If you find advertisers who are willing to pay you directly for advertising on your blog you can make much more money than from Adsense. On the other hand, it is much more difficult to find direct advertisers because you need to contact them directly. If you are willing to do the work this might be interesting for you. When should you take this step? Read on.

There are a few things that direct advertisers want in a site they’re advertising in. Firstly, of course, they are looking for traffic. If a site doesn’t get enough traffic, there are no reasons for them to advertise on that site. Secondly, they tend to be very brand conscious. Specifically, they want their ads to be displayed on websites that complement their brand. A page about “how to get rid of acne” on WebMD can get much higher CPMs than another site on the same topic. The thing is, that a direct advertiser loves to be associated with a brand like WebMD.

Often direct advertisers go for direct add placements. However, by and large direct advertisers tend to be more brand conscious than response conscious.

If you want to shoot for the high CPM ad buyers, you’re usually aiming for brand-oriented ad buyers rather than purely response-oriented ad buyers.

When people start writing you if they can advertise on your site it is a good sign that it is time to star taking on direct advertisers. Because at that time they see your site as a reputable site in your niche. They believe that you have traffic they ant and they think that your brand is worth to be associated with. Once you have attracted your first advertisers you can start looking of more. Just send nice emails to those in your niche asking if they are looking for advertising space. It might be that you need to write a lot of people before you get direct advertisers but once you found some it is well worth. As a rule of thumb you should have at least half a million pageviews. Your brand needs to be recognized in your space and you should have a good page rank.

It is a good idea to have a software set up which can handle the ad displays. Generally, you’ll want to set up your site so that it displays direct ads first, then displays AdSense ads once your higher CPM ad buys run out.

If you think about selling text links be sure you have your own policy for that in place first. Selling text links can damage your rankings so you might want to consider that before selling them.

Finally, remember that direct advertisers are real human beings. Unlike dealing with AdSense code, you’ll now have to manage a real relationship. That means figuring out what’s important to your advertisers and making sure they’re continuing to get that by advertising with you. They need to get value from your partnership then they’ll stick with you. If you don’t have enough pageviews yet, don’t worry. Try to get as much traffic as you can by writing good content. Use a keyword tool like Market Samurai or LongTail Pro then you find keywords you should shoot for in your content. The more content you have about high targeting keywords the better it is.