How To Get More Giveaways, Freebies & Create a Media Kit

I’ve worked with Bloggers and website owners for over a decade to build brands, drive sales and help companies grow.  Some of the most powerful groups include Mommy Bloggers, Marketing Bloggers and Techies, Foodie blogs, Travel blogs as well as Review and Giveaway Blogs.  Over the years tons of competitors, new sites and new people started to develop these blogs to either compete with the bigger ones and make money, or just to be able to vent and help other people with the things that they know.

Although I have seen a ton of growth, unfortunately not all of the sites have grown professionally and realized how to sell themselves to get more advertisers, free giveaways, sponsored reviews, etc…  What they need are media kits to properly sell their site’s inventory and posts because advertisers (especially smaller ones) need to ensure they can get the most back for their money.  If you are a Blogger or website owner, here is what you want to try and collect to show the value of your site.  Even if your numbers aren’t the highest, your quality can be what gets the sale.

PR – Knowing what your Google PR is can help you out with selling ad space.  Although a lot of people don’t pay attention to PR, SEOs love finding sites with a PR of 5 and higher.  Even sites with a PR of 3 can still sell adspace to an SEO since there is obviously some value, even if there is not much traffic.

Monthly Unique Visitors – This is important if you are selling ad space across your site.  For a review or a regular post, this is not a good metric (even though most media buyers don’t realize it) because you may have 50K uniques a month, but 48K of them are on three posts and each new one may only get 100 unique views making it not the smartest buy.

Unique visitors to a post (within a week or month) – This is key when selling your site.  If you track by url, you can see how many unique visitors each post gets and track it for the first week.  Then divide them up by categories and you can tell advertisers about how many uniques they can expect within their niche from a post.  This information makes a huge difference when selling reviews or trying to get giveaways.

How many sales have come from each contest or review – One thing you should follow up with are how many sales came from your review or post.  Not many Bloggers think to do this or ask, but if you know that posts will generate sales, you have an upper hand on getting free products, paid reviews, etc… because you have numbers to back up why they should spend with you.  Even if you don’t have much traffic, if your traffic buys and the other site doesn’t have that data, you may get the giveaways instead.  One other option is to find a couple of merchants that don’t have a coupon code box, adware, etc… in their Affiliate program and track sales from it.  Then you can guestimate the sales per clicks and what potential partners can expect.

Email list subscribers – Don’t forget to say how many email list subscribers you have, if that is part of your sales pitch.  You can also include how many opens, click throughs, etc… you get from each blast to help show why people should sponsor your newsletter.

Twitter followers (How many you are following as well) – This is tricky.  When someone pitches that they have a ton of Twitter followers, I usually see that they are following about as many people.  To me this means they are just following back.  The people who follow very few but have thousands of followers actually have people interested in what they say.  When selling your site because of Twitter followers, mention how many followers you have and how many people you follow, how many lists you are on, the average click through on your tweets with links and anything else that can show that you have an active Twitter following.

Facebook fans – This is pretty easy, except for the people who buy fans.  I like to show how many comments, likes, shares, etc… each post gets and you can track it by category as well.  This helps to show the value and actual reach that your Facebook Fan Page has.  You can also show how many click throughs to your site you get, how many people like the advertiser’s Fan Page and even how many post on the advertiser’s Fan Page.

Comments and activity (Blog comments, Facebook, Retweets, Repins, etc…) – If you show or keep track of the comments by category or post, you can use this to show activity on your site.  Sometimes Tweets, Shares, etc… aren’t a good metric because the share buttons break or don’t track properly.  You can also fake them with sites like Fiverr.  Showing the combination of all of them really helps to sell the paid reviews as well as show the activity of your blog readers and add confidence to the Advertiser that they’re making the right choice with your site.

How many posts per month/year are in their category and how long they will stay on the Homepage – This is a great way to sell your site.  If there isn’t much clutter or too many new posts going into a category, but that category gets a lot of traffic, that could be a huge selling point even if you don’t have many unique visitors per post.  They can still get exposure even after the post is done.  By letting Advertisers know how long they will be on your homepage you can also help to sell them on buying reviews or doing a giveaway on your site since they will gain exposure when your next post goes live.

RSS readers – Your RSS readers are a great metric to show as well.  It helps to increase the places you can sell ads as well as the activity and active readership of your blog.

Bloggers have a ton of power to grow brands easily.  The problem is that there are a ton of new bloggers that don’t understand what the value in a blog is and think that because they write content, but only have bots and spam on their site (not knowing what bots or spam are) they deserve freebies.  To set yourself apart and get advertisers to make purchases and do giveaways with you, all you have to do is put together a basic media kit showing why you are a great option for them and how you can give them a solid return on their investment.  If you get sales info, etc… you have an even better chance.  Brands are always looking for exposure and this is an awesome way to get to the top of their list when they are ready to buy media space or run a promotion.

There are other metrics that I can include here and other things you can mention in your media kit.  If you have one that helps you sell ad space and attract advertisers or giveaways, please feel free to share them below.  Also, don’t forget to include a way to contact you besides an email address on your media kit, otherwise you may miss out on sales.