Home > Profit > Advertising > Getting Started

by Todd W. Winslow

So you have a Web site and your building traffic, and hopefully you're showing a profit from your own product sales and/or through affiliate programs. Now it's time to look at attracting advertisers who will pay you to run their banners and/or text links on your site (and in your ezine or newsletter, if you have one.)

Know Your Visitors

The first step is to compile demographic information on your site's visitors. This is extremely important information for any potential advertiser, and is important for you in targeting potential advertisers.

There are two simple ways of collecting demographic data on your visitors. You can run a daily or weekly poll, or you can collect this information through the subscription process if you have a newsletter or ezine. For example, Listbot allows you to ask demographic information of those subscribing to your ezine/newsletter. Otherwise, simply polling your visitors works too.

Don't try and collect too much information, as most people are unwilling to spend the time to fill out a long form or survey, and may be quite hesitant to give too much information. Just concentrate on the basics:

Country
Gender
Age
Home
Ownership
Education
Marital Status
Children in Household
Income

This information will be enough to give potential advertisers a good sense of who visits your site.

Know Your Traffic

Potential advertisers are also going to want to know how many unique visitors your site generates (and the subscription base of your ezine/newsletter, if you have one.) Many hosting companies make available your site's statistics - either as part of your monthly fee or for an additional fee. If they don't provide this service, you can find outside sources such as superstats.com, who offer various packages, depending on what stats you wish to track and how much you're willing to pay.

At the very least, you will need to know your monthly unique visitor count for each page of your web site. Most services provide stats on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis, and collect much more information than just unique visitors.

Determining Your Price

Now it's time to determine what you'll charge for advertising on your web site (and ezine/newsletter.) I suggest offering three advertising options:

Prime Ad
Standard Ad
Basic Ad

These can pertain to both banners and text link advertisements. Prime ads are large (full color or bold text), and appear at or near the top of each page. Standard ads are scaled down versions of prime ads and are generally smaller in size and may or may not have color or bold features, etc. These usually appear somewhere in the middle of your page or in a side column. Basic ads are simple text links or very small banners and are normally placed at or near the bottom of a page.

In setting your price, you can use a general rule of thumb: $ times the number of unique visitors for the length or term of the ad (ad run). Prime ads: .007 cents, Standard: .006 cents, basic .005 cents.

Example:

Prime ad for your main page for a one month duration.

Unique visitors to that page - one month: 150,000 Prime Ad price: $.007

Calculation: 150,000 x $.007 = $1,050 /mo.

So, for a prime ad on that page of your site to run for one month would cost the advertiser $1,050.

*For advertising in an ezine or newsletter, just substitute your subscription base for the unique visitor figure. (Remember, if yours is a weekly publication, be sure to times your subscription base by 4.333 to arrive at a monthly figure.)

This is just a guideline - it's always a good idea to find out what your competitors are charging advertisers and adjust your price based on that information.

Advertiser's Informational Packet

Once you've collected all the above information, you need to come up with a way to present this information to potential advertisers. I suggest a short and to the point Advertiser's Informational Packet. This should be available in both an online and off-line version.

Our Advertiser's Informational Packet is ordered as follows:

Company Information and Background
Our Advertising Efforts and Partnerships
Web Site & Newsletter Demographics
Advertising Options & Current Rates
Payment Methods

It's always a good idea to offer incentives or discounts. Give a price break to those who commit to advertising for several months or for those who take out more than just one ad, etc. Personally, I like to offer new advertisers ½ off their second month's total ad cost. (Buy one month, get the second at half price.)

Where To Find Potential Advertisers

The last thing you need are the actual advertisers themselves. If you don't already have an Advertise With Us page on your site, consider putting one up. You might be surprised by how effective this can be. Many potential advertisers use search engines and terms to find sites which relate to their products. If they come across yours and you have an Advertise Here page, they just might contact you for advertising information. Be sure to also submit this page to the major search engines.

Another simple way of getting advertisers is to go to your competitors web sites and see who's advertising with them. All is fair in love and Internet advertising, right? If you can offer them a better deal, they just might place their advertising with you.

Don't forget to look into off-line businesses as well. For example, there may be a magazine (not online), which shares similar demographics with your web site. By taking the time to do a little research and to draft a well-written letter of introduction, you may find these off-line businesses very receptive to placing advertising with you.

There are also many advertising agencies which would be more than willing to help sell advertising on your site (or in your ezine), but I suggest trying to do it on your own at first. If later you need help, then contact these agencies.

For examples of advertisement placement and further information, please visit us on the web, www.taddgroup.com.

For an example of an Advertise With Us page, go to our sister site at www.mysticbeagle.com/advertise_here.htm.