Hey Guys, I am a complete newbie - and am looking to you guys as Mentors. I have never ran a website before, but I am thinking of coming out with one for a class project. I got my inspiration from freerice.com I am a fan of the non-profit business model. Using the CPM rate to pay for a good to be donated to a charity. I am wondering if you guys could help answer some of the questions I have. Firstly, what do you think their CPM rate is? Or if they even use it, is it CPC? How do I sell space on my website once it is launched? Who is the best network to go to for CPM banners? Is 2 banners going to generate more money than 1? Perhaps a classic banner, skyscraper combo? I am delighted to hear all of your insight. Thank you
The only way you will be able to bring in any income from selling ads is to have decent traffic. Being a student in the local U, I know that younger people will most likely be your targeted traffic. Young adults these days in college feel like they are "enlightened" with the knowledge they gain and can help change the world (not making fun. I sometimes feel this way too). As for their CPM or CPC, I don't even see any ads on that site. I only briefly looked at the home page and can't see any forms of monetization at all. Maybe they sell links? I have no idea. I would love to know where the monetization comes from if you know otherwise. As for selling banners, I would think that buysellads.com would give you some insight to your banner questions. If I ran a non-profit website, I would throw up some Adsense. No contextual ads, but mainly those public service ads that they offer. We don't want your non-profit website appearing spammy or shady to your traffic and in my opinion, text ads make it seem that way. Another option I would consider is to sell adspace yourself. Have an advertising section in your site and that way you have control over what is being advertised in your banner or skyscraper or whatever you want to do. Take Paypal payments and charge them monthly. Simple as that . As for your question about how many banners you should have, if you are selling only one ad exclusively, it can cost more than 2 banners just because of the exclusivity of the adspace. However, it's all up to you on how to price the banner space. However, before anything can be implemented, you need traffic, traffic, and more traffic. I have been considering dipping into the non-profit business model as well, although I've been looking more into selling products than adspace. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
Thank you for such a thoughtful answer and touching on all the questions I had. From what I can see on Freerice.com there is a banner that loads underneath the trivia game after each question. I assume this is either CPM or CPC. The other question I had is about registering a domain name. Should I go with godaddy? I've heard good things about them. Also how does a analytical framework get built into a website? I am probably going to need a decent way to view statistics related to traffic. Thank you again
Nice to see you here and with a dream of site making. Plan it properly, keep ready material ready to be published, make good keyword search, find out the host and then start doing it. all the best to you.
I guess I haven't used Freerice enough to see the banner. Unless you see the Google thing on the bottom of the ad, there isn't a definite way to tell if it's CPC or CPM. But either way would be profitable. I actually use Godaddy myself for domain names. I've heard good and bad things about every domain registrar and in my opinion, the bad things happen everywhere. I also have used Name.com, Namecheap, Monikor, and the only difference is pricing and the layout of the website. As for analytics, most if not all web counters have you insert a code inside the source code within the body of the page you want to be counted. I know that Google Analytics makes you put their code before their </body> tag. I assume it's the same for any other service. If you are planning to use Godaddy hosting, I don't have too much experience with them however if you get huge spikes of traffic, I would suggest you move to your dedicated server. I have heard things about hosting services like Godaddy and Hostgator about huge traffic spikes. Even though it says the plan you purchased has unlimited bandwidth, chances are if you use a great deal of it, they will try to limit you. However if you are just starting out, Godaddy or Hostgator is fine for hosting. No problem at all. Discussions like this reinforces my mind with the ideas that I have learned but kept away for a while.