Advertising...

[jizbot]

When can you say that your site is ready to begin placing advertisments onto?

and when you do begin advertising for others, where do you begin?

I have heard about getting paid for impressions, click thrus, and commissions.

I am more interested in impressions than any other but havent been able to find out much about the affiliate programs that offer CPM.

Can I get some input on this from you guys?
which do you think is better? CPC or CPM?

[mjames]

I'd say a good point is 10,000 page views a month. You don't want to start too early, but again, you don't want to be losing potential revenue.

[TWTCommish]

I think the answer, like the question, would have to be a little vague. From what I understand, SitePoint doesn't bring in as much traffic as you would expect from the obviously high amount of revenue they generate. I attribute this to their visitors being particularly loyal...IE: quality over quantity.

I definetly prefer to be paid by impressions. As for advertising: I'd accept it as soon as I felt that my site conveyed a professional image to advertisers and had launched...I must just slap some BurstNet/Advertising.com banner up there and swap it for something else once approached.

[Aidan Bahta]

CPM is a lot safer. With CPC you rely on your visitors clicking your banners. CPM guarrantees you payment. You can depend on CPM.

[TWTCommish]

Absolutely. The click-thru rates have been dropping steadily for quite a long time now...only highly targetted banner ads through tracking buying habits and other such things have kept the advertising dollars flowing. I'd rather take potentially less money by going with CPM...it's safer.

[jizbot]

sounds good

thanks for the advice guys

[webtipzcom]

check out banner advertising websites and you will find out how much you need for getting in certain programs.

for example burstmedia.com requires 5000 page impressions per month for getting into their program, others like advertising.com offer programs with no restrictions but the pay out is much more less (only click through rates),

rgds,
markus
http://www.webtipz.com/

[westmich]

You may want to consider a banner exchange like http://www.bcentral.com until you reach a level where you can start charging. Beware, though, managing banners can be overwhelming. You may want to use third party like double-click to manage banners for you.

To learn more, start with forums here dedicated to promotion.

[oodie]

For banner exchange, I use http://www.exchange-it.com and like it. I get quite high CTR (1.4% - 1.5%) for all banners I rotate. I also hear other people get high CTR with them.

[mjames]

Originally posted by westmich
You may want to consider a banner exchange like http://www.bcentral.com until you reach a level where you can start charging. Beware, though, managing banners can be overwhelming. You may want to use third party like double-click to manage banners for you.

To learn more, start with forums here dedicated to promotion.

Exactly. Good point. That's what I would recommend to very low traffic sites - until they get more traffic.