Forum Moderators: skibum
Initially I sold sitewide static text links (mainly for SEO) in the footer for $250/mo but I sold out (I sell a max of 10). I raised them up to the sidebar and raised the price to $500/mo and now, yet again, I have sold out.
I really thought that $500 per month was appropriate for links that don't get much direct traffic but are there primarily for SEO reasons. But now I'm stuck turning down new advertiser after new advertiser.
Based on my statistics, what do you feel is an appropriate price? How much would YOU pay to have a link on my site?
Thanks!
If I were you, I'd keep raising the prices until you no longer sell out. Alternatively, if you can figure out a way to do this, set up a monthly auction, with your current price as the starting point....
But now I am left with the problem of having just doubled my prices last month. With static text links, as I'm sure many here know, people like to keep them for a prolonged period of time, for SEO. Therefore, one of my selling points for prospective advertisers was: "we just raised the prices as we went through a growth spurt, don't worry, we won't raise them again anytime soon" I'm afraid that raising the prices at the end of each month is just going to make advertisers mad and feeling insecure.
I also don't like the idea of an auction because I was once very interested in advertising on a site but sole the reason I didn't was because I felt insecure with their auction-based system - I wanted something I could feel secure with and I really do want my advertisers to feel the same.
For example: It's better to have 100 people who will pay, say, $350, than 40 who will pay out $500.
I myself can't see putting that much ad money in one site.
For more ad space, perhaps you could have a classifieds page in your site for more ads, and advertise that on your homepage?
You better receive a small fee from a lot of people than a high fee from only a few. Think that people are reluctant to put $500 or $350 on a site. Only professionals do and they aren't too many
Just an advice. Try a discount period for 1-2 months with $100-200 and get the final decision afterwards
have a double rainbow day
At the same time, the suggestion that you sell additional spaces is a good one. The question you have to settle on is how you integrate them into your site--perhaps a "premium" links page that is linked to from your home page and all your top-level pages.
Consider your options...
Just base the rate for each specific forum based on traffic rates.
This would give u a large supply of links to sell (say 8 forums 5 links so 40 links to sell) without having too many links on each page.
Joeseph and interval, I think you guys misunderstood me. No matter how many links I offer, I keep selling out - people buy them all. The problem is not at all that I am having a problem selling!
hunderdown, I agree that it's important that I should stick to my commitment that I promised no price increase soon. I think a price increase every six months is reasonable.
From an advertising perspective, simply adding more ad space seems like a good solution. I think it's something I am going to seriously consider.
aleksl, unfortunately I already sold all the spots with the promise that the links are sitewide. I may, however, open up more ad space on a section-wide basis.
WSQuant - just what I was thinking ;) I am already selling section-wide and forum-wide "forum sponsorship" text links at a cost of $0.10 per forum thread.
The sitewides in addition to the forum-wides are all sold out! ... and there are over 180 forums!
Congrats.
It's like making $100/day on a site that should be generating $1000/day.
