selling ads on web site

looking for kind of recent thread about this

[Trisha]

Recently I saw a great thread about this, but now I can't find it. I could have sworn it was it on Webmaster World and that it was in this forum, but I've looked all over and can't find it now.

Anyway, the thread I saw went into quite a bit a detail about the numbers of visitors you need to be able to attract advertisers, software to use, etc. If I remember correctly the focus was on what to do to be able to present yourself/site in a professional manner to potential advertisers.

I ask because an organization I'm involved with wants to have ads on their web site. But someone is hosting their site for free and they don't have access to log files and I really doubt that the site gets much traffic. Most likely they can get some advertisers interested though because it is a local business related site and they are interested in local advertisers. Still, I think the prices they were proposing, flat monthly rates, were too high. I was hoping to re-read the thread I saw before and give them more realistic information about it.

If someone remembers this particlar thread - I'd appreciate it if you could post the link to it. Or if you can answer any of these questions yourself also.

Thanks!

[vibgyor79]

Trisha, even if you don't have access to log files, you can still find out about the amount of traffic you are getting. Just sign up for web-based statistics services like SiteStats.com or DK3.com. Both of them offer these services for free.

Once you implement this, you will get an idea about your site's unique hits, pageviews, visitor country and so on. In addition to this, run a survey on your website and collect user demographic information like male/female ratio, their incomes, their educational qualifications (grad, post grad, college etc) and so on.

Once you have this data, create a Media Kit for your advertisers. The media kit should explain -

1) Your website's description and its target audience.
2) User demographics and site statistics
3) Ad Specs and rate card (What type of ads will you be accepting? Banner ads? Sponsored links? Newsletter advertisement? How will you be charging your customers? On a CPM basis? Monthly fee?)

Since you mentioned this is a local business site, you should probably make a hard copy of your "media kit" and send it across to your prospective clients.

[Trisha]

Thanks vibgyor79!

I finally found the original thread I was looking for, it was on a different site. Only it was 2 years old. I'm going to start a new thread to see if anyone thinks that information is really outdated or not.