Skip to content

Advertising on sites without advertising

Here’s something that’s unlikely to happen often, but just might crop up one day and we’d all be well advised to keep an eye open for it. Yesterday I mentioned identifying the competition in the search results, making the assumption that it was probably the same type of page as you want to rank on your site, such as a product page from a commercial competitor. But what if the top-ranking page is on a non-commercial site, such as a blog or a not-for-profit organisation? Offering to buy your way on to that page with a one-off advert ought to be a no-brainer.

I run several sites for hobbies or for community organisations. I have loads of pages which do extraordinarily well for fairly commercial search queries, and if I had the resources, I’d probably sell advertising space on them. Sadly, I don’t have the time or ability; but if a company approached me with a cheque, I’d bite off their hand. If you don’t ask, you don’t get…