Selling Ad space
Hi
This may not be the right place for this post but I can't think of anywhere else to post it :)
I have reached the point where I need to consider earning some revenue from my site. I have taken pride in the fact that I have not resorted to advertising to date - but the heat is on to cover hosting and maintenance costs.
I hate banner ads and I have received a lot of praise from visitors on how nice it is to visit a useful site without the awful intrusion of blanket advertising.
As a last resort I have opened a paypal account to take donations - I would prefer a voluntary approach rather than annoying my visitors. However, as an amazon association program hasn't paid off too well (probably as its UK based) I don't hold out much hope for the paypal scheme.
So what I am doing now is gathering some info about selling ad space on the site. Here are the rules I want to follow
1. NO popups or popunders.
2. NO onload/unload events that trigger endless windows
3. Ads must add value to the site.
4. NO link exchange program
5. If it annoys me then it'll annoy my visitor - so must be industry related
OK now that I have some rules here's where I'm stuck -
How much is ad space worth on the web?.
How dependant on traffic is pricing?
Are site features important when pricing? for example - headline syndication/promotion , high search engine rankings etc
I have in excess of 400-500,000 hits per month (translates to around 20-30,000 page impressions ) to increasing month on month - how much would traffic like that be worth to an advertiser?
Hits are from news readers, search engines. regulars etc I don't have a mailing list at present - I tried that in the past for weeekly/monthly newsletters but it wasn't a great success - I know this would increase ad value but I don't think the time is right to try again.
So how much is ad space worth? weekly/monthly rates etc and what is the best approach to use when targetting advertisers.
Sorry for the long post but I'm hoping for some cool tips here :)
Andy
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