Need advice on my website, and how to charge for advertising...

[Diabolus]

Hi all,

I currently run a website (don't worry, it's not computer related at ALL) and am in the process of getting advertisers to help fund the activities on my site (it's not porn either!).

Anyhoo... I am not really sure how to charge people for this. Some info though, I get about 3.2 million hits a month, with about 60,000 unique users.

I was thinking about charging by every 100k impressions, but I don't know what price to charge. I have lots of people that are sending me emails with questions on how to advertise, and I file them and give them a canned response saying "I'm not yet accepting ads" which is true... My site is in the middle of a changeover so I want to wait on that.

Appreciate any info.

 

[rudeguy]

can I ask what site it is you run?

 

[wkabel23]

Originally posted by: GoodDad
can I ask what site it is you run?

 

[Diabolus]

http://www.mazdaworld.org

It's a mess, I know... but that doesn't change our traffic

 

[LeetViet]

Flat per monthly rate.

 

[Diabolus]

Okay flat... but how much should I charge? What's fair for me and them, in order to make some type of profit short of just giving it away?

 

[Diabolus]

^^

 

[sillymofo]

If advertising is for ecommerce, you can work out a deal with the vendors, some where between 1.5% - 3 % of their sales, or a flat rate of .05 cents per click. Of course the sales is base on trust, and you can only control the per click aspect.

 

[Diabolus]

Originally posted by: cr4zymofo
If advertising is for ecommerce, you can work out a deal with the vendors, some where between 1.5% - 3 % of their sales, or a flat rate of .05 cents per click. Of course the sales is base on trust, and you can only control the per click aspect.

The advertising that will come is mainly from automotive part vendors... I was thinking of charging a flat rate like $20 or $25 for each 100k impressions, and not have to worry about 'click-thrus'.

Good idea, bad?

 

[sillymofo]

Originally posted by: Diabolus

Originally posted by: cr4zymofo If advertising is for ecommerce, you can work out a deal with the vendors, some where between 1.5% - 3 % of their sales, or a flat rate of .05 cents per click. Of course the sales is base on trust, and you can only control the per click aspect.

The advertising that will come is mainly from automotive part vendors... I was thinking of charging a flat rate like $20 or $25 for each 100k impressions, and not have to worry about 'click-thrus'. Good idea, bad?

You'll make more money per click, which is the prefered method for most people. If the vendor is a small business and doesn't have financial backing, just charge them a flat monthly rate, regardless of traffic, whatever you deem fit to cover operating expenses.

 

[RossMAN]

This is slightly off topic but one of my web hosts offers Fantastico auto installer scripts which automatically installs phpAdsNew pretty spiffy.

 

[Diabolus]

Originally posted by: RossMAN
This is slightly off topic but one of my web hosts offers Fantastico auto installer scripts which automatically installs phpAdsNew pretty spiffy.

I'm familiar with the software, thanks

I won't be using it since I'm building something specific for the site, but that will certainly be an option available to advertisers.

 

[Diabolus]

Hrm... doing the math is what I've come up with for the click-thrus...

$.05 a click, with say .05% of the visitors clicking thru (making it only 16,000 people of the 3.2 million) (this is probably conservative but regardless), comes to $800 a month. That's pretty good revenue, and far more than I expected.

It does seem the right way to go, but is it the best method?

 

[Diabolus]

^