Hello, All,

I've not visited this forum in ages, but I've taken on a project for a friend and am doing some research and remembered what a helpful community this is... so here I am!

My friend has a very niche-oriented blog, and she's reached the point that she wants to move to finding her own advertisers rather than just using BlogHer. She's got some smaller affiliate advertising below the fold, but wants to sell the prime space.

As an example of where she's at with her blogging 'business'... she recently worked out an arrangement with an online retailer to get a percentage of sales generated when buyers used a discount code that was tied to her site. She blogged about their product and that generated several thousand dollars in sales for that company within a couple of days.

In other words... she's not at all in the 'start up' phase, and has enough legitimacy that I believe she's ready to farm her sidebar out a little more lucratively than in the past.

Her forte is not ad sales. She knows I'm fairly bold and entrepreneurial, that I freelance writing persuasive text, and that I'm web-savvy, and that's why she's contracting me to pursue advertisers for her.

I'm interested in finding something that will provide information about the best way to approach potential advertisers. We've identified several companies that are likely a very good fit. I need to know if there is more credibility associated with her as the blog owner, or me as her 'agent'. In other words... do I ghost write letters on her behalf, or do I approach advertisers as her rep?

And is there a place I can go to research what various companies pay based on CPM's, etc?

I've found many ebooks that might be helpful, but there are actually so many of them that I'm not sure which one is most likely to be helpful, and I don't want to buy all 72,000 of them before hitting upon THE best resource for my needs.

Anyone out there with any tips for me?

There are a lot of advertising companies: Google Adsense, Bidvertiser, Infolinks, Kontera.
Also you can sell advertising space directly form the website. The price is up to you but its also depends about the traffic the website get.
I advise you to search for related sites to yours and see how much they are charging.

Thanks - and actually, that's the sort of thing I can't figure out how to find.

She's getting about half a million page views per month according to google analytics.

She has really developed a lot of clout in her niche. Her website is not at all flashy and fancy. She sells an eBook of sorts that she wrote that is to be used with a different niche than her main niche. She's a mommy blogger type and has several interests, and the main-main one is what I'd call her 'main niche". The eBook is, in my opinion, related to her second most 'drawing' niche.

Interestingly, I'm not into either of the issues that make her a big draw, but I can certainly use my skills to help her max HER interest in them....

I just need to know what to charge, etc.