Hi there, I just register to this forum to try to find some more info about selling ads on my website. Three years ago I crated an archaeology/travel related website which has now reached a Google PR5 and it gets around 300-600 unique visitors every month. I have never put any banners or ads or paid links on it. It only has 9 pages (one of them is the links page with 23 free links to related websites). I simply made the website, promote it and I updated it a couple of times per year. Recently out of the blue I had an e-mail from a SEO working on behalf of a charter airline offering me 50 Euros a month to place an advertisement on my website. I never thought about selling space on the website for advertising, it is not what the website was made for and I feel that ads would look ugly on the website, but 600 Euros per year is not a small amount of money. I said to the SEO chap that I will think about it... What do you suggest? Can I really make reasonable amount of money from putting ads or paid links on it? Thanks in advance for your replies Regards Nectarios
If you are only getting 300 to 600 visitors a month, that advertiser will lose his money. It's according to the look of the site and the product, but on average only one half to, maybe, 2% of a site's visitors click on ads. And 2% is REALLY pushing it. Then when those few goes to the advertiser's site, that advertiser then has to be able to sell them. On average it is like, maybe 1 out of 100 that he can sell to. So, do the math to see that he would lose his shirt. Unelss he has a very high-ticket item. As an advertiser myself I only approach sites that have at least daily visitors in the 3 digits. It's the only way to see any kind of money, becasue so few click on ads, and then I have to try to sell them when they get to my sites. If you are an honest guy, you will first tell him that is all you get, and let him decide from there.
I would offer advertising as an option and work on getting more visitors. You can raise your rates as you get more traffic. Advertising is not entirely about immediate dollar conversions but it's a nice thought. People can sign up for newsletters which are free and that is where an advertiser really makes the hard sell. So you don't really need a ton of traffic to sell inexpensive advertising, but I would get your traffic up as much as you could because you can charge more.
If someone is offering to pay 50 euros on a 300 - 600 UV mo site then take it. My site has 4,500 UV mo and guitar lesson targeted traffic and I want something similar. But then again he may just be buying PR.