Advertising rates -- what's fair?

Little or no experience in this area

[Don Markstein]

I run a site that, generally speaking, deals with entertainment. Somebody just asked me to take on a 15-or-so-word text ad, containing about 2-3 links. I have a reasonably prominent place it could be put, along the right-hand edge about 1/3 of the way down the screen, right underneath a broad Adsense block.

I get about 10,000 unique visitors a day. What would be a fair price to ask?

-- Don

[eljefe3]

HOw many clicks per day are you getting from adsense and how much are you earning from each click?

I'd use this as a guide as to a range that should be acceptable to both parties, then add another 20-30% on top of this to cover adsense overhead ( what google takes out) plus what the pr value of the link would be (say your site is a PR6 how much is that worth on PR value alone?). Hopefully this makes sense.

[Don Markstein]

Perfect sense, Eljefe. Thanks. Trouble is, I don't think they'll pay that much. My Bottom Line in AdSense is in four figures monthly (not bragging, of course -- not with so many people here who do better), and I only have that one block on each page. (And yeah, I've got a PR6 on the home page, but I don't know how to relate that to money from an advertiser.)

Anyway, this gives me a ballpark. Thanks. I'll mull it over and quote him something.

-- Don

[eljefe3]

Quite possibly the prospective advertiser sees that you have a PR6. If you told him you could give him a .js link and he complained, then you would know that he is very aware of the PR6. If he doesn't care about the link, only that you do place a link to his site, then he is truly an advertiser first and the PR is just an added bonus.

[Don Markstein]

Gotcha. I take it, then, .js is a means of linking that doesn't give them the Google advantage of an additional inbound link? I wouldn't know how to do that even if I wanted to, and I don't see why I'd want to. If they're offering to pay me to help them get their product in front of people, I don't see why that shouldn't be part of the package.

-- Don

[jc1x]

You can check out AdBrite to see what comparable sites are charging. Alternatively, you can do it in proportion to you are getting from the adsense block. ie. if 5 links in adsense gets you 5K/mth charge 2K for that 2 additional links. The PR 6 links alone if on-topic/etc, is worth ~high hundreds-1K.

[vincevincevince]

There is also textlinkads who have an 'earnings estimate' tool that's fairly easy to use. See what kind of numbers they give you.