Re: Generating income via ads

From: Michael Martinez <Michael_at_xenite.org>
Date: Fri 29 Dec 2000 13:28:07 -0500

DAILEY PIKE <dailey_at_webtv.net> WROTE:
> We've been online for six months and have built up a
> decent amount of traffic. About 100,000+ Visitor
> Sessions and 1,000,000+ hits a month for the last three
> months according to Webtrends.
>
> Here are the questions for you seers, sages &
> soothsayers. How can I generate income from
> advertisers? Am I delusional to think I'll be able to?
> Can I borrow a hundred dollars? Please answer the last
> question first.

Don't mean to sound blunt or condescending, so please
don't take this that way. Just put ad rates on your
site and see what comes in. I've been sick for over a
week and had to shelve most of my usual projects. So
I've been cruising Web sites (I have to sit up rather
than lay in bed, so I have to do SOMETHING). I've
been looking for ad rates on sites that take
advertising. Most don't put their rates on the Web.
Some actually tell you to contact a third-party.

Well, I've limited my inquiries to mostly sites which
really pique my interest. The rest, if they don't
tell me their rates up front, I move on.

And then there is the old CPM question, of course.
Some people are charging flat fees for a fixed period
of time. You go into the rotation and you get what
you get. I just paid $30 for three months' advertising
with an ezine that gets regular if not spectacular
traffic. Maybe part of the deal was sentimentality
for me. I wanted to help keep a good site going.

Some of the rates I've looked at have been outrageous.
People want $75 CPM on sites I wouldn't consider
paying $30 CPM for. I guess they get it, but they
won't get it from small-budgeted people like me.

Maybe this is a good time to open a dialogue on this
list for establishing some guidelines. How about the
following table. What do people here think?

In terms of page views per month:

100,000 $5 CPM
250,000 $10 CPM
500,000 $15 CPM
750,000 $20 CPM
1,000,000 $30 CPM
2,000,000 $50 CPM
3,000,000 $75 CPM

Okay, that's not a normal progression. But it
establishes a lower-bound (less than 100,000 page
views and it's not really worth anyone's trouble) and
an upper-bound (after 3,000,000 views sites probably
will have a lot of advertisers so they won't really
benefit from increased traffic anyway).

In terms of unique visitors per month:

100,000 $25 per month
250,000 $30 per month
500,000 $50 per month
750,000 $75 per month
1,000,000 $100 per month

Figure each unique visitor translates into 4 page
views. That may be too low a figure. But you're
getting 400,000 page views for $25, or $6.25 CPM. But
you're paying a flat fee for the month and there is a
chance the site will generate more traffic as the
month goes on. So the CPM could drop below $5.

Are these realistic numbers?

I guess the type of site should be taken into
consideration, too. Where are people most likely to
click on banner ads anyway?

Science Fiction and Fantasy info_at_xenite.org
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Received on Fri Dec 29 2000 - 12:28:07 CST