I Wish I Started Doing This Years Ago…

If you sell direct advertising placements on your blog or website, I am sure you know how it goes. Some months you are full booked, on others (the majority!) you have many spots vacant.

Today two 125×125 spots became available on my site, and I started to think what strategies I could use to make sure I would always have those sold out. Then one thing came to me. It’s a really simple thing to do, but it should be pretty effective.

What if I had a list with a) all the people/companies who advertised on my site in the past and b) and the people/companies who contacted me inquiring about advertising opportunities?

I could simply create a message explaining the current stats of the blog, and asking each one of those people if they were interested in becoming an advertiser again or giving it a short for the first time. I am sure the two spots I have available would sell within one hour.

Sadly this idea only came to me today. Had I started doing this a couple of years ago my list would probably have over 100 contacts by now…

As they say, better late than never.

Takeaway message: start creating a contact list with all the people/companies that advertised on your website or that inquired about doing so.

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6 Responses to "I Wish I Started Doing This Years Ago…"

Colby on May 12th, 2011 5:47 pm | Reply

A very good point. Luckily for me I started collecting a list in the beginning mainly because I didn’t have advertising options and I was just trying to collect an interest list. Anyhow today I have about 50 potential advertisers and I still haven’t redesigned my blog to accommodate advertisers. I’m working on it and hopefully I will have my redesign done in the next month or so.
22sales.com on May 12th, 2011 6:40 pm | Reply

Thanks for the advice! I think I will start building a list a.s.a.p!….
Jennifer on May 12th, 2011 7:38 pm | Reply

ha, you’re message came to me just in time, since I just started a couple days ago. thanks!
Steve on May 12th, 2011 8:22 pm | Reply

Is it possible you have emails in your ‘trash’ or ‘archive’ from the people who contacted you? I often use the power of Google’s email search function to find email inquiries from years ago.
steve on May 12th, 2011 8:22 pm | Reply

I wish people want to advertise on my blog.
Dave on May 12th, 2011 9:16 pm | Reply

I started keeping a list via a Google Docs spreadsheet the moment I made money from my website, and that goes back to December 2006!

But I’ve only been using it to track renewals, and never spent any time going back to those old advertisers to update them on my site and see if they’d wanted to do business again.

I know I’ve left money on the table as a result, and could really benefit from taking a proactive approach and getting in the habit of touching base with them every few months.