Which company to pick?

can't decide

[Benj]

Hi guys, I have a site getting 4,000 - 10,000 page views a day. I been working really hard on it since I started it 2 months ago. It's a really sticky site too with each visitor averaging 15 pages. Thanks to Brett, I've been able to get some good rankings on the search engines. I would like to start putting some form of advertising on it in the form of a banner and button.

Which company should I use? I've seen a lot of companies being used such as efront, burstnet, flycast, and many others. I'm also considering joining a network such as gamefan-network.com or ign.com which split the banner revenue with me in half.

Let me know what has worked best for you guys. If you guys need to take a look at my site just ask and I'll post it. Thanks.

[Brett_Tabke]

Burst or Flycast, it is a toss up. Burst is a bit more open and goes in more spurts. Flycast is a touch bigger, but I find they are asking a little too much of websites for my taste. I've stuck with Burst. They are pretty close - read the fine print and decide.

[rcjordan]

>I've stuck with Burst.

and I've stuck w/ Flycast

Brett's right, it's a toss-up. I DO like the ability to censor companies on FC, and (this may have changed) Flycast had a better online interface for publishers. But when it comes down to $$, there doesn't seem to be much difference. My only caution is to stay away from all of the cheesy brokers promising everything and delivering little --this business is populated by snake-oil salesmen.

[2_much]

Excuse my ignorance but I've never heard of these companies before nor do I know what "banner and button" advertising consists of. Is Benj referring to allowing companies to place their banners on his index page, and they will pay him for this? If somebody would do a short, quick, "banner and button advertising" summary for dummies that would be great. Or, better yet, if somebody could refer me to a place where I can read about this, that would be fabulous.

Thanks!
2M

[rcjordan]

>Is Benj referring to allowing companies to place their banners on his index page, and they will pay him for this?

Yes, but not necessarily on his index. I have banners flying on nearly every page of my sites that the public uses. I'll try to find a resource for you, but for now, start with some of the terms in our ad glossary [webmasterworld.com].

[Benj]

Thanks for all the helpful information guys. I think I'll try to join a network and if that doesn't work then I might go with Burst providing they can provide banners for my target audience which is 14-25. I don't think my audience would be interested in banners on financing, loans, business, and the like.

[DaveAtIFG]

Benj - If I need an affiliate or ad program, I always start my research at ClickQuick [clickquick.com]. They don't list them all but the information on the programs listed is accurate, timely, and contains more depth then most similar sites.
[marker rcjordan banner programs]

Edited by: rcjordan

[Brett_Tabke]

With ad networks like Burst or Flycast, you are going to have to take your run of network ads. It is the exception to get targeted advertising when you are just starting out.

[Benj]

Awesome, awesome, awesome DaveAtIFG, thanks for telling me about that site. I learned everything I need to know about the banner companies that are out there.

But now I have another question. After reading the information on that site it sounds like Pay-per-Lead my be a better deal than Pay-per-click or selling based on impressions. But I think it might be a bad idea since Brett is using Burst to sell based on CPM instead of using pay-per-lead. The same goes for a lot of other people here at Webmasterworld. Is pay-per-lead a bad idea?

[rcjordan]

For very targeted sites, pay-per-lead might pay out some respectable money (I know of at least one member of these forums that makes a very nice monthly income from PPL), but IMO, most sites just don't generate enough revenue from these programs.

[DaveAtIFG]

Benj - My main site (the second in my profile) gets similar traffic to yours, 8K-10K raw hits per day. Carefully selected pay-per-lead and affiliate programs work well for me, although I haven't tried pay-per-impression or pay-per-click, I did some estimates and didn't feel I had enough traffic.

Also, I'm sure someone will come to me with an attractive offer if I do have the traffic, everyone else has :)