The past couple of months, I've monetized my beef jerky review blog by selling banner ads directly to advertisers.

Previously, I was running Google AdSense and displaying banner ads from the Gourmet Ads network.

While I've sold banner ads directly before, I've never put this much effort into making it a viable revenue stream. So far, of all the websites I currently run, I'm doing direct ad sales only this one website.

Here's some bullet points on what I've done...

• In the first year of publishing my beef jerky review blog, I managed to maintain some communication with a handful of beef jerky manufacturers and retailers. I think this was critical in establishing trust and credibility with them.



• Last January, I made website design changes to accomodate two standard banner sizes, a 160x600 and a 300x250.



• At the same time, I began testing out various ad managers. I looked at the cheaper ad managers, that allowed me to manage ads remotely, and not on my own server.



• I e-mailed those manufacturers and retailers whom I had maintained communication with, and notified them that I'm currently testing out banner ads, and planned to sell banner ads in the future. I offered them to run their banners for free during the testing phase, and they sent me some banners.



• I eventually settled on Google AdManager, it's free, it's feature-rich, and it interfaces with AdSense to monetize unsold inventory.



• I waited until my website averaged 1,000 page views per day, just to make it practical to sell banner ads on a CPM.



• On June 1, 2009, I began selling banner ads. I set a CPM rate of $5.00 for the 160x600 and the 300x250. I also redesigned the site to accomodate a 468x60 space, and set a rate of $2.50 CPM.



• I published an "Advertise Here" page, which spells out all the details on buying ad banners on my site.



• Right off the bat, three of the manufacturers whom I was running test banners for free opted to buy ads from me right away. I'm not sure if any of them had ever purchased ad banner inventory on a CPM before. So to make things easy, I offered a buy at $50.00, which got them 10,000 impressions. I explained to them that their banner would run in a rotation with other advertisers' banners.



• As it turns out, the $50.00 buy so far seems to be successful. All advertisers wanted the 300x250 space, because it displays on every page, including the home page, and displays above the fold. At 10,000 impressions per $50.00, a buy seems to last about a month, with three advertisers in that space, at the current traffic levels.



• Two of those three manufacturers renewed their purchase of the 300x250 at $50.00 each. The other manufacturer initially bought 30,000 impressions at $150.00.



• I've also sold a $50.00 buy for the 160x600 space to a manufacturer, who renewed that buy again a month later. And today, I brought on a fourth manufacturer who bought into the 300x250 space for $50.00, and another $50.00 for the 160x600.



• I have two other manufacturers who expressed interest in buying impressions in the 300x250 space, but are developing their creatives.

I think what has made this work thus far, is that for one, beef jerky doesn't appear to have been affected all that much by the sagging economy. People still seem to be buying jerky. Two, the beef jerky market online appears to be rather fierce, with manufacturers and retailers all competing for Google AdWords, and competing for that top spot on Google. Three, I've managed to do a pretty good job building up a loyal audience of beef jerky lovers. I've also done a good job seeding the search engines with lots of keyword rich content, which brings in those beef jerky lovers.

I've also talked to my advertisers, who've said that they actually get a fair amount of sales referred from my site, not necessarily from the banner ads, but just from the content I've published there. That has built up a level of confidence, that my site's audience is valuable.

So what's next for me? I really need more traffic! I continue to publish more content, but I've also been launching "satellite sites", that share the same niche as my beef jerky blog, but focus on slightly different subjects, such as "how to make jerky", or "beef jerky dieting", and "beef sticks". They're basically more search engine food, but those sites should still attract visitors my advertisers are interested in.

I've also launched a Facebook fan page for my beef jerky blog, and have been marketing my newest beef jerky reviews on Twitter.  ✓