Hey everyone,
Would love to hear some thoughts on how to price ad spots on a website, especially when it’s a new website.
A bit about my upcoming site:
Niche audience
domain been around since 2006, got rebranded in 09 to my current industry and now i got other industry professionals to write for me (we will release it to public within a week or so) So there is se traffic, not much though.
I will start with affiliate ads and use stats from that to sell ads to advertisers and once traffic builds up it will be easier to sell.
But how do i price my ad spots right now, in the beginning, if advertisers contact me?
@Jun,
Thanks for your reply. There’s not much traffic once the site launches. Here’s some info:
Alexa traffic rank is about 3 million.
CJ says that from Nov 1 to Dec 31, I tried to write more to build up search engine traffic during this time, my ad impressions were almost 9,000 and CTR was 0.52%.
Google Analytics for the same period: 900 visitors, 1300 pageviews.
It’s not much, but once I launch the new platform with several writers I can build upon what I already have there. I will focus on increasing traffic and it will go up.
But, advertisers might contact me asking about ads and I want to be ready. What’s the best approach?
Should I charge per specific time period (ex: per 7 days)? With low impressions and CTR I don’t think I can effectively sell ads based on this criteria yet.
Would really appreciate some feedback and info. Thanks.
Since you have a lower traffic, I better advise to sell ads per impression and not per day period. Sell only per period once your traffic is stable. There are some free script to use for pay per impression ads…
Hey,
Thanks for advice. I guess I was wrong to think that selling days is better than impressions with low traffic in the beginning. I got OIO Publisher, which is nice for WP site.
What would you recommend for start with my traffic numbers? Not much resources on how to do that out there, at least I haven’t seen any.
Check out what would be the average CPM that the top-tier ad networks offer and ask for twice the amount.
For example, if banner ads fetch 40cents per 1000 impressions, ask for 99 cents.
As for the static text-link ads, that depends on your niche AND on your buyer. If the buyer is pharma/gambling/ or exactly your niche, charge double of what a typical site with your traffic, backlinks and PR charges.
A friend’s blog was offered $200/year for a 250x250 box space and he grabbed it right away. Someone just emailed him and he said ok. Then he put the ads and after a couple of days he got $200 on his paypal account. His Alexa is about 250k and traffic is about 200 visitors per day. That $200 isn’t bad considering his traffic stats.
