Forum Moderators: skibum
We have a website that has been building nicely over the last 3 years. Maybe we did this bass ackward but here we are. We specialize in DIY advice and advice to professionals all in the home improvement field. Here are some of our stats.
Monthly Statistics for May 2003
Total Hits 2312819
Total Files 1170772
Total Pages 65187
Total Visits 27766
Total KBytes 7862017
Total Unique Sites 19680
Total Unique URLs 1342
Total Unique Referrers 1551
Total Unique Usernames 1
Total Unique User Agents 1899
. Avg Max
Hits per Hour 3108 8085
Hits per Day 74607 100715
Files per Day 37766 52250
Pages per Day 2102 2711
Visits per Day 895 1165
KBytes per Day 253613 343473
We are trying to establish what our pricing for adspace should be. We are of national interest and get a smattering of international traffic.
We would appreciate any assistance. Thanks in advance.
Ad prices vary wildy depending on the market and competition for ads. With those stats, one site might be able to charge $100 while the same traffic in another niche might only be able to charge $5. A lot will come down to how much your advertisers are willing to pay.
Here are some other threads where we have recently discussed charging for advertising:
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
Another option to consider is the new Google AdSense program, since it targets content sites.
Besides, your biggest competitor just might be a member of these boards, and you have just given him or her a great deal of information on your site's popularity ;)
There will also be a difference in what you can charge if you are strictly a content site, or if you are also selling products as well. Content sites are much easier to solicit advertising for.
Now that the cat's out of the bag what dou you think of those stats?
In one niche, those stats might be absolutely phenomenal that no other competitor can compare to, another niche your stats might be ho-hum, and in yet another, those same stats could get you the response of "you think you can charge for ads with those measly stats?" It is really dependent on so many factors that no one here can really say one way or another.
Check and see what your competitors charge for ads, and then scale your rates depending on their traffic (or your best estimate of their traffic) to yours. This will give you the best starting point, because you should be comparable to what others charge.
jenstar has pointed you in the irght direction, however can you elaborate on what advertising format you are looking at:
banners
text links
site sponsorship
email newsletter
?
also have you considered Google Adsense to get a feel for the industry and its advertisers, also Overture are out there with a similar product which may well be worth looking at.
Shak
Thanks for the homework hints, I'll be back. :)
one site might be able to charge $100 while the same traffic in another niche might only be able to charge $5.
When you say that do you mean per day, per month or per click? We are still thinking Banner ads only.
If you can get $100 per thousand banner impressions that would be revenue of $650 per month. I doubt you'd be able to get a deal that good though even selling directly - and of course selling directly will incur overhead costs that will eat into that revenue pretty quickly.
Depending on your industry, adsense PPC text ads can actually pay quite nicely. There is a bit of competition for ad space relating to tile products so I would expect you to make around $0.19 per click if you run the 486x60 banners.
Your average visitor is only sticking around to read 2.3 pages of content - which may be good or bad depending on how your site in intended to operate. From a perspective of selling ad space it can be good, since people wanting to leave your wesbite may well choose to do so via an ad.
Now I don't know all that much about your audience, but I suspect that they would be looking for tips, project sheets, etc on your site as part of a purchasing process. Once they figure out what they need then their next step will be to go and buy it. This should result in a pretty good click-through rate. If you can get as high as 5% then that would be revenue of $650 per month.
On the other hand, if your readers are not in a state to buy - or they WERE, but leave your site without a project in mind, your CTR could be much lower - like say 0.5% - which would leave you with only around $65 per month.
They look like webalizer stats to me? 20,000 uniques per month for me evaluates to about $2,800 in advertising/affilaite revenue.
Grow the traffic and you grow the revenue proportionally.
I work on 13 to 14 cents per visitor, which is approximately the same as webalizer shows as "sites".
These numbers are based upon selling someone else's product. If you are selling your own prodcut the numbers could be much higher depending upon margins.
