Music site

[peregil]

Im a newbie regarding advertising and banners.

I have just started a site targeted towards guitar players. It is a search engine for lyrics with guitar chords.

After a month I got 1500 unique visitors and about 25.000 page views a day. I expect the numbers to double in the next couple of months.

I want some banners on the pages. Preferrably adds related to music. The adds should not be too intrusive.

I have two questions for you:
* How much can I expect to earn on these banners?
* How should I go about selling this advertising space? Affiliate program? Exclusive deals? In short: Where should I start?

Regards,

Per

[korkus2000]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld peregil,

Banners in this industry don't do real well. You have a highly targeted audience. You need to find programs that will work well with this audience. Music industry sites are hard to convert. I would look at guitar related sites and see what they are doing.

[red_bull]

If I was you I would be looking more towards text ads. In general they generate more click throughs than banners. Going by your traffic figures if I was going to use banners I would be looking to sell on a cpm basis.
CPC just doesnt work all the time for the web site owners.

I find that a lot of companies who advertise on a cpc basis are not generaly looking for clicks, more to streighthen teir branding by having their site exposed. Some companies tend to use online advertising as a bill board.

[Grumpus]

Consider product tie-ins - sheet music, instruction/technique manuals, biographies of great composers/songwriters, CD's, instructional videos, etc. It takes a bit of work to get someone seeking free chords and lyrics and convert them to buyers, but it can be done - especially if you get some loyalty. The next time they ARE looking to buy something, they might come in and get it from you.

Consider spending some time building something that will tie into your database directly. Amazon's web services program would be good for this and if done right, it could convert very well. There are tons of other options out there, as well.

G.

[peregil]

Thanks a lot for useful responses.

My other question was about how much I could expect to get on these ads (given the traffic figures above). I understand this is a terrible question to answer.

Im looking for a number to put in my budget, and am really a newbie here...:-) Im more wondering like "how many zeroes?".

It would give me a hint whether it is worth spending a lot of time finding a good advertising deal for a site with relatively few visitors.

Thanks..:-)

[hobbnet]

It's really impossible to answer. If you do it wrong the amount of money you make could be one big fat zero ;). If you do it right you could have a few zeroes in there. Just play around with different advertising programs and see what works best for you.

[freejung]

Have you considered music posters? PostersFast has music posters, a 20% commission, and a 60-day cookie, which is a pretty good deal. I don't have any experience with them, however.