Forum Moderators: skibum
Does it work better or worse than affiliate/ad programs?
How do you manage advertisors-- with a program, or just put their ads up in exchange for payment, etc...
I guess I'm looking for a basic beginner's page and info on starting to privately sell ad space. I currently just use Adsense and it works out well but I'd love to have a few private advertisors.
Set up a page that lists your rates for text / banners, whatever you want - set your fees so that you will get at least a little better than adsense, and you've nothing to lose.
Place a few links - "advertise here" - and see what happens - if nothing else it's handy for the idiots who say they want to advertise, but really want to con you into an affiliate program or scam or whatever - my page ends with "email your proposal to **; I'm open to offers, but please don't write unless you are serious; I am happy with adsense until a better offer comes along".
So every email I get that isn't a serious offer, gets a response which consists of the ad page URL ... eventually they give up. :)
I've got two nice little earners out of it, plus a few short term banner campaigns.
[edited by: Quadrille at 8:10 am (utc) on Sep. 20, 2006]
One more question: How do you decide on fair pricing?
So I can change an adsense block to a local ad across the whole site in one move.
I did get a rotating banner javascript thingy, but I've never had a taker, so that just gets used for my internal promotions - including "See your ad here!"
But it's really not worth dealing with very small items - to be time effective for me, I insist on a three-month deal (paid up front for first timers), and I have tight rules - no flash, no noises, no pop-ups, etc.
I don't get into long negotiations - the amounts we're talking just don't justify the time (my biggest 3-monthly check is a couple of hundred).
I learned early on that some will bargain endlessly to save a few pennies - constantly offering new combinations of ads, all non-standard.
Now, I just resend the URL, or say "Sorry, but I am very happy to stay with the adsense sevice if you don't like my prices" - and it's true. I am!
Or just look at similar sites? I found a site that gets about 70% of the traffic we get and charges $1,000/ month for a banner on the top! Seems like more than double what is fair...
It's fair if someone will pay it. The question is, does anyone actually pay that?
Five years ago, I discovered an interesting fact about "movie advertising" online. Several times per year, a marketing firm for a movie studio would come in and pay "full rate card" for advertising on movies sites for one week, to promote the release of a new movie. During the other 48-50 weeks every year, those sites would earn a tiny fraction of that amount by running ads from various networks.
Advertising rates are established by the agreement of the buyer and the seller, period. If they agree on a high price, fine. If they agree on a low price, fine. If they can't agree on a price, that's life.
I am currently working for a small, new merchant that sells stuff online. We offer an affiliate program, and we also buy advertising. In the past several weeks, I've discovered dozens of web sites that have "rate cards" commanding $3.00 to $12.00 per 1,000 adviews for advertising. Yet I can run a Google AdWords "site-targetted" campaign with my ad appearing on that same web site for $0.25 per 1,000 adviews. In most cases, the performance is so poor even at that rate that I terminate the "site-targetted" campaigns. (I also run pay-per-click campaigns on Google AdWords, and those ads appear in the same AdSense ad spaces on the same sites.)
What is advertising worth? Whatever someone agrees to pay you for it.
Clearly, if your sites are big earners, then you can justify increased time and effort into tweaking your rates and plans to maximise your income.
I'm in the lucky position of being in niches where it's all small beer - and everything is a bonus ;)
Your mileage, as they say, will vary!
