Feb 15 2008

Australian Blog Advertising

As a majority of bloggers would agree, making money from a blog is pretty tough work. A lot of advertisers pay on a cost per click basis (such as Google AdWords) and typically click through rates are not great on blogs.

Other schemes such as Text Link Ads can prove to be more trouble than they are worth, when blog owners find themselves being penalised by Google for displaying such links without the “no follow” attribute applied.

I really see a market in Australia for blog advertising, but I don’t think advertisers (and agencies) see the opportunity.

Certainly a common complaint for Australian bloggers is the lack of relevant Australian ads available to display on blogs. Perhaps there is a misconception amongst advertisers that blogs are somehow a substandard advertising medium?

I’ve been following a discussion on the Aussie Bloggers Forum about setting up an advertising network.

Perhaps this would be a good opportunity for an advertising broker (or what ever they are called in Australia) to be the middleman between advertisers and bloggers (publishers)? Something a little more upmarket and professional than Commission Monster.

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Sponsorship

Back in May I wrote about an Aussie Startup called Plugger. Plugger is a website that aggregates Australian business news from a variety of sources including blogs. It is a free service that allows users to create customised RSS feeds and daily email reports depending on the companies or keywords they wish to monitor.

For those in business, it’s also a great vehicle for distributing company news.

I have personally being using the service since May, and found it to be a really convenient way of having filtered news delivered directly to me.

Recently Stephen Phillips (co-founder of Plugger) approached me about sponsoring the Top 100 Australian Blogs list. As most of you would be aware it does take some time maintaining the list (even though I’ve dropped to monthly updates), so the opportunity to advertise a proactive Aussie startup like Plugger was one that I jumped at.

I’d like to thank Plugger for the opportunity to get paid for a fair chunk of the time I put into maintaining the list, and for having faith in Australian blogs as an advertising vehicle.

And for those of you who follow business news, why not give the Plugger service a trial – nothing to lose….

4 responses so far

4 Responses to “Australian Blog Advertising”

  1. Neeravon 15 Feb 2008 at 6:40 pm

    Good on you :-)

    I’ve used Plugger for a while to keep track of people mentioning my name on other sites

    Neerav’s last blog post..Debit Cards: Better or Worse than Credit Cards? (2 comment/s)

  2. Megon 17 Feb 2008 at 12:07 am

    Thanks Neerav – it is certainly handy for monitoring names and businesses.

  3. Feroxon 17 Feb 2008 at 8:39 am

    I agree that there aren’t a lot of Australian advertisers out there. I’ve tried to find some that are decent, and even found an Australian program for selling books and earning a comisison, but their prices couldn’t compete with Amazon so I ended up going with the american company.

    Even in paid blogging programs, I can’t take jobs to blog about american companies because they’re not over here.

    Ferox’s last blog post..SHAG Toga Party

  4. Fat Bastardon 17 Feb 2008 at 8:54 pm

    I’ve been using Plugger since it launched and I find it saves me a heap of time in sorting through the news sites every day.
    Whilst giving them 10/10 for their service, I still cant work out how they make any money!