Besides banner ads, sponsored posts are one of the first methods new bloggers use to monetize their blog. In theory it is simple, but knowing exactly how to get sponsored posts for your blog effectively can take a few years of trial and error to learn.
As with our how to get sponsors for your blog post, we’ll take you through step by step how to get sponsored posts for your blog, starting with the foundations, through to email outreach, then into closing the deal and publishing the content.
Side note: For those that are new to sponsored posts, you might not know exactly what a sponsored post is. In a nutshell, a sponsored post is an article on your website, that an advertiser has paid for, and either supplied the content for, or given your editorial team direction on what they would like the content to cover. Sponsored posts are typically labelled as sponsored for full transparency.
There are a few steps in getting sponsored posts on your website which we will explore one by one. These are:
- Build a blog that brands want to partner with
- Understand the rules & regulations around sponsored posts
- Know what to charge for a sponsored post
- Design your media kit
- Add it to your “Advertise with us” page
- Reach out to brands
- Profit
Build a blog that brands want to partner with
No brand wants to partner with a website that doesn’t reflect well with their own brand. This means both the content on your website, and the brand of your website, has to be of good quality.
Here is a checklist for you blog to ensure it meets these guidelines:
- Nice domain name (not some weird foreign subdomain).
- Fast hosting
- Well design blog theme and logo
- No profanity or adult content (unless that is the type of advertisers you are trying to attract)
- Not “sold out” in terms of having an excessive amount of ads everywhere. No brand wants to be lost in a sea of other brands
Understand the rules & regulations around sponsored posts
5 years ago I wouldn’t have had to include this, but these days things are a bit stricter in regards to what you can and can’t do.
A boring, but important, guide on what you need to know is the FTC’s Official Endorsement Guide. This guide from the Federal Trade Commission (in America) covers the following topics:
- When Does the FTC Act Apply to Endorsements?
- Product Placements
- Endorsements by Individuals on Social Networking Sites
- How Should I Disclose That I Was Given Something for My Endorsement?
- Social Media Contests
- Online Review Programs
- Soliciting Endorsements
- What Are an Advertiser’s Responsibilities for What Others Say in Social Media?
- What About Intermediaries?
- What About Affiliate or Network Marketing?
- Using Testimonials That Don’t Reflect the Typical Consumer Experience
Like I said, boring! But important. So give it a read.
Know what to charge for a sponsored post
People new to this really struggle when it comes to knowing what to charge for a sponsored post. The answer actually depends on a few things.
But before I ramble on about how to know what to charge, I want to quickly say that within my Monetization Method course I’ve revealed what I have actually paid for hundreds of sponsored posts on other blogs throughout the years. I painstakingly plotted them, and made the data freely downloadable, so you can figure out what you should be charging…in about 5 seconds. Check it out.
So, what effects the price of a sponsored post?
The goal of the advertiser.
They are buying the sponsored post to either get traffic to their own website, build brand awareness, or improve their search engine rankings.
What they look for when they are deciding whom to buy a sponsored post from depends on what their goal is. The buyer simply wanting to improve their own SEO ranking probably doesn’t care too much if no one actually reads the post, but the buyer who wants to improve brand awareness simply wants people to read and understand the post, and most likely doesn’t care about any SEO benefits it might provide.
Why am I explaining this?
