Over the past few days I’ve had a number of bloggers email asking for advice on how much to charge for advertising on their blogs. I thought I’d open the question up for some discussion.
How much would you charge for advertising on your site?
Of course the answer would vary depending upon traffic, topic, ad type – but let me throw out a couple of ‘hypotheticals’ – well they are actually real life examples from the readers emails.
a) an established site (blog and discussion forum) with 45,000 unique visitors per month (1500 per day) on a niche topic with loyal readership which is growing. How would you determine how much to charge for a banner (468 x 60) across the whole site?
b) a blog with a page rank of 5 with daily traffic levels of 500 unique visitors – mainly coming from Search Engines. How much would you charge for a text link high on the side bar with a title/link and a short description.
c) blog with 10,000 impressions per day looking to sell a variety of ads including the two above (banner and text) as well as skyscraper ads.
So how would you determine how much to charge for advertising? What factors would you consider, what is a reasonable rate to ask? I have my own ideas which I’ll be happy to share once we’ve had a bit of discussion – but I’m interested to know how others make these kinds of decisions. Feel free to contribute below as you feel you’d like.
Sometimes its trial and error, but at the end of the day if you are charging too much people won’t pay. I’ve found that sometimes its better to keep the prices low and build relationships with advertisers that atleast guarantee a regular flow of income, as opposed to chasing the occasional quick buck with inflated ad prices.
One consideration is that many professional sites quote $1 CPM, so if your looking at say 50,000 views a month you’d be talking only $50. That’s the resistance I got at first because I think it underestimates the value of premium placement on niche and relevant blogs. Your return from Adsense can also be a guide, with the addition of a premium for graphic ads as opposed to text.
I cant disclose my last advertising placement rate, but I have sold a number of yearly packages previously and recently for $100 USD for the year, which I suspect under-rates their value (particularly given that its the same amount I charged successfully when traffic was 10,000 a month when its now 100,000) but I suppose I see it as easy, occasional pocket money.
I’m interested to see what others say, as bloggers we are often not online advertising professionals, and its not the easiest field to get right.
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Personaly, I think you people are strongly underestimating the power of online ads. Newspapers are still charging a ton of cash for meaningless ads, so us website developers need to stand up for ourselves and start charging much more. An online ad has way more potential per viewer than crumy newspapers, so let’s start using some sales skills and put together ad estimates for what we deserve.