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Five ways to offer advertisers more value on your online newspaper/magazine

Newspapers and magazines have slowly but surely been stepping away from the traditional print format and have now been overtaken by their newly preferred digital format. This has allowed a lot of amateur/hobby publishers to create online magazines that allow them to share their passions with other people interested in their niche. As fun as that is, it can also be expensive to deliver a high-quality online magazine or newspaper, which is why advertising is so crucial. Let’s look at five ways a magazine or newspaper publisher can get more advertisers for their online publication.

Classifieds

This is a particularly good option if you are running an online newspaper, as classifieds have always been a part of the traditional newspaper and people are familiar with them. This allows you to get a lot of smaller ads that generate income on a regular basis.

Advertorials

These are essential paid ads that are done in the form of an editorial piece. They allow the advertiser to go into a lot more details about the service or product that they have to offer. While these can take up a good amount of space in your magazine or newspaper, they also tend to be on the higher end of the advertising income scale, which is why so many publications offer up this particular form of advertising.

Your Readers as Advertisers

The strategy that many online publications tend to follow is to reach out to big name companies that they hope will advertise. There are plenty of smaller businesses out there that have an advertising budget they are looking to spend online. Instead of narrowing your search for bigger names and having empty spots on your site, allow those smaller businesses run by your readers to have access to those spots. You may even consider offering a special rate for readers who are also paid subscribers. So, reach out to your readers with either a media kit or by direct email to engage their interest.

Ad Networks

These are ad networks/exchanges that act as a middle man between publishers and advertisers. They host creatives from multiple advertisers and then automatically send those ads out to websites. You can choose to display targeted ads from these ad networks on some sections of your site. If some specific advertisers perform well with your site, they will notice that and may just come to order directly with you instead of going through an intermediary. However, make sure you also have a good ad server that can serve and track ads for these direct advertisers accurately and reliably.

Affiliate Programs

Why not use an affiliate program that will place ads that fit your specific visitor demographics and can also make you some money in the process. Signing up with relevant affiliate products and placing their banner ads on your site is a great way to fill those empty ad spaces until you get more direct advertisers. It will also help make it look as though your site has a good selection of advertisers, which may in fact prompt some potential advertisers to buy a piece of real estate on your website for their own businesses.

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