Moving along now you would have contacted a site owner and received a not interested/yes interested type of reply and you would have replied by stating that you were interested in one of the banner or text spots located on their site. Now they should be sending over their advertising rates and it is at this time that you should begin a serious process of site evaluation. I’m still getting questions on why not to evaluate the sites thoroughly BEFORE contacting the webmaster so I’m going to take another crack at this one last in the simplest form.

DONT WASTE TIME…

It’s simple folks. Why would you ever research a site thoroughly only to find out the site owner is not even interested in your proposition? I mean seriously, I’ve been over this topic sort of before but the whole idea is to get the biggest return in the shortest amount of time possible because this will leave you more time to scale. If your a stubborn head then I encourage you to try it another way and cry about it later. Believe me, I’ve been there before and I’m only trying to keep it dead simple and the least time-consuming as possible.

Alright now so begins the process of a good site evaluation. There are some tools that will aid in this but your best weapon is to reply to the webmaster when they send you the ad rates. When they do send that email it is now time to inquire about their traffic. Some webmasters wont have a clue but you should go ahead and ask about their quality of traffic and anything important that comes to mind. I’m not going to name any examples here because each site is different. I will give you a few things to look for though:

1. Forums - Look to see if they have a forum attached to the site
2. Blog - Look for a blog attached to the site
3. Newsletter - Look for any type of optin form
4. Anything else that captures visitors and would keep them returning

Looking for these will allow even more possible advertising for you. You should also ask about these just in case they are hidden. Some of the best advertising is renting optin email lists and mass forum blasts.

While waiting for the email or phone call back you should do your own analysis as well. I personally use sites such as Quantcast and Compete to gauge traffic levels and pick up any hints of what their traffic types are. By using these tools you should know that you have no idea if they are accurate or not so you should take everything as suggestion only. You should be adding notes to your spreadsheet on this site of everything those two sites return to you. Also take note of the little spot where it says “People who visit this site, also visit” because that is just another source for you to pursue later on for your ads.

Look over this potential site thoroughly. You dont know at this point what the ad rates are so you should prepare yourself now. Where are all the ads located? Above the fold, below the fold? Typically if you are going to advertise on a “pay per impressions” basis then you are going to want the ads above the fold. If you are paying per click then you can try out ads below the fold. I personally do not advertise below the fold.

Negotiation

The time has come and you receive the advertising rates. Now here’s what I do so that I dont have to pay the bulk of the rates upfront. If you hop into buying for a full month before even testing the site, then your just a fool unless of course you just have the cash to burn. I am not going to talk about how I really dont care and I just throw the money down. That is something that I have worked myself up to and honestly I dont have the time to keep testing. I consider a month of advertising AS MY TEST. I dont want you to do this though if you are just starting out.

So you will want to ask the webmaster to pro-rate your ad rate so you can test the traffic. All the while this communication is going on you should be reassuring the webmaster that you are looking for a stable, long-term deal here and as long as it works for both sites, you will be a happy advertiser forever. If it’s banner placements I like to ask the webmaster to allow me to test the site for a week. By only paying for a week’s worth of advertising you cut your cost by 75%. If it’s an email drop to their list then you should only send out to a partial number of their lists to evaluate the response rate. Same goes for a forum blast.

Always negotiation folks the best you can. If it seems like it might cost you a deal then go with your gut instinct. That’s why it’s so important to evaluate the site yourself because their are snakes out there that will take advantage of you. Although, I personally have yet to come across such an instance.

From there on out you are on your own. I cant tell you what will play out because it’s up to you and the webmaster to negotiate some terms. Just use the tip of testing because it’s going to allow you to spend the least amount possible just to see if it’s all worth it.

This is dead simple folks and I’m giving it to you as I use it. No need to make it more complicated than it is. Find an offer, find a site, contact the site, if possible yes then start researching the site on your own, inquire the owner for any additional information, negotiate a testing price and time, move forward.

From here on out I would like a questions post. Any questions you send thru the blog, forum or email will be answered tomorrow and from there I will spend the rest of the month giving out some honey-holes and tons of places to use this method with.