Selling Advertising

Any top tips for selling advertising on a website

[FrogOfPower]

We have recently been experimenting with banner advertising on our website. We're getting about 3,000 visits a day and I've tried some commission junction and some amazon affiliate programs but not generated any revenue from them. Can any one recommend any better affiliate programs?

I'm also considering selling banners direct, any idea what sort of figures I can charge? I'm thinking of around £200 for a skyscraper on the homepage for a month. We also do a newsletter to 17,500 memebers, does anyone have prices out there for what we should be charging for banner ads put in these?

It's such a big grey area and other sites seem to charge anything between tiny fees and massive sums, I just wanted to get a flavour from you guys. Thanks.

[edited by: eljefe3 at 4:08 am (utc) on Jan. 21, 2006]

[Vlad]

Look around other sites in your niche and ask what they charge for banners. This will give you an idea.

[richardmasoner]

3000 visits per day and no affiliate revenue? That doesn't seem right to me. Are you choosing the correct products for your audience? Are you putting the ads in the right places on your website?

[diamondgrl]

I had 10,000 visits a day with not a single affiliate sale after 3 weeks. Not even $.25.

My site's content was just completely unrelated to any affiliate I could find. Sure, I could have optimized placement and done other things to get revenue, but some sites are not meant to bring affiliate revenue.

[FrogOfPower]

Thanks for the responses. The website is for a cultural magazine so there isn't anything really obvious to go for so I've previously gone for general things such as books, cheap flight etc. I have now been able to improve the banner positioning so will see if that makes a difference, but any more suggestions are most welcome.

[Beagle]

Depending on what cultural activities the magazine concentrates on, there should be some affiliate program for it. Art.com offers a range of products from inexpensive wall posters to framed and matted high-quality art reproductions, and has its own affiliate program along with being available through amazon. I'd think there would be similar programs for music, etc., but I'm not familiar with them.

And, of course, amazon has things that would tie in with just about any cultural area possible, from art to drama to music to writing. I've seen one literary magazine, especially, that had its amazon links very nicely customized to fit with the color scheme and style of the website, offering links to books by any author who had an article or story in the issue, as well as to books on the topics covered.

Watch for relevant sites that have affiliate programs and see what they have available. The more targeted to your readers, the better. Banners have notoriously poor conversion for affiliate programs, amazon or otherwise. To be useful, the ads need to be more tied into your site and offer people something specific.

[LanaST]

there's no reason why you shouldn't be making money off your visitors especially if you are getting those kind of numbers. It has to be that you are not targetting them properly.

You are on the right track by asking for suggestions. if something isn't working then you must change it and try other things.

You might consider some free offers campaigns. These tend to convert pretty well for most sites. If you want to PM me with your URL then I could take a look at it and would be able to suggest other campaigns based on your content.