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March 14th, 2010 
Ifydcat 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.
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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.
Definately charge more for the size of the banner and position of the banner. ie- top page banners should be top price. If you are searching for companies wishing to advertise, let each company bid for each position. This way you will not lose. As your website becomes more popular with more viewers increase to the price you want. Companies will notice other companies success and be more willing to bid higher or pay the higher price.
Just do some research posing as a potential company wanting to advertise to get some ballpark prices.
Based on all the questions here, everyone wants it for free.
I charge them 29 dollors for a month
Advertising rates generally depend on four things: the demographics of your visitors, number of unique visitors per day, the location of the ad (above the fold or below the fold) and/or Google PageRank. Selling your own advertising is a pain to do and a pain to manage. I would recommend instead using the space to host other ads through networks such as Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network or AdBrite. You earn money each time someone clicks on an ad on your site.
As someone that sells online advertising I can tell you this is a tightrope.
The first thing you need to do is make sure you have accurate traffic information on your site. The more historical data you can provide the better. Things you will want to see are…..
1. who are your top refferring sites to your site
2. how many pages does each visitor on your site look at
3. total number of page views per day/month/
My personal opinion on the online gaming industry is it is fairly shady. Not that there are not some reputable companies out there but people will try to take advantage of you if you don’t know what your doing.
This industry will want to force you into an affilliate program where you advertise and only get paid a fee or percentage when clients sign up.
I would recommend that when the companies contact you about ads you either find someone who knows what they are talking about to do the deals for a commission or get some plain english no nonsense contract in place. You should require a quick payment plan and understand that there are a ton of gaming sites so be patient.
Depending on your traffic level you may be able to even sell an exclusive sponsorship to one of the big companies.
Time is not on your side considering that the US Gov is trying to make this illegal.
Some things to consider –
Companies would probably prefer Text links to banners.
If you could offer editorial content on some of the different gaming sites and success stories from gamblers would be great
If you have millions of page views you have room to try things out on 30 or 60 day contracts.
Do whatever you can to get a high google page ranking 8 of 10 or better.
It really depends upon the traffic of your website, click-through-rate on ads, the subject of the website etc.
Maybe contextual advertising using Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network would be more beneficial as this way you will get paid per click and people can also advertise on your site via Google AdWords on paying by CPM (cost per thousand impressions).
Just charge according to your hard work and reasonable……