How much should I charge people for advertising on my website?

Question by The Great Sphinx: How much should I charge people for advertising on my website?
Hi,
I never sell advertising from my site. I constantly get people asking, maybe I should start.

My whole site will be redesigned soon. It needs to look a lot better, and the content needs to be updated.

The best thing about my site is that it ranks so high naturally (#1 on google and yahoo for “how to gamble”, and other key words.

If I ever did it, I would not put more than 5 or maybe 10 links on the home page.

Maybe, I could charge more for the size of banners?

Is there some kind of appraisal website that specializes in this stuff?

thanks.

Best answer:

Answer by imisidro
There are no websites that can appraise how much you can sell advertising spaces for. The only thing you can consider is how much the market is willing to pay, and your rate will depend on several factors:

- Who is your audience and how desirable is your audience to the advertisers? If your audience are techies or those who have the propensity to purchase higher-ticket items, then you can charge a higher price as compared to an audience of bird lovers.
What is the rate of comparative websites in your niche? You don’t want to overprice yourself out of the market yet you don’t want to undercharge as well.

- What is the rate advertisers are willing to pay in your site? You may charge $ 5 per CPM but if nobody’s taking you up on the rate even though you may get inquiries, then it could imply that advertisers may consider your rate too expensive. But if you charge $ 0.50 per CPM and advertisers are flooding in, then you may be too cheap and can afford to increase your rate.

- What is the CPM you get from other advertising vehicles? Do you run Google Adsense, and if so, what is your effective CPM rate with them? Or if you run banner ads through ad networks like Burst Media, Valueclick or Tribal Fusion, what is the CPM you’re getting? You can use those values to help you gauge your rate. It may not always work (e.g. if we use the CPM we get from Adsense, nobody’s ever going to advertise on our site because our Adsense CPM is too high) but it can give you an idea of what rate to use.

- What is the level of exposure the advertiser wants? You can lower your rate for an advertiser willing to sign a longer term contract, say for one year vis-a-vis an advertiser that signs up for only a month. You can also arrange for special rates if the advertiser is purchasing several advertising products from your site (e.g. advertiser wants to buy banner ads, text ads and newsletter sponsorship).

We are selling different ad spaces on my sites and we are a little on the high side of some similar types of websites, but our audience is attractive to advertisers and the traffic we are getting allows you to demand a higher rate than most.

My advise is to prepare your media kit — e.g. description of your audience, statistics on demographics, as well as rate card — then set a rate and see how it goes.

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