It looks like I’ve finally tweaked and tinkered with my living in London site enough for me to considering the thing finished. Actually my sites are never really finished as I usually try to keep adding content here and there, but it’s finished enough to be attractive to a potential advertiser. The major thing that was holding me back was just the crappy header that I used to have and that’s been replaced by something a bit less crappy and now I’m ready to attempt to sell ads on the site.
I thought it might be interesting to keep track of my efforts of selling ad space from start to finish. So far I’ve never really been rejected when I’ve approached companies to advertise, but I’ve only ever done it a few times. I’m not expecting my little run of luck to continue with everyone I approach and I think it might be interesting for people to see which companies I’ve approached, how I’ve done it, their reaction, the price I’ve asked, the price that was agreed, or which ones have come back with a big, fat NO.
Starting on Monday, here are the areas I’ll touch upon:
- Where to find potential advertisers
- Making the first approach
- Deciding what types of ads to offer
- Setting an initial price and then negotiating
- Sealing the deal and receiving payment
- Keeping track of link sales
- Building rapport with advertisers and keeping them sweet
I’ve written about some of these things already but think that with an actual site and actual companies the whole thing becomes a bit more interesting. Rather than making a post about each heading, I’ll just be giving a sort of running progress report with those topics as key features.
When I built my London site, direct link sales were something that were on my mind from the start. I know that there are a lot of companies who want to advertise to the market my site is aimed at and the trick for me will be convincing them that my site is the way to reach them. I’ve always been really bad at sales so this will be a challenge, but one that I’m looking forward to.
Keeping track of things from start to finish will hopefully shed some light on this whole link sales process and open my eyes as well to how it all works. Here’s hoping things go smoothly! Nah… that’d be boring.
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