Exploring How to Sell Ads, What is Ad Space?

Ad space refers to the potential placement of advertisements on your website. Quite literally, if it is a dedicated space made to accommodate an ad, it’s considered (yes, you called it!) an ad space. Identifying what you want to use for this purpose is important when considering how to sell ads. It can dictate the revenue potential of your website as well as the ad formats you can support. So, in the following subsections, we’ll share insights and information that will ultimately help you learn how to sell ads.

Best Practices for Positioning Ads on Your Site to Maximize Visibility and Clicks

Strategic ad placement refers to the deliberate decisions you make in determining where to place ads on your site. If you want to maximize the placed ad’s visibility and clicks, you should offer banner ads at the top of the site. But knowing how to sell ads isn’t just about determining which will generate the most income. You should also:

  • Think about how it will impact how the site looks as a whole;
  • Find the goldilocks of ad size — not too big, not too small;
  • Decide how to sell ads, bearing in mind that it will impact how people perceive your platform.

Think of it this way: if you focus purely on visibility, users may be turned off by the ads plastered over the page and leave the site ASAP.

What Types of Ad Formats Perform Best in Different Placements?

Knowing how to sell ads involves determining what will yield the best results for your partners. So, here’s a quick run-through of the optimal formats based on placement.

  • Above-the-fold: Huge banners or short video ads maximize the benefit of high visibility.
  • Header and sidebar: Smaller display ads work here because they can still get noticed without covering the content.
  • In-content ads: Want to learn how to sell ads that don’t distract from the user’s browsing experience? Your best bet here is native ads!

These are just recommendations, and it’s important to look at your build and make inferences from your own data. This way, you can make decisions that completely apply to your site.

Selling Ad Space: How Does It Work?

Regardless of which path you want to take in selling advertisements, the process is very straightforward. Here’s a quick look at how to sell ads.

  1. Decide which ad placements you want to support.
  2. Gather interest from advertisers.
  3. Place an ad from one of the advertisers.
  4. Get paid based on the pricing model used.

However, there will be some differences based on your decision on how to sell ads. Basically, you have two options: direct ad sales or ad networks. Learn more about them below to see which is the better fit for you.

Direct Ad Sales

From the term itself, direct ad sales refer to a selling model where there’s no intermediary between you and the advertiser. Some publishers prefer this method due to the following benefits:

  • Have full control over ad placements;
  • Build relationships with advertisers that can be a reliable source of income;
  • Get paid more because you can negotiate rates with advertisers;
  • Run custom campaigns that you can charge more for.

If your website has a lot of traffic, direct ad sales can be a great option, especially if you prefer to manage things on your own. You’ll be completely in charge of finding advertisers, so get ready to sharpen your sales and negotiation skills!

How to Approach Advertisers

Looking to learn how to sell ads this way? The process we outlined above is more or less the same. But now, you’ll have to approach advertisers instead of them coming to you. To make a compelling argument for buying ad placements on your site, you’ll have to:

  • Focus on how to sell ads to advertisers with the same target market;
  • Craft a pitch that showcases the benefits of ad space on your website;
  • Be responsive to show advertisers what they can expect from you;
  • Be open to creating custom packages even if they are not what you had in mind when considering how to sell ads;
  • Highlight success stories and explain how advertisers can get the same results.

When learning how to sell ads, it’s important to remember that there’s no “one size fits all” solution. Personalize each pitch to better resonate with the receiver.

Using Ad Networks

Direct ad sales will take a lot of work. You’re in charge of everything, from finding advertisers to closing the deal. If you don’t want to do all that work, ad networks like Google AdSense and MGID can help facilitate how to sell ads. By using MGID as your ad network, you’ll be able to enjoy these benefits:

  • Access to thousands of advertisers;
  • 100% fill rate for various ad types;
  • Lots of saved time because there’s no need to learn how to sell ads;
  • Analytics and optimization tools to help maximize your income.

We have also designed our platform to eliminate the commonly associated disadvantages of using an ad network. By choosing MGID, you maintain full control over placement and content. We also ensure that advertisements placed on your site are always high quality and relevant.

Steps to Getting Started with an Ad Network

Want to ditch learning how to sell ads and focus on collecting revenue? Here’s how to do it with MGID.

  1. Make sure your website meets all the prerequisites detailed here.
  2. Create an account with MGID.
  3. Set up your profile.
  4. Add a website and wait for MGID’s approval.
  5. Start getting paid through the ads placed on your site.

Instead of getting deep into how to sell ads, you can focus on creating valuable content to increase your traffic and profitability. You can also set up automatic payments, so your earnings will be transferred to your preferred method once you meet a certain threshold.

Basic Requirements for How to Sell Ads

We know that a lot of website owners launched their sites because of the potential for monetization. But as excited as you probably are about learning how to sell ads, you need to meet certain requirements before you are allowed to profit by renting ad space on your website. There will be time to explore how to sell ads later on. But for now, let’s focus on making your website a polished product that many advertisers will bid on and fight over.

Sufficient Traffic Levels

Trying to find out how to sell ads? When you think about it, it’s not just the ad space that you’re selling. You’re also renting out access to the users whose trust you’ve worked hard to gain. That’s why part of knowing how to sell ads is ensuring that your website is generating enough traffic. For Google Ads, there’s no minimum traffic requirement. However, because there’s a minimum payout amount, it can take a long time before you see the fruits of your labor. At MGID, we require at least 3,000 unique daily visitors to ensure a satisfactory advertising experience for both our publishers and advertisers.

Engaged Audience

However, having a large number of visitors doesn’t mean much if they’re essentially just passing by. Anyone who truly knows how to sell ads will also focus on keeping visitors engaged. If you’re interested in learning how to sell ads for a high price, engaged visitors can be your ticket. Even with smaller audiences, advertisers may be willing to pay more because an engaged audience is more likely to take action. Check other interactive signals like email open or response rates. These indicators will only further elevate the value of your website to advertisers.

User-Friendly Website

Part of getting into how to sell ads is ensuring a user-friendly interface. This ensures that visitors to the site can easily consume the content presented on the pages. However, in the context of websites, being user-friendly is not just about web design. So, if you want to be successful with how to sell online ads, consider this your mini checklist for creating a user-centric experience:

  • Quick loading speed;
  • Optimized for mobile use;
  • Consistent page style;
  • Functional links;
  • Easy navigation.

Your website will be reviewed before you are accepted into an advertising platform. So, consider everything you’ve learned about how to sell ads and what you can do to make your website easy to navigate and user-friendly.

Quality Content

Part of knowing how to sell ads is understanding what it takes to produce high-quality content that your target market will be interested in. At the very least, it must also be original and relevant, providing value to the reader in some way. So, what does quality content look like? It should:

  • Pique the interest of the audience;
  • Provide authentic insights or opinions;
  • Be structured for easy reading;
  • Provide videos, images or other relevant media to illustrate your point;
  • Convey your point clearly.

Your content is what’s driving visitors. When learning how to sell ads, guarantee to the advertisers that viewers will keep coming by maintaining a certain level of quality for your content.

Transparency

Learning how to sell ads is partly about thinking through the ways that you can promote transparency. This can include two things:

  • Creating a media kit: Since advertisers are going to be investing in your site through ad placements, they’re going to have a lot of questions. For this, you can develop a media kit that gives the gist of everything that you have achieved on your website.
  • Publishing your security measures: If a company places an ad on your site, it becomes associated with you. That’s why learning how to sell ads also involves making the security measures you take known so you can avoid anything that might damage the advertiser’s reputation.

Through transparency, you’re building a relationship with advertisers. This is an important part of how to sell ads because good relationships with clients can mean long-term profitability.

Your First Move on How to Sell Ads: Setting Up Your Website for Ad Sales

If you want to make money through ads, you must first make your site attractive to potential advertisers. Before going deeper into how to sell ads, you need to meet certain requirements. We’ve discussed these in detail in the previous section. But for a quick recap, here’s what you’ll need to move forward with how to sell ads:

  • Traffic levels;
  • User-friendly site design;
  • Quality content;
  • Engaged audience;
  • Transparency measures;
  • Ad servers.

Identify the areas you still need to work on. The most important aspect to selling ad space is coming up with an attractive offer. So, even if you’ve met the minimum requirements, why not push the envelope and go further?

How to Sell Ads and Maximize Your Income: Pricing Strategies for Ad Space

When selling website ads — or anything, really — it can be hard to find the balance between profitability and competitive pricing. But if selling ads online is something that you want to make money from, you’ll need to come up with a good pricing strategy. How much should you charge for a company or advertiser to place an ad on your site? It depends on many factors. If you want a better sense of how to sell ads profitably, basic economics says that it’s where supply and demand meet. But what does this mean? Below, we will discuss some major considerations to help you yield the most financial value out of your website.

What Should You Consider in Setting Rates?

Want to find out how to sell ads at competitive rates? You first need to ensure your website meets those advertising prerequisites: no site owner can do without ad servers and transparency. However, there can be differences in how to sell ads based on the following criteria.

  • Traffic: It’s not just about the number of site visitors. The quality of traffic is considered as well.
  • Audience engagement: A highly engaged audience can make up for lower traffic and then some. This will mean you’ll be able to charge more.
  • Ad placement: It’s not hard to sell ads above the fold because these positions are in great demand.

For reference for how to sell ads, try to find competition in your niche with similar traffic and engagement levels to keep your offer competitive.

How to Sell Ads on Your Website for Maximum Returns: Setting Competitive Pricing for Ad Placement

Setting marketable pricing based on ad placements is easy! You just need to determine the relevance and demand. So, as part of learning how to sell ads, refer to the information below.

  • Above-the-fold: Above-the-fold refers to any ad that you can see without scrolling down.
  • Below-the-fold: This refers to all ads that you need to scroll down to see. Working out how to sell ads may be more challenging here because the demand isn’t as great as it is for the first type.
  • Special placements: Pop-ups and video ads don’t fit into the first two categories.

As well as looking at the competition to determine how to sell ads with different placements, check out major platforms to see what they offer. Check the pricing models used, too.

Leveraging Technology for Selling Advertising Space

Ad servers are necessary for facilitating online advertising. However, you can begin to learn how to sell ads without one. Your server is where the advertiser will:

  • Store all the data on your ad campaigns, such as impressions and clicks;
  • Manage creative media used for the advertisements;
  • Make decisions about how to further optimize the campaign.

This isn’t just necessary when learning how to sell ads. Through SSPs (Supply-Side Platforms), you can automate the selling of ad placements. This allows you to connect with broader programmatic advertising markets so that your platform can be paired with the most suited content. For you, this means a bigger payout!

Case Studies and Success Stories on Selling Ads

There’s no shortage of successful websites and publishing platforms. Our favorite examples know how to sell ads online and profit from it sustainably.

  • The New York Times: The New York Times used their in-house brand studio to create sponsored content. Through programmatic advertising tech, they show you how to sell banner ads on your website while maintaining stature as an authority in the publishing space.
  • Kiplinger: Kiplinger uses large banner ads at the top and side of the page. This way, they still get a healthy revenue while not breaking up the main content with ads.
  • Buzzfeed: Wondering how to sell ads and maintain high engagement rates? Buzzfeed uses native advertising to ensure that the promotions match what’s already on the page.

What We Learn from Top Publishers

Have you noticed what these top publishers all have in common in terms of their strategy for how to sell ads? The user browsing experience is still the top priority. They were able to preserve their credibility by not going over the top with the ads. It is a fine balance between wanting to maximize profits and keeping a reputation intact. In deciding how to sell ads, it also appears that they have considered how to make content fit their platforms naturally. Going back to The New York Times, you’ll see that they didn’t use header ad placement even though it’s one of the most profitable options out there. All of them consider the long-term implications of their ad-selling decisions.

Want to Know How to Sell Ads Online and Get Paid Well? Develop Your Website!

Traffic, engagement and user-friendliness are all ingredients that make your website attractive. After that, you can move forward with working out how to sell ads. Your goal is to maximize your income while still ensuring that your pricing is competitive with the market.

However, what if you don’t want to create intrusions on your users’ browsing experience? Native advertising allows seamless integration with your content to retain browsing quality while still earning from promotions. When learning how to sell ads, trust our team at MGID to find the right solutions for you. Sign up today to access various integration types, AMP compatibility and other features that can expand your earning opportunities.

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Native Monetization
Digital Advertising
Victoria Mozolevska
Supervising the MGID blog as a Content Manager, Victoria wears many hats and combines the skills of an eclectic writer, reflective researcher and forward-looking content strategist. She has over 10 years of experience creating diverse content cradled in creativity and backed by tangible goals for B2B, B2C and B2G.