Whether you are a domain owner or a web developer, the best advertising deals are usually direct deals with advertisers. In many cases affiliate relationships pay more, but for the sake of this post, I will focus on direct advertising deals since that is guaranteed revenue.
The first thing you need to do is obviously build a website on your great domain name. Once you have your site with unique content, add some Adsense blocks on your site. I generally recommend waiting until you are receiving search engine traffic before doing this to make certain that Google and Bing will see that you don’t have a “spammy” site with the sole objective of monetizing the traffic. I don’t have quantifiable evidence, but I’ve been told they may rank these sites lower.
Once your Adsense blocks are showing relevant advertising, you should make note of all of the advertisers whose ads are showing on your site. Make sure you have both text and graphic banners, as some advertisers might choose one over the other. You should also contact friends and colleagues in different areas of the country and ask them to email you those advertisers as well, in the event that there is some geo targeted advertising.
I would then do some research on the advertisers, and contact the companies who most likely have the smaller marketing department, allowing you to get directly in touch with the decision maker. Let them know they are currently advertising on your site via Google, and you would be willing to give them great space on your site. You might even offer exclusivity if you can make it worth your while financially.
Do some research to estimate what they are paying (using Adwords) and offer them a compelling deal. You might also want to keep at least one Adsense text block so you can keep an eye on new advertisers.
If you can make a good argument about why an advertiser should be advertising on your website, you just might score a great deal.
As an FYI, you don’t necessarily need to install Adsense on your site, as you can do the same thing simply by searching Google, although you won’t see banner advertisers.
A few weeks ago, I received a message on 