Weddingbee PRO

One of the most common questions people ask me is how we started accepting ads on Weddingbee. I’m definitely no expert when it comes to advertising, but I wanted to share what I’ve learned from my experience with Weddingbee!  

I thought I’d answer this Q&A style, so if you have a question, please leave it in the comments section and I’ll try my best to answer it in this blog post.

I’ll start with some of the most common questions I get asked:

When did you first launch ads on Weddingbee?

We launched Weddingbee in early February 2006, and we launched Google Adsense ads on June 26, 2006.  Prior to launching adsense ads, we didn’t have any other source of revenue.  Text ads may not be the prettiest ads from a design perspective, which is why I think a lot of people are reluctant to add them to their site.  But Adsense is definitely a consistent and often largest source of revenue for many blogs.

As Weddingbee grew, advertisers would purchase Google adsense ads that would only show up on Weddingbee, and not any other sites.  For quite some time now, our Google ads have actually been predominantly graphic ads rather than text ads. 

Why did you decide to use Adsense instead of the other ad networks out there?

Adbrite and Blogads were popular ad networks for blogs back then. For female-targeted sites there was also the Glam Network, and now there is Martha’s Circle and BlogHer (I’m sure there are many more that I’m not as familiar with). But we were already familiar with Adsense, it was easy to set up, and we’d never have to worry about inventory.  We looked into Adbrite’s text and image ads, but eventually we launched direct graphic ads instead of going through a network which would take a portion of the revenue.

How much revenue do Adsense ads generate?

Revenue will always vary depending on your traffic.  I also think that in a category like weddings, readers are more likely to click on ads because they’re looking to purchase so many items.

The first month I think we did around $300 - $400 in adsense revenue.  But with each passing month, we made more and more until we were making thousands of dollars a month.  Google automatically generated the ads based on the content of our site, and at the end of each month they direct deposited a payment into our checking account.  If I could go back in time, I would definitely have launched Weddingbee with Adsense ads already on the site.  

How/when did you decide to launch graphic ads?

I think we started getting inquiries about graphic ads in May 2006.  At the time our resources were limited and adding graphic ads took time because they required that we redesign the site.  On August 31, 2006, we redesigned Weddingbee to a three column layout to accommodate graphic ads and Adsense ads (we previously had a two column layout), and we launched graphic ads. 

We had already received a couple of inquiries from potential advertisers, so we reached out to them and launched with just 2-3 ads.  We also offered a couple of free ads to our friends.  Again in retrospect I would have added graphic ads much earlier, even if we hadn’t had any inquiries, by offering free or barter ads to our friends.  After all, having ads on your blog lets advertisers know that you accept ads. 

How did you decide what size ads to accept?

We accepted 120×90 graphic ads — an IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) standard — because it fit with our site layout.  You can check out all the IAB standard ad sizes here.

How did you decide how much to charge? 

This is a difficult question to answer because I think we charged what we thought was fair, and what advertisers were willing to pay.  When we launched graphic ads, we charged $70/week and were doing 15,000 pageviews a day.  As our traffic grew and we started regularly selling out our inventory, we incrementally raised our prices to $100/week, $150/week, and $200/week.

Did you create a media kit?

Luckily my brother-in-law (aka BIL Bee) has a lot of experience with ad sales, so he created a very professional pdf media kit for Weddingbee.  Whenever anyone inquired about advertising on Weddingbee, we emailed them our media kit which included the following sections:

• What is Weddingbee?
• Who are the bees?
• Who are our readers? (Demographic data from Quantcast)
• Traffic statistics via sitemeter
• Available ad placements and cost

If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask!