Make sure you have traffic and content on your website first
Content has to come first before any traffic will come to your website. I do not mean a few blog posts but I mean a large sum of good quality content. If your site has good quality content and has a good amount of traffic coming to it, your advertisers will come to ask you if they can advertise on your website. You do not even have to look for them anymore
If your site doesn’t have the traffic yet to get advertisers try to trade links, banners and advertising spots with other websites. It’s better to have your advertisement spots filled with free advertisers than with no advertisers at all. No potential advertiser likes to see “Advertise here” place holders. If no one advertises on your website, why would they advertise on your website?
You can also join an advertising network like Trade tracker and fill your advertising spots with banners from that affiliate network. If you do so you will get a commission if someone clicks on a banner and buys something on the affiliate website that you are promoting.
It’s possible to join multiple affiliate networks and make an income out of that without selling any of your own products on your website.
If all your spots are filled it’s more likely an advertiser will be interested in advertising on your website. No advertiser wants to be the first to advertise on your website.
It is not all about the written text in your website. You should also make sure you place new content on your website on a regular basis. Make sure your content is unique and written by yourself, because search engines love unique content.
Make sure you also check that all the links on your website are working and that there are no broken images on any of the pages in your website.
Spend some time and /or money to find a good quality professional looking template. The design of your website is important: a potential advertiser should think your website looks professional and that it shines out quality. Check all your content on grammatical errors. Content with grammatical errors in it doesn’t look professional.
You should not suspect an advertiser to be interested to advertise on a website with little or no visitors to it yet. That is why it’s also important to define for what target audience you have built or are making a website. Make sure your website is not only interesting to visit for business to business websites but also for the general public. The more people that come to your website the better your traffic amount will be.
Be sure you built a quality website and add good quality content, combine that with being active in the social media and on YouTube, use your YouTube videos in your articles on your website and link to your website on YouTube. Make sure you have a YouTube channel and grow subscribers and views. Install Google Analytics on your website so that you can give your possible advertisers a page where they can find the amount of traffic to your website.
Make sure you own a domain name and an email address that belong with that domain name. You will be taken far more professional by possible advertisers when you do so.
Create a packages or advertisers page
Create a packages page so that possible advertisers can see your prices, and can contact you if they are interested in advertising on your page. Offer a discount if someone advertises on your page for a longer period of time. The longer the advertising period the higher your discount will be, and you will secure you're advertising income for a longer period of time.
You can also choose not to mention the prices to advertise in your packages, so that your potential advertisers can contact you. This shows you that they are already interested to advertise in advertising on your page. You might also be able to negotiate better rates than you would if you would have your rates on your website already because you can offer additional services and this will mean an additional amount of income is coming your way.
Motivate why the advertisers should advertise on your site
You can also send a potential interested advertiser a PDF file which contains statistics, demographics a description, and even more. You will have all your information in one PDF file and it does look professional when you approach the advertisers.
Make sure you ask a realistic price to advertise on your page. Check other similar websites to see what their advertising rates are and also compare their traffic with your site (if possible) to see if the amount of traffic to that website is also similar to the amount of traffic you receive to your website.
Be someone an advertiser can trust, do not promise things that aren’t true
If you offer potential advertisers an advertising spot on your website do not fool them, you have to be realistic in what you have to offer. You potential advertiser is not a dumb person and maybe he has had offers to advertise somewhere before.
Do not say things like “If you advertise on our website your Google rankings will skyrocket” or “When you advertise on my website you will sell 100’s of your products”. If you say things like that a potential advertiser who had some trust in you before, will now think you are a liar who tries to sell an advertising spot at any cost. And when you do find someone that buys a spot, they will not be happy either if what you have offered them will not happen.
If you want to know what is realistic to offer to your advertisers you can also offer affiliate products on your website yourself. By doing so you know what product or service sells best on your website. And because of what you know you can make your advertisers realistic offers.
There are many people and businesses on the internet that offer you a huge amount of traffic to your website. This will give you a boost in your traffic – for a short while. Your advertisers are looking for someone they can trust on so not for traffic that will come to your website just for a short while. They are looking for websites to advertise on with a consistent amount of (high) traffic to it.
You can better organize a contest on your website in which people can actually win something (for example a Playstation 4). After that let them send the message to their friends via Facebook – the word of mouth is much better to get returning visitors to your website. There are many people that add a like if they can win something your website.
Conclusion
If you do not have any advertisers yet you should start with finding someone that wants to advertise on your page. It does’t matter for what price. Its a fact that advertisers do not want to advertise on a website if no one is advertising on it yet. But if you find someone more advertisers will follow.
After you have found your first advertisers, you can always raise your rates. Do not change your rates all the time in the beginning, this will confuse possible advertisers. Make sure you start with low rates in the beginning to fill in the advertising spots. You can always increase your rates later on.
Do not put yourself off the market by ask to high rates in the beginning
If you start to contact possible advertisers be sure to sell yourself and your company properly. You should have a good reason why your possible advertiser should advertise on your website. Offer your potential advertiser a PDF with actual proof of the performance of your website and services. Offer your potential advertisers testimonials of other companies on your website so that they know other companies are satisfied with your products or services.