Need Some advice On Advertising

[futureX]

Hey guys, long time no speak, I was just looking for som advice on making revenue from one of my sites, I hve afew ides, but need some more info on my options...

I own a game related website related to gaming and I know that 99% of the visitors play computer games as the site is a resource site. I get around 40,000 - 60,000 pageviews a day from around 100,000 visitors a month.

I know games companies will be interested in advertising on the site, but how do I approach them? Or will they approach me? Do I need to make it more accessible to advertise?

At the moment I am running adsense and valueclick banners on the site, it still has to be seen how popular these are, because I have just redesigned and re-launched the site, but I would say I am generating around $2 a day at the moment (sub 1% CTR), which is ample, but with bandwidth usage of around 200Gb/month its not even enough to pay the hosting bills. Any strategies on better ad-servers that would incerease my earnings?

The site offers downloads, is there any way I could tie download links directly with a banner/popup payment rather than a click, by the amount of downloads I have per day it would amount to a lot :)

Thanks in advance for any advice

[edited by: eljefe3 at 2:35 am (utc) on Mar. 31, 2004]

[hitsusa]

Hey there,

Off the top of my head, I'd say you could move your download fiiles to a different server/website.

I do that for some of mine with large bandwidth usage from downloads.

At your other site, you can popup a page with desired advertising along with the download.

Customize the ads on the page to the download involved. I'm not saying to run a "banner farm" download page, but you shouldn't be running a deficit on baseline cost structure.

There are plenty of good hosting deals that can save you a ton on your current setup. I've seen some (no ads) with 50GB bandwidth for $7 a month.

Hits

P.S. - Hope you're an affiliate of the related sites that you're sending all that traffic to...

[SubZero]

I've been doing some research lately cause my son's are into anime and gaming. Sorry, i dont remember the site names, but if you do some searching, you'll find all kinds of japanese companies that do gaming and animes and offer affiliate programs. Since Japan is usually 6 months to a year ahead in the gaming and anime market, you'll probably come out way ahead in the U.S., since everyone will try to jump and be the first ones to get this stuff. also look into jpop or kpop music. there are a lot of fans here, but dont like to talk about it because people will think they're geeks. one even let me put a couple of banners on one of my sites. Good Luck,
SubZero

[edited by: eljefe3 at 3:11 am (utc) on April 5, 2004]