Weekly Saturday column on how to make money with a sports blog. For more, check out the Sports Blogger Forums.

Most sports blog promotion is done through free methods–Ballhype, Stumble Upon, soliciting links, etc–so most people won’t have the ability to run advertising campaigns for their blogs. However with 125 Exchange, you can run free campaigns.

125 Exchange is a system that lets you run 125×125 ads on related blogs in exchange for having them run one ad on your blog. The traffic isn’t expected to be huge, but what it lacks in volume, it will make up in quality. Having a small amount of interested visitors who spend a lot of time on your site is often better than having a lot of visitors who aren’t as interested.

Keep reading to find out exactly how the traffic exchange works and how to create an ad:

First, by signing up, you automatically get 5,000 free impressions of your ad. From there, your impressions are based on performance.

That means for every 3 visitors who click from your ad to another members ad, you will get 2 visitors clicking to your site. That may seem like an unfair exchange, but the visitors who click from your site will remember your site if it offers quality content, and so will the 2 new visitors. That can add up to 5 visitors, from 3.

This click trading (instead of impression trading) also helps make sure you get quality visitors as part of the program. For simple impression trading programs, people can put their ads at the bottom of the page and benefit off it while adding no value. The incentive of needing clicks to get clicks forces other bloggers to put their ads in a prominent location.

Keep in mind that the program tracks IP address, so they can tell if you are abusing the system by clicking the ads on your site, and you will be kicked out for that.

Some interesting features of 125 Exchange are that you can upload up to 3 different ads and track performance of each; that way you know which ads are working best, and you can adjust what you use based on that.

To join 125 Exchange, sign up here.

How to Create An Ad?

The biggest question I hear when talking about advertising your blog is how do you create an ad?

125 Exchange won’t accept blatantly unprofessional-looking ads, but you don’t need to be a pro to create a quick ad on Photoshop. Here’s how:

Make the canvas 125 pixels by 125. Put some flashy colors on the background to draw attention. That’s very important with ad blindness on the rise and 125’s small to notice. I use one of their tie dye backgrounds:

Then look through the fonts and find some that stand out. Use multiple fonts, also to make it stand out (and high contrast between font and background). Then put the name of your site, describe it, and tell them to click, or tell them why they should click.

In my case, I have branded my forums as “Sports Blogger Forums” and people should click to “join” and “discuss promotion, marketing, and monetization.”

And if you want to join (why not plug it again here?), click here: Sports Blogger Forums

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