I am launching a news blog and it has a lot of content. I dont know what advertising I should put on there. At a guess I was thinking: Adsense & some type of banner adds. What do you guys suggest I put on there? My second question is what would be a fair price to pay someone to put those bits on the site? Thank you in advance for your help
AdSense is a "pay per click" (PPC) program, where you earn money each time one of your readers clicks on a Google-served ad. Since you earn money on clicks, rather than completed sales, PPC ad networks can provide a more reliable source of income for sites whose readers are not looking to make a purchase right away.
It depends from your blogs' quality. In these cases I often advise AdBrite and Fidelity Media. But you should understand if your sites have illegal content then ...I think you understand
The site is about current affairs in European Politics. Eventually I think it would be good to do some affiliate marketing on the site. But to begin with just some sort of adsense and some banner adds would be good.
Your focus should be on building the site's popularity. Advertising will come as a result of that, so do not waste/focus too much of your time into advertising. For now, proceed with a few adsense blocks. Check out affiliate programs in the same niche.. newspaper or iPad news subscriptions and so on. Once you start getting consistent traffic then create a few more adblocks or replace the existing ones for new paying advertisers. In regards to how much to charge, it basically depends on the niche's overall standards. Use adwords to get a fair idea on the niche and the CPC advertisers are paying and based on that you can frame your pricing.