Rates

What's a good cost to charge?

[Mr_Fern]

Right now I own a community site which is on its way to 100,000 registrations. On any given day over 3000 users log in.

Currently I support my site by using Adsense. However I have been contacted by some people about advertising on my site.

I don't want to over charge, but I don't want to minimalizing my profit potential.

If I were to charge by the month, anyone have an idea on what's a good rate?

[annej]

I have the same question. Does anyone have any ideas on what one might charge? I know it depends on not only traffic but the topic, etc.

Is there any source for information on this sort of thing?

[FourDegreez]

Currently I support my site by using Adsense. However I have been contacted by some people about advertising on my site.

Whatever percentage of AdSense ads these new ads will displace, take that amount of revenue and multiply it by 1.5 for a good starting point. i.e. new ads displace $100 worth of AdSense revenue, charge $150.

[BwanaZulia]

I looked around at some sites that were like mine and charged what they charged.

I broke it down into two different kinds of advertising, banners and directory listings. Each one has plans (1,6,12 months, and bronze, silver, gold) so people can buy up.

I also charge a set up fee ($25) that I can waive on the second year or renewals.

I also put together combo plans.

Again, seems to be working.

BZ

[annej]

Thanks for the info everyone.

[affgirl]

I have the same question. We need to put together an ad rate package for our site. People are contacting us wanting to advertise. Currently we are not advertising anything on our site. It's still in the final stages of development and the beginning stages of traffic building. We are adding and redesigning a lot of our pages and the ad spots we are creating will be pretty large. Not quite as big as NY Times ads but pretty close. Of course we will have smaller ad spots as well, and I'm not sure how to incorporate text ads into our layout yet. We will also be offering ads in our online videos themselves or even as sponsors in the shows themselves, featuring their products. The company that contacted us is very tightly targeted to our audience and niche and we are going to keep it that way. Only advertising companies that are related to our content and target audience in some way. And also designing the most of the ads ourselves so that they fit into our design and we can make sure they are of high quality. So we will have to charge a small set up and design fee and also because it's targeted it is more valuable. We don't have the means to automatically keep track and bill according to the number of impressions. So we want to charge flat rates like per week or per month. However I have NO idea what good rates would be... and how much to charge per placement on the site, where it is and the size of the ad etc. And also, we are just starting out and our traffic is going to start taking off very shortly. So we want to be able to raise the rates very soon according to our traffic and popularity and how long people stay on the site etc. Currently we get about only 500-700 unique visitors a day and thousands of page views. Once we get our community features in and are able to update the content daily and get our store in and all and start going after the PR heavily, the traffic will go way up. From the people coming back each day to increased search engine traffic and keywords to the press and inbound links etc. Currently we have a PR 6 rating from Google.

So really, I have NO idea what to charge. I've looked around a little bit and it seems that most places are charging by the CPM. Really not that much either. We don't have a huge amount of traffic yet, but it's all very high quality traffic and very well targeted. We see where they are coming from and it's mostly all other sites in the same niche, and they stay and look around for a while. It's not junk traffic. Also, I don't really see variations of ad sizes and prices. They seem to just be all over the place in rates. We need to get back to this company by Monday with our rates and info. Any help or resources will be appreciated, thanks.