One of many ways to make money directly from your blog or website is to sell advertising space. This can be a lucrative way to make extra income, but there are a few things you need to keep in mind.

Selling advertising depends on having a proven amount of traffic to your site, and being able to demonstrate this convincingly to potential advertisers. If you are convinced that your site is an attractive prospect, there are ways to make sure your advertisers know about it.

It is not enough to tell advertisers that your site is a success; you will need to prove it with hard statistics. With so many advertising options available, savvy buyers of advertising will be able to spot a 'real deal' and that generally means an advertising option that backs up claims with numbers. If you are starting out or building your audience, you may consider offering advertising that is free for a period of time. That means you have advertisers on your site, which, in the future you may be able to convert into paying customers.

There are a number of statistics that are relevant to advertising buyers. The main ones used to measure a website's success are the number of unique visitors, page views, the time that viewers spend on the site, and their geographical location.

There are also well-respected traffic measurement platforms out there that can help you track this data. Google Analytics is a commonly used free platform, popular with small and or niche businesses.

If you want to branch out, and increase your potential standing with potential advertisers, you might like to consider a paid ranking system like Nielsen Online. For the cost of a subscription, link will track and monitor your site traffic, then rank your site according to its rigorous standards. Although this can be a great way to get your site in front of advertisers in the Nielsen rankings, it can be expensive for smaller sites. A more cost-effective way to use Nielsen's rankings is joining the Audit Bureaux of Australia - a website platform that audits a site, and makes its statistics available through Nielsen's network. Either way, access to statistics is critical.