Forum Moderators: skibum
I run a website on which retailers of certain types of widgets and widget-related items can advertise their retail stores, their online stores, etc. These retail stores pay just $10 a month for having a full page of advertising about their stores on the site.
On this site, I have individual pages for every model of widget from the major widget manufacturers. I contact the major manufacturers and get their written permission to use the photographs and descriptions of their products on my site. It's free advertising for them, and only the most dim bulbs would see it otherwise.
The majority of traffic to my site comes from people searching for "Acme Model X15 Widget."
Traffic to my site is now at 150,000+ visitors a month (using AWStats) to 250,000 a month (using LiveStats).
Months ago, a very small widget manufacturer approached me about running a banner ad on all of the pages on my site that show his widgets. After a bit of trial-and-error, he's now getting about 400 clicks per month from my site through his banner to his site.
If he wants to continue, I'm thinking that 15 cents per click--based upon the past three month's performance--would be a reasonable rate.
However, the majority of manufacturers whose products I feature on my site receive many more page views than this small widget manufacturer. Some manufacturers have ten times as many page views, others even twenty times as many, others thirty times as many.
That leads me to believe that even one manufacturer could get 4,000 to 8,000 click-through's monthly from my site to their online stores that sell t-shirts, hats, and other related paraphanelia.
My question is this: do you think that the traffic levels I've described, and the estimated click-through rates for the larger manufacturers are sufficient for me to approach those manufacturers?
Any suggestions are much appreciated.
Your greatest obstacle would be in their being too big and would not be interested in dealing on individual basis with publishers, and would instead refer you to their CJ or similar network.
But it is worth a try, just word and package your offerings well.
Good luck.
Also - if you turned your banner into a text link that says "buy widgets here" you'll probably get 3-5 x as many clicks...good luck
Hobbs, I've had to deal with varying levels of bureaucracy in getting permission to use images and so on. At some manufacturers, I call one person and that's it. At others, I have to go through several people, including the legal department.
gamb, right now I have 300 stores on my site, although many are still on the free trial period. Since I started calling stores to pay to renew a few months ago, I've had roughly 100 pay.
I have approximately 1,000 pages with individual models from the major manufacturers, and I'll be adding more soon.
Your idea of a text link is something I hadn't considered. If it were at the top of each product page, and were in an eye-catching color, that just might boost the number of clicks.
There's one marketing manager who usually takes my calls. I'll have to sound him out on this idea.
Is there a click-tracking software program you're aware of that works on a Mac? I have a PC, but it's a bit old and slow.
