How to sell ad space on your website directly
No ad network, no auction: a business pays you directly to be seen by your readers. Here's the whole process, step by step.
Facts checked 29 Sep 2026 · by the AdSworn team
To sell ad space directly: pick the pages whose readers a business would pay to reach, decide what you'll sell (a banner, a sponsored post, or both), price it from real traffic, show proof of that traffic, label every ad, and take payment before it goes live. A marketplace like AdSworn does the listing, proof, payment and ad serving for you, free to list, for 15% of each sale.
The steps
- Choose your pagesOpen Google Search Console and look at the searches behind each page. Pages people reach by searching for products or services are the easiest to sell.
- Decide what you sellA banner at the top of the page, a sponsored paragraph inside the article, or both. Keep it to one or two formats.
- Set a priceA rate per 1,000 page views times how long it runs, with a minimum. See how much to charge.
- Prove your trafficBuyers trust numbers from Google over numbers in a PDF. Share read-only data, not screenshots.
- Approve the adRead every ad before it runs. Check the link, the claims and the fit with your readers.
- Label it and mark the linkLabel it "Ad" or "Sponsored" and mark paid links rel="sponsored", as Google's spam policies require for paid links.
- Get paid firstTake payment before the ad goes live, or use a service that holds it until it does.
- Report resultsSend the sponsor the views and clicks. A good report is how you get the second booking.
Where the ad goes
Doing it yourself vs using a marketplace
| On your own | On AdSworn | |
|---|---|---|
| Finding sponsors | Outreach, one by one | Buyers search by what your pages rank for |
| Proving traffic | Screenshots or a media kit | Read from Google, shown on every page |
| Payment | Invoices and chasing | Paid on approval, held until the ad is live |
| Serving and counting the ad | Manual placement, no reporting | One snippet; views and clicks counted |
| Cost | Your time | Free to list; 15% of each sale |
- Advertiser booksPicks a page and format, writes the ad. Nothing is charged yet.
- Publisher approves, advertiser paysThe listed price, nothing on top. AdSworn holds it.
- Verified live, publisher paidOnce the snippet confirms the ad is live, the publisher gets 85%.
- Never ran? Full refundDeclined or not live: the advertiser gets every cent back.
Straight answers
Can I sell ads on my website without AdSense?
Yes. Direct sponsorships are sold to one business at a price you set. You can run them alongside AdSense or instead of it.
How do I get advertisers for my website?
Add an "Advertise with us" page, show proof of your traffic, and pitch businesses that sell to your readers. A marketplace also lets buyers find you.
Do I need a lot of traffic?
No. A page with a few hundred readers searching for a service can be worth more to the right business than thousands of casual visitors.