I run a historical photo gallery website that gets almost 2 million pageviews a month with about 50,000 unique visitors/month. I was recently contacted by a company that wants to buy ad space on my site until June 2007. They want to run an ad for a major movie studio that is releasing a DVD that is related to my site's subject matter (WWII). They need to know what my rates are, but I don't know where to begin! Can someone give me some pointers on how much to charge for this ad space? Thanks for any help!
Oh, wow. So, if I get like 66,000 pageviews a day and I display a banner ad, that would cost like $132 a day if I were to charge them 2.00cpm?
You can charge them $500/month. Remember they came to you and not the other way around. It won't hurt for you to negotiate with them.
That can backfire if you quote a too high a price and the advertiser never turns up to negotiate! Try out other similar sites and find out what they charge. That should give you a good indication.
Like the others mentioned, they came to you. I'd say go with something high in the beginning and then negotiate your way down if they say no.
You might consider coming up with an ideal number that you would like. Then come up with an absolute low number that you won't go under. Then say something like "Our normal rate is $XXX/month, which translates to $X CPM. But...we value your patronage and would like to bring you in at a $XXX a month. Is that something you can work with?" So the ideal would be your 'normal rate' and your discounted, introductory rate would be somewhere between your ideal and your absolute low.