Attracting advertisers is a crucial step in the survival of a website if you are depending on the funds to keep your site up and running. When it comes to the World Wide Web advertising is an almost unlimited resource when it comes to the amount of views one advertisement can receive. It is because of this that companies are looking to the web in order to increase the popularity of their products or services. When starting up your own website their are several steps you can take in order to increase your potential to attract advertisers and at the same time help promote your own site.




Market Your Website
Before anything you need to make people aware of your website. It would be quite difficult to sell companies to advertise on your site if no one is aware of your site in the first place. In order to do this you must promote your site to the Web and its audience. This is mainly discussed under the Attracting Visitors Tab. Once this is done companies will be more willing to advertise on your site since your site already has a steady inbound traffic of viewers.


Affiliate Programs
I believe affiliate programs are the easiest way to make money by having advertisements on your website. Affiliate programs like Google AdSense allows you to get paid by referring customers to another site that offers services or products. These affiliate programs are perfect for small websites or Blogs to generate income to help pay for expenses their websites may in cure. The best part is you do not even have to have a steady flow of visitor traffic in order to participate in these programs. This is great for websites that have just started up and want to start earning right away. All you need to have is a legit website and usually a Terms and Condition page. Here is this sites Terms and Condition page for an example                     .

 Once you have signed up and your site is approved you will then be able to pick affiliate merchant programs that are of interest to you and your site. Always pick ones that go with the content of your site to maximize the profit you make off of those links. For instance It would not make sense for you to have a link to a dog food supplier if your site was about global warming. Also If you are selling a product I recommend not picking rival merchants so they do not take business away from your site. Once that is complete, the online merchants will approve your site and then the affiliate network will show you how to post the links to your site and establish payment. Hopefully the next step will be you receiving payments, probably very small at the beginning but will grow with the popularity of your site. The three most popular affiliate programs you can sign up with are listed below and are free to enroll with. Please read the next paragraph about affiliate program scams before you move on. It may save you a lot of time and money.

Freelancer

Google AdSense

ClcikXchange.com

amazon.com


Affiliate Program Scams:
If you do decide to sign up to use Affiliate programs never pay for their service. There are plenty of free programs out there on the web and usually the ones you do pay for are scams. Most of them will tell that all you must pay is .99 cent or $1.97 to sign up and receive your starter kit to start earning money, but then a couple of weeks later they will charge your credit card any where from $60 to $90 dollars a month without letting you know. After that it is even a bigger hassle to cancel the program because you will never get a hold of anybody at the 800 number they give you. my rule of thumb is to always stay away from website that give you a promise that you can earn multiples of thousands of dollars a month with their program. Trust me it never works and you will be paying out more money than what comes to you. Don't get me wrong, you can earn a decent amount of money off legit, free affiliate programs but it takes time and effort on your part.  


Offer Advertising Space:
Another good way to attract advertisers is to have a spot on your website that shows visitors you are excepting advertisements. This is usually done by placing a "Advertise Here" banner on some of your pages to your website. An example of this is shown below. Be careful though because you don't want to over due it by placing them all over each page to where it renders the appearance or content of that page. One per page is plenty to let them know you are willing to accept advertising on your site.