Private Ad Sales

How would someone cut out middleman programs like Adsense and go for direct sales dealing directly with sponsors?

Would you guys recommend reaching a certain traffic and ranking level before attempting this conversion?

What are you after doing?

Buy or sell...

[a] Buying...
If your buying ad's and you want to cut out the middle man you should just have to go to the site which you feel would suit your needs i.e. you dont want to go to an over 18's site when your selling baby products right....

99 times out of a 100 there will be an option to advertise... if not im sure a simple message to them would be suitable... if you would like to research there traffic to see what your asking to advertise on then you can use sites such as www.alexa.com (search website stats or something similar)

[b] Selling ad's...
Again selling ad's is just the same process but the other way round... give people the option to get in touch with you. Let them know you are trying to sell ad's.

Other than thats there's nothing more you can do...

Alot of the time you will find people selling advertising/giving it away for free on forums... digitalpoint.com sitepoint.com and ofcourse talkfreelance.com are good places to start.

hope this helps...

Chris

Yes, many websites do it. It narrows down on finding the right advertisers. Some advertisers will pay less than what you would earn from adsense. So its more of a gamble until you find the right advertiser.

Thanks for the replies.

I should have clarified that I am into selling ad space.

So, I get it that I have to go out and find advertisers or they may come to me, but how much should I be setting my ad space for? Is it better to go for impressions, click throughs, or require a flat fee?

It depends... sometimes you might go for a flat fee and you get alot more hits than expected and then other times you might not get so much so I would suggest doing some research into there site first.

What is it you're trying to advertise?

Thanks

Lyke, remember that direct sales is the only way to sell, if we are talking about a content-based website. Third party networks will never make you money, be it AdSense, or something else.

When I was establishing my first site, what I would do is visit my competitors and see who their clients are (I'd do it every 2-3 months), the logic being - if they are currently spending money, they might as well reach more people if they knew about my site as well. So I was only approaching those companies that were actively marketing themselves at that time. I would eventually get a contract out of average of 5-7 emails I send. After 2-3 years of such strategy, I now have over 250 clients and very rarely do I go out looking for contracts - companies today approach me instead.