Banner Advertising

sdarby · Share | #1 (**permalink**) 04-25-2012, 09:05 PM

Where do I start with creating a P&P on banner ads? Pricing, contract items to think about? Monthly pricing or a CPC fee structure. I have an advertising company in France with a French retail client interested in one of my sites for banner ads. My site is run in WordPress so setting it up wouldn't be a headache and the client fits the theme of the site just fine. My worry is that I do NOT get much traffic to it but with the addition of someone actually paying to advertise on it I'd have to really start posting on it on a regular basis (proverbial kick in the pants to DO something with a 4 yr old domain).

I really need to know where to start, questions to ask and how to proceed.

BTW the domain is www.books-music-more.com but unfortunately in the process of updating plugins today its down... grrrrr same plugin updates worked on some of my sites and not others for whatever mysterious reason!

Anyway, any help, questions, suggestions or ideas are welcome!

Sue Darby

**snakeair** · #2 (**permalink**) 04-25-2012, 09:13 PM

For my wordpress blog, I bought OIO publisher a few years ago when they was in beta and i love this advertising platform. It's a one time payment of $47 to get this software for your blog with lifetime updates and lifetime support.

The admin panel is easy to figure out. Contact the owner to ask some pre-sales question. Since you don't have a ton of traffic, i'm not going to mention other advertising platforms.

Check out the demo's.

http://www.oiopublisher.com/
http://www.oiopublisher.com/faq.php

sdarby · #3 (**permalink**) 04-25-2012, 09:47 PM

I'm more worried about what to charge for space per month than how to get it on the site right now! but that looks like something to definitely keep in mind if this little project goes through!
Thanks!

**snakeair** · #4 (**permalink**) 04-25-2012, 09:52 PM

Figuring out a price is the hard part. You don't want to be to expensive to scare people off but don't want to be to cheap to scare people off.

I'd say go with $xx per month or xx amount of day's. If your blog has a good amount of unique traffic and PR people will pay whatever price you set it as. I'm not the type of guy to give an exact number to charge. I've changed my price's every few months in hopes of more people taking the bait.

sdarby · #5 (**permalink**) 04-25-2012, 10:00 PM

I have an actual active inquiry so I'm looking for a jumping off point to start.... $60/mo or 0.05 per click or something... dunno and it's driving me crazy! Well actually they are requesting a monthly fee so I'm really trying to figure it out based on that and one of the sizes listed 160x600, 240x400, 300x250, 336x280, 468x60, 728x90 on every page of the site... I really dunno what to start with for a formula... hmmm wonder if I should go build the various banner sizes to see what they look like and build a fee structure from that?

I'm hoping someone knows more about this than I do!

Thanks!

**snakeair** · #6 (**permalink**) 04-25-2012, 10:04 PM

Hmmm. How about for the bigger ad blocks, you raise the price and for smaller blocks the price is lower or depending in how much the block is shown.

FYI, I'd go with a flat fee per month.

125x125 = $9.95 (only size i offer on my blog but my price is different)
250x250 = 12.95
300x250 = 15.95

...etc

I'm not saying use those prices but make them different depending on the location. People will pay the big price for a prime location.

sdarby · #7 (**permalink**) 04-25-2012, 10:19 PM

OK that makes some sense.... I'll have to get my site fixed, look at the regions I can put banners and which sizes and go from there for prices. Dang it's a lot to think on....esp in the middle of the work week! Yipe! At least I now have a jump off point!

For now I'm going to build the box sizes a banner would fit in, play with location/size combos and go from there with price....

And now it's bedtime!

masm50 · #8 (**permalink**) 04-26-2012, 04:13 PM

Flat prices are definitely an easy way to sell your ad space to advertisers, then you don;t get too caught up with setting frequency caps, geotargeting, and other things that just aren't worthwhile with a relatively small site. Definitely don't bother selling directly to advertisers on a CPC basis - it just isn't worth the effort.

The general rule I go with for setting prices is to work out how much you would get by putting AdSense (or whichever ad network works best for you) in that ad spot and then doubling it. That is your minimum price (and round it up to an integer).

Once you start selling at those rates then the market will decide when to put your prices up - if you are sold out of inventory you can put the price up, but if your rates become too high you will have inventory spare.

I wrote a little guide to selling ads directly to advertisers on AdBalance:
http://www.adbalance.com/selling-ads...o-advertisers/

sdarby · #9 (**permalink**) 04-27-2012, 02:03 PM

Here's the big problem, the site is one I have for fun and I've never "gotten around" to setting up AdSense so I really don't' have that metric to use as a benchmark. This site barely has a handful of articles on it! I may have the beginnings of something and now I'm trying to work up P&Ps on the whole thing. I really don't have a clue how it'd work from my end nor how tracking or payment even will happen!

The site is neglected and leftover from college assignments and now it's about to be the focus of my business world.. at least for a while... although if I can get this running it'll become more than my focus... it'll be my income stop gap!

So far I have:

Horizontal Banner
Small - $40 mo
Large - $80 mo

Vertical Banner
Short Medium - $60
Tall Large - $80

Square
Medium - $90
Large - $120

BUT I don't have that listed at top, bottom, sides, home page only or all pages either! I may just start with this and then later on change the TOS as I get more advertisers....heh I hope! Honestly, I'd be really happy if I could get my page views up to the triple digits.... seriously....even half way to the triple digits would make me happy right now! LOL

Well I'm going to write up and send off the proposed rates along with a who, what, when, where, how and why type basic contract to see what happens next!

Any more suggestions I'm all "eyes"! ;-)

qhoster · #10 (**permalink**) 04-30-2012, 10:07 AM

For selling ads space you better check OpenX Ad server solution. It is open-source so it is free to instal. All you need PHP and MySQL to be enabled on your hosting. It will server the ads and track the clicks/impressions. You may take part in some ad network as well like buysellads.com but you need to pay some commission there. Good luck.