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I was curious how I can go about finding companies to advertise on my site. Do any of you have suggestions?
Some of the questions I have are:
How do I find people to advertise?
How do I convince them that my site is the place to advertise?
What information will they want to know?
What is a good price? (Not much competition to go by)
What kind of reports should I setup?
If I have rotating header banners (468x60), what is the top number I should have rotating? (I figure 3)
Thank you in advance for your help! If you need any clarification on these questions, please let me know :)
So one thing at a time: first work on building your traffic, link building and quality content.
If you're dying to have some ads run on your site, you can get your feet wet by using Google Adsense or Adbrite, or maybe look for affiliate banners you can put on your site. Sign up with one of the affiliate websites (CJ, clixgalore, etc) and there will be many banners to choose from (these often pay a commission on products sold).
hope that helps,
Phil
I should have added in the post that I have been using AdSense on the site for 2 years now and that I get over 15k unqiue visitors a month. I currently offer advertising for $150/month to $100/month.
I have to admit, my media kit isn't the greatest. It is mostly text explaining my stats but maybe I should put some graphs or something. What do you usually want to highlight in your media kit / advertising page?
My site gets between 150,000 and 200,000 visitors a month. Of these, 40% are repeat visitors. The average number of page views per visitor is roughly five, and the average amount of time spent on the site is a bit over four minutes.
I currently have one banner advertiser on the site, and that advertiser is only on 17 pages of the more than 1,600 pages I have on the site. I should note that these pages feature that advertiser's product. Also, those pages are not the most-often visited on the site.
Last year, the advertiser offered me $600 for banner ads on those pages for all of 2006. I agreed to that price, as it worked out to roughly 11 cents per click. Not the best deal, but not the worst.
This year the advertiser wants to be on 85 of my 1600+ pages, and is offering to pay $2400 for all of 2007. I still consider that to be a fair price.
I've run banner ads for other advertisers on the remaining pages, but the CTR wasn't anywhere near what the above-mentioned advertiser is getting. Even though his pages aren't visited often, his banner ads have a CTR of nearly 5%. And his marketing firm is telling me that the conversion rates from my site are better than those from other sites they advertise on.
Right now I'm at the point where I'm considering selling my own product(s) using banner ads on the site, as it seems like the only way to really monetize the traffic I'm getting.
I have to say my click through rates are not as high as yours, however, one of the advertisers on my website has their 1-800 number on there and it does get customers. I think it mainly depends on the ad and how it attracts clicks. The ads I place on my site are on every page and still its a fairly low CTR.
Where do you display your ads? Ontop of each page or do you put them within content of your site?
IOW, the people who click on his banner ads are people who are already interested in his brand of product.
On top of that, his banner ads promote a "click here for a free catalog" offer.
I've experimented with running his ads all across my site, and the CTR rate drops to almost nothing.
I've tried running banner ads for a magazine that caters to the people who are interested in my site's topics. The magazine is one of the best-known in the US for this particular sport.
The CTR was .03%.
I also tried running banner ads for a retailer who sells these sporting goods at bargain prices. It was an affiliate program, and I was supposed to get a percentage of the profit. Well, $65 a month for a run-of-the-site banner ad is not satisfactory. Not when I have 150K+ visitors and nearly one million page views per month.
The reason that my current successful banner advertiser is doing so well is that he's advertising on pages that feature his products, and that the people who visit those pages are particularly interested in his products, and he's offering a free catalog.
I have on my site some 1000+ pages from other manufacturers of the same type of sporting goods. All of these manufacturers have better brand recognition and much higher sales than the manufacturer I've been mentioning.
They also have online stores that sell accessories, such as hats, t-shirts, jackets, etc that have their logo on them. They also sell parts and performance-enhancing products. These products sell very well in retail stores.
I've approached a few of the marketing people at these companies, and have offered them all sorts of trial runs, with banner ads that direct visitors to their clothing/accessory sites.
But they shut me down every time by saying that they're really not all that interested in the performance of their online stores.
They're either just trying to get me off the phone, or they're stupid enough to spend money on online stores that are not focused on generating sales.
The owner of my current banner advertising company is very astute. He owns one of the smallest companies in his niche, but he spends a far greater amount on catalogs, etc than do most of his competitors.
If I could get just a handful of like-minded advertisers, life would be good.
I am in the same boat. I am waiting for those advertisers. I have had two advertise already and one has not contacted me back about renewal. The other is away so I will see what happens when he gets back.
I would like to increase CTR as much as I can. At the same time, I don't want those ads taking up room that gives me income from AdSense.
Unfortunately, I can't run Adsense on my site since the retail stores that advertise on my site sell a prohibited product (guns).
The best banner ads are those that offer something for free. Unfortunately, those kind of advertisers are especially difficult to find.
I would like to also get some banner advertisers as it increases monthly income :)
I would also like to increase my AdSense revenue but I don't know what else I can do to increase earnings.
On my site, I get about three times your CTR, and I don't exactly shove the ads in people's faces. If I did I could get it higher, but I try to balance the look of the site against the earnings....
On every page I have the AdSense code on the right hand side. I have also placed ads inside product descriptions.
I know the right side isn't the best but it will have to do as my website was not designed for AdSense.
I do run a forums which I'm sure lowers my CTR. I recently placed AdSense ads above and below the first post. If you like, PM me and I will give you the URL for my site. I'm always looking for more suggestions on improving my CTR. :)
Can anyone point me in the right direction? I also need information on cost, types of advertising ect.....
my website is at <edited>
I just started it last week, but I no and have nothing to gauge on wether I am getting poor, average, or good amount of hits. If someone knows anything about this market, or can steer me to the answer, I would really appreciate it, Untill then I am tangled in the web., Thanks,
Valerie
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[edited by: tedster at 4:41 am (utc) on Nov. 23, 2006]
