Hobby turning profit?

[NavyCS]

I started a website about 2 years ago as a hobby to learn website design and marketing. I now get about 35500 unique visitors a month and about 5.4 pages per visitor. For the heck of it back in Feb 2006 I put Adsense on the site and average about $300 a month. Well, now I am getting emails from companies who want to place ads on every page of my site. I have about 1500 pages. Remembering I am learning this stuff on the fly and it is a hobby, what price should I charge without sounding like an idiot?

[hunderdown]

First of all, don't undercut yourself. Start high and drop your prices if they scream.

Would you replace your AdSense ads with the direct ads or put both on a page? Would you put multiple ads on a page? Here's what I'd do:

I have a somewhat similar site profile and I've been thinking about direct advertising. My suggestion would be to ask for what you are getting for AdSense to add an ad to a page. To replace the AdSense ads, charge more, say $500/month, on the grounds that you are giving that advertiser exclusive exposure--and a link that passes page rank.

For multiple ads on a page, charge less but make the total more than you'd get for one exclusive one. Say you have a 4-ad AdSense block and would replace it with a four-ad block of your own--charge $200/month for that.

And you could also break out your home page or highly trafficked other pages and charge just for them.

Think it through, write up a rate card with an explanation of the benefits of advertising on your site. Include traffic info. Send it out, and start talking.

(Can you easily modify all of your pages to add a top-of-page banner, for example? If you can't, then you may have to charge more, to take your labor into account.)

[NavyCS]

Wow, thanks for the information. I would keep Adsense and add whoever. The emails I have gotten so far in each case I asked Google for their input so I don't violate their TOS and of course I told the people who want to advertise that I will not remove the Adsense. In each case Google "approved" of the advertisement requests. I can change header/footer information very easy on most of my site so labor isn't that difficult or time consuming. Thank you again for the input, you have given me some ideas I before didn't even consider. I'll take this slow, I am really not in any hurry. Just retired from the Navy today after 26 years :)

[dickbaker]

NavyCS, I have a site with roughly the same number of pages. However, I get 150,000 to 200,000 visitors a month.

I currently have just one banner advertiser, and his banners only appear on 17 of the pages on my site. He gets an average of 600+ clicks per month for those page. For that he paid me $600 for all of 2006. That's not a lot, but it works out to about twelve cents a click.

For 2007, he wants to be on 85 pages of my site, and is willing to pay $2400.

Just FYI.

[mnemonik23]

You should charge at least $100/month for that (1 banner) ;)

[dickbaker]

mnemonik23, I'm assuming that your reply was directed to me.

As I've stressed in previous posts, this particular advertiser is ONLY getting a 5% CTR on the 17 pages that feature his products. He knows that, and I know that.

However, he and his marketing people want to expand to the 85 pages I mentioned. I can almost guarantee that he will not get anywhere near a 5% CTR on the additional pages. If he gets even 1%, I'll be surprised.

His products just don't generate that much interest in the niche my site serves.