Direct Advertising Advice Needed - What would you charge?

[Gerry]

I have been contacted by a company that would like to be a national advertiser on one of my sites.

Here's the deal.

The site is ceuq dot com

It is a specialty niche site for ALL medical professionals to get FREE medical continuing education units, usually on a year to year renewal basis.

Some stats from Google analytics for year to date (01/01/10 - 03/31/10):

00:02:21 Avg. Time on Site
79.76% New Visits

Search Engines (64.28%)

Referring Sites (24.23%)

Direct Traffic (11.49%)


2009, my traffic was 879.800

first quarter 2010 is 227,487

This is all pretty amazing considering that this is a specialty niche site.


As a national advertiser, this company would be featured on every page.

At present, I am anticipating a banner or block ad on every page.


Being that this may be the first real paying advertiser, I would like to start out reasonable to attract more and let other advertisers know I am open for business!

What would you charge per month, year, quarter etc.

[Gerry]

Need input from members, please.

What is a standard rate or model used to sell ad space?

[copper]

Google soliciting co. and you may find their other ad placement.
Once you find which sites they place their ads, contact those sites
pretend that you want to advertise on their site and find out their price

Kind of sneaky to those sites, but, you need to find out going rate

[Gerry]

Kind of sneaky to those sites, but, you need to find out going rate

I can do sneaky...:grin:

---------- Post added at 02:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:31 PM ----------

I know what they are paying for some print ads that I see in journals I get. Not Cheap!

I'll see what they are shelling out for ads and placement preferences.

[nicedomains]

Of course it depends on the size of the ad and how long they want to run the ad for. Also coming into factor, where the ad will be located (will you see it on the page or have to scroll down, right now I have to scroll down to see the first 'ads by google' block). Considering the traffic is still fairly low but your site is PR4 and the niche is specialty a good starting price for a banner+text ad should run in the high $xx range per month. Always better to set the single monthly rate offer on the high side so you can comfortably negotiate longer contracts (which are ideal). Sorry if I anyone thinks I am way off base here but I do have a little experience in this area.

[Gerry]

Of course it depends on the size of the ad and how long they want to run the ad for. Also coming into factor, where the ad will be located (will you see it on the page or have to scroll down, right now I have to scroll down to see the first 'ads by google' block). Considering the traffic is still fairly low but your site is PR4 and the niche is specialty a good starting price for a banner+text ad should run in the high $xx range per month. Always better to set the single monthly rate offer on the high side so you can comfortably negotiate longer contracts (which are ideal). Sorry if I anyone thinks I am way off base here but I do have a little experience in this area.

I want to look at other advertising models but also want to create my own.

Ideally, I would like to offer quarterly, semi annual, and annual rates with discounts on prepayment.
Placement is a prime rate consideration, something that will have to be priced based on ad placement.
I too have a great deal of experience in this area but primarily with print advertising, although I can apply many of the same concepts to the web (in regards to size, placement, etc.)

As for where the current ads are, that is all variable and I can change it.

Other considerations are this. If I remove certain Google Adsense ads, that is revenue lost that must be tacked onto the advertiser.

I will most likely break down my site in quadrants (top, left, bottom, right) and price per spot.
Then factor in how much exposure (number of pages, etc.)

[hugegrowth]

What does the advertiser sell and how good a market is your visitors to them?

A medical education site should be a high paying niche, already I am thinking in the area of xxx to xxxx per month.

Your traffic is up, it's a targeted audience, the ads are running 24/7. Much better than a print ad in a journal or tv ad, which are costly.

Where else can they go to get an audience like this, and be on every page of the site?

The other thing, even if they don't make a sale on each visitor, they could gain leads for their database that they can contact forever (if they try to collect names and emails). Get an idea of what kind of business they could do listing on your site. Also ask around at other similar sites what they are charging for ads.

[Gerry]

What does the advertiser sell and how good a market is your visitors to them?

A medical education site should be a high paying niche, already I am thinking in the area of xxx to xxxx per month.

Your traffic is up, it's a targeted audience, the ads are running 24/7. Much better than a print ad in a journal or tv ad, which are costly.

Where else can they go to get an audience like this, and be on every page of the site?

The other thing, even if they don't make a sale on each visitor, they could gain leads for their database that they can contact forever (if they try to collect names and emails). Get an idea of what kind of business they could do listing on your site. Also ask around at other similar sites what they are charging for ads.

I know exactly what their business is and their fees.

They are actually a competitor, in a sense...where I am a portal for FREE continuing education credits, they CHARGE!

Obviously they want to take advantage of the traffic I am getting (plus daily promotions on Twitter from my site). And I do not have a problem with that at all. If someone is in a hurry and needs the credits PRONTO, I can direct them to the paid advertiser.

[hugegrowth]

If you have the time you could work out a flat fee per month plus a % of their sales that come from your site. Might be too much work and you'd have to trust them too. Or, If you know their services and fees, you could run some scenarios on what their sales could be from your site, and cost up with a cost per month from that.

Don't forget to consider how much one customer could be worth to them over 1 year, 2 years, etc.? Is it possible a customer could make multiple purchases from them over time?

[Gerry]

If you have the time you could work out a flat fee per month plus a % of their sales that come from your site. Might be too much work and you'd have to trust them too. Or, If you know their services and fees, you could run some scenarios on what their sales could be from your site, and cost up with a cost per month from that.

I want to see first if they have an affiliate program and pay a fee per lead. That can sometimes be HUGE on a per referral basis.

---------- Post added at 04:00 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:57 PM ----------

Is it possible a customer could make multiple purchases from them over time?

Absolutely! Besides increased growth year after year when the word gets around, if you will notice I have approximately 1 out of 4 visitors as a repeat customer.

I have many plans for this site including direct advertising and the addition (creation) of additional "sister sites" which would create my own network within a network (profession specific).

But, I am waiting for someone to make a 30 hour day so I can get all of these plans (and tax return) into full gear.