How much to charge for ads?

[the goat]

I have a website that is all about the town I am from. The town has about 35,000 year round residents and that number swells to 100,000 in the summer.

The site gets 3,000 unique visitors and about 15,000 page views a month. It has 87 registered members who are notified by email of any site updates. 90% of the traffic is local.

My first question is do you think this is a popular enough site to sell advertising to local business'?

If so what is a good amount to charger per month, I will do two sizes, 125x125 and 460x60 banners?

[vangogh]

If 90% of your traffic is local you probably do have enough to advertise. You're getting 2,700 targeted uniques per month. How much is the tough question.

I wish I had a good answer for you, but I don't. I'll offer up some thoughts until someone wiser pops in behind me. See if you can find similar sites as yours that are advertising and see if you can find out what they charge. They might have a page on the site or you could get in touch as though you were looking to buy ad space from them. You can also look at other sites in general and see if you can get a feel for what their traffic might be and how much they charge.

Place some affiliate banners in the space to make it look like others are already paying for the space.

If you're having trouble selling the ads at any price you could start by giving away some free ad space. As long as you're measuring the traffic through the ads you'll have a good idea how valuable the space is to the businesses and you'll be better able to set a price. You could give away a month's advertising say.

I'm guessing until you can prove you can deliver traffic you won't be able to charge all that much. Maybe pick a price you think fair and start approaching some businesses. Based on the initial response you should have an idea whether to increase your price or drop it.

[Steve B]

I think this is going to be more a question of "what will the market bear". Your customer isn't going to have a reference point on this question either - so it will just come down to convincing them it will help their business more than it will cost their business.

Naturally, if you can find something to compare with like VG suggests - that will help knowing you are in the ballpark of what similar sites have settled on. But, ultimately, it comes down to the advertiser deciding to take the risk.

One word of advice as far as giving advertising away in general. Most advertising doesn't work very well initially. So, if you give it away in hopes they will be happy with the results in a month or two, most likely they won't be happy. Then, you'll have trouble convincing them to continue or convincing them to try again later if your site gets more popular. At least, that has been my experience with selling advertising with our coupon magazine. Instead, I'd give away 1 month of advertising if they agreed to buy two months. That gives you some guaranteed income and gives the advertising enough time to work (if it's going to).

[vangogh]

I think this is going to be more a question of "what will the market bear".

Good point. That's really what this comes down to. The market is going to determine the price.

Steve as far as the ads taking time to work I think the situation is a little different online in the sense that you'd be measuring things like how often the ad is viewed and how many times it's clicked when selling the space. True, in the end, it comes down to how much people buy, but someone will buy the ad space if they know X people are seeing it or Y people have clicked to the site. Both of those can be seen over the course of a month or two an if anything more people will click in the beginning when the ad first goes up than they will once it's been there awhile and they've developed 'ad blindness' to it.

[KristineS]

If 90% of the traffic is local, and you have the stats to pack up your uniques and page views, which I would think you would, I'd say this is a perfect site for local advertisers.

The first thing I always ask when buying advertising is if what I'm buying will help me reach my target market. This is a sort of web advertising that makes sense for any local business because it is targeting their market, local consumers. Instead of buying advertising on a site that "might" have a percentage of people who are in their market, your site is delivering targeted traffic. That's a gold mine for people who advertise.

As for cost, check and see what the local newspaper or television station charges for advertising, particularly online ads if they have them. That would probably be the reference most local businesses which are trying to reach local consumers would have for advertising. The prices you find on these venues would be what I would use to at least set your baseline price.

[nealrm]

Do a google search on "Online advertising CPM". The adverting rate page for many sites should pop up. Browse through the pages to get an idea of rate. For a small site like your I'm thinking the rate normally run around $1 to $3 per 1000 views (ad views not page views).

[vangogh]

Good idea to search for the rates pages nealrm.

One thing you may want to add to the search is a current year. If you go back a few years CPM rates were probably higher, but those pages will probably rank better because they've been online longer. I've been adding 2008 or 2009 to time sensitive queries.

You can also go into advanced search and add dates, locations, etc to refine the search a little more.

[Travelchick]

My site also has about 3000 unique visitors. I was approached this week by another quite large travel site, who asked me if they can place a text-based ad on my home page. At this point the only "advertising" I have is affiliate links. They said that they pay "per year upfront" and will like either a text-based ad (which is basically a two-sentences with 2 links to their site), or an article that I can post inside my site. They will pay more for the hompage link, but they didn't mention how much:confused: yet. We will discuss numbers after I respond to them, so I want to be prepared. I would like to know that I am getting an okay deal before I accept it. They must know that my site does not have much traffic, so I am a bit confused as to how much I should expect for this.

Would it be wise for me to ask if we could do a cross promotion (whereas I get to advertise, or at least get a link to my site from their site, in exchange for allowing them to advertise?) According to extremetracking.com, they have 10,000 to 18,000 unique visitors PER DAY! My site has been growing SLOWLY every month since July, and I hope to greatly increase the traffic this year with advertising, but have little funds. I think advertising on their site would be worth more to me than receiving money from them.

??? Any ideas ???

[the goat]

Thanks everyone you have been very helpful. I have done a little research and I think I will start low, $50 a month and only do the 125x125 ads. Does that sound like a good number?

Also this will be my first foray into selling advertising face to face, I have a salesman that is going to do it, but I want to make sure I give him all the resources he needs.

I was thinking a few screen shots of the site and traffic reports with uniques, page views, visitor location, time spent on site etc.

Is there anything else he should have with him?

[vangogh]

Travelchick that other site is really looking to buy the link in the hopes of it improving search engine rank than they are advertising. Just know that Google has taken a stand against the practice and if they decide you're selling links they'll discount the value of all your links.

Personally I think Google is going a little overboard with their reaction, but do know it's now against their guidelines to sell links and I can tell by the offer that's what the other site is looking for.

If you're going to sell links either as the link on the home page or as an article in the site you're best keeping it quiet. Don't advertise it on the site later to get more people to buy links.

A link from the other side would likely be good for you, but I'm going to guess that other site won't be so interested in an exchange. Based on their offer I think they simply want to get a link from you without having to link back in order to help them in search engines.

[vangogh]

goat that sounds like a reasonable price. I think what will be most important for selling the ads is the traffic reports.

Some sites will also create a dedicated page on their site showing stats and asking to be contacted about the price. Here are a couple of sample advertising pages:

Shoemoney (http://www.shoemoney.com/advertising-on-shoemoney/)
DoshDosh (http://www.doshdosh.com/advertise/)

Both get quite a bit of traffic so have higher rates, but the pages should give you some ideas if you want to create your own. I've seen people display Google Analytics stats right on their advertising page too.

[KristineS]

Goat, It think that sounds like a reasonable price. It's not so much that you can't entice people to try advertising with you, and it's not so little that it sounds like you don't value your advertising space.

Vangogh's idea about creating an advertising information page is a good one. I know when I'm looking for online advertising I love it if I can see what a site has to offer without having to go through a lot of tedious e-mails and hard sells first. If I can find the information easily, I'm probably more likely to decide in favor of advertising on the site.

[Travelchick]

Travelchick that other site is really looking to buy the link in the hopes of it improving search engine rank than they are advertising.

Okay. Would this possibly hurt me then? They are a well known site, because I have heard of them before and they advertise on tv. They sent me links to other sites that they are "advertising" on. It all looks legit, and like a real ad.

What is the difference between an "ad" and a "paid link"? I really don't know:o! I'm a webmaster newbie. I don't plan on selling links or anything linkfarm-y, thats not my gig.

[vangogh]

What is the difference between an "ad" and a "paid link"?

Good question and one of the reasons many people think Google's stance on paid link is a bit over the top. You can take the question further and ask what constitutes payment. Does it have to be cash or if I take you out to dinner or buy you a new tv is that also payment.

Google places a great deal of weight on linking and linking patterns when it comes to ranking web pages and web sites. Because of that people started trying to get more links pointing into their sites through any means possible. Unfortunately that leads to a certain amount of spam which Google doesn't want polluting their search results. Their response to people buying and selling links was to take a stance against link buying. It still goes on and many people will tell you it still works very well too.

Highly unlikely you'll be hurt in any way for selling the one link Where it might become a problem is if you start selling links to everyone and advertising that you do. If that happens what Google says they will do is prevent your links from passing PageRank. Essentially that would mean your links would become worthless to the people looking to buy them to help with search engines. Technically even the one link would go against the official policy, but I doubt Google would care about a single links. They could though.

Like I said I doubt selling the one link would hurt you, but say Google did prevent your links from passing PageRank. That would also include internal links between pages of your own site. Your visible PR in the toolbar would show as less than it should which really means nothing.

One link I wouldn't worry about. If you want to respond and accept the offer you should be fine. Just ask yourself if would make sense to link to that other side if no money was exchanged. If the answer is yes you should be ok.

Advertising that people could buy links on your site? Placing links to random sites all over your site? Those kind of things could call attention and lead to Google doing something.

[Travelchick]

Thanks for taking the time to respond! :)

I apologize that I still do not quite understand how a "paid link" is different than an "ad". By "ad" do you mean that it is a graphic and not text? In the examples they showed me, the text is written in what I would call a mini "paragraph" with 1-2 links to their site, usually located on the side next to other graphical banner ads. I'm assuming they prefer text so they get the anchor text. ? They also suggest in their email that they could do a "text banner" instead of the content text. What the heck is a "text banner"?

Their site is relevant to mine, so it does make sense to add an article or paragraph from them onto my site. Should I be expecting far less $ than an "ad" running on Goat's site and why?

[nealrm]

Specificly, It is against Google policy for sites to sell links that pass link juice. If you sell a link that either blocks the juice via the NoFollow tag or via coding you are OK.

[Travelchick]

So, I would need to do a robotstxt that says "no follow" before their ad? Do i tell them that is what I will do, and see if they still want to buy "advertising"?

[nealrm]

I would put it in the link. Sample <a rel="NoFollow" href="www.sitename.com"> [link text here] </a>

To be honest, I would let them know you follow Google guildlines relating to paid advertising. If it works out, let me know. I have a few ad spots open.

[Travelchick]

Should I contact these other websites that have already allowed this company to "advertise" on their site and ask if they will disclose how much they charged?

[Travelchick]

I would put it in the link. Sample <a rel="NoFollow" href="www.sitename.com"> [link text here] </a>

To be honest, I would let them know you follow Google guildlines relating to paid advertising. If it works out, let me know. I have a few ad spots open.

Thanks!!:)

[vangogh]

No reason you can't contact other companies and ask about the price. You could pretend you want to buy the same thing too.

One thing to know about rel="nofollow" I can almost guarantee if you include that the company that offered to buy the link won't want to buy it any more. I'm pretty sure they want to buy the kind of link that does pass PageRank. If you ask them if they'll accept a rel="nofollow" link I'll bet they rescind the offer.

[Travelchick]

Yes, you are probably right. However, I don't understand why they would want my pagerank, which is less than their's.

[vangogh]

It's not really the PageRank itself they want. What they want is a link that passes value in the eyes of search engines, particularly Google. The links are additive so more generally means better and their page and site will rank better. It doesn't matter if the links come from pages with lower PR. The links will still help them.

[Travelchick]

Thanks. Your input has been very helpful.

Are online ad's generally "no follow" then? So, is that the standard? I suppose I could look and see if their other "advertisements" are "no follow" by looking at the source code for that page, right?

I will post back here after I ask them if they will accept a "no follow" link, and let anyone who may be watching this post know what happened.:p

[nealrm]

Travelchick,
You will probably find a range. Some site will follow Google guidelines other will not. Also, just looking at the source code might not help. You can block the link juice several ways. Not all of them show up in the source code.

[vangogh]

Yeah it'll vary from site to site. Some people will add nofollow to links just because they're afraid of Google. Some will never add them to defy Google. Most people probably don't add them since they have no idea there is such a thing called nofollow.

I wouldn't worry about it on things like banner ads. The only time this will probably be a problem for you is if you make it obvious you're selling links that pass PR. I know that's never been your intention so it's probably nothing to worry about.

Also let's pretend Google does decide you're violating their guidelines by selling links. If you remove the links or add nofollow after the fact everything should go back to normal once Google notices the change.