How much do I charge advertisers for a banner ad?

It's time for me to start earning income from my flooring site. It's been live for about a year and a half, I'm approaching 1,000 members. About 2/3rds of the members are flooring professionals, mostly men and have better than average disposable income as well as a good budget for business related tools and equipment for jobsites and office. I don't want to inundate them with ads, but I do have some merchants I would like to approach about advertising banners in my header, footer and maybe between the occasional post.

There is at least one merchant who is interested in the promotional opportunity in exchange for 3 days and nights lodging and meals at their Las Vegas hotel casino as a contest prize - during the largest flooring convention in the US in January. I have a couple other merchants I think might have an interest, either as paid ads or in exchange for contest prizes - or both.

My problem is not knowing what value to place on the banner ads. Being a niche site would be good for specific merchants I would think. I get different results using several different statistics programs, so I don't really know what my actual traffic is. It was reported by my old host, 1and1.com at being well over 1,000 uniques a day and sometimes as high as 2,500. I changed to Host Gator and the results are reported at just under 1,000 uniques with one stats program and under 500 with another.

Any guidance would be appreciated.

Jim
PS: I posted about this on the Earners Forum (http://www.earnersforum.com/t16766/ ) over 12 hours ago and it's gotten only 12 views and no replies. http://grumpsplace.com/images/smilies/didnt_know.gif

Honeslty - thats a very hard question to answer.

One of the questions to as yourself is what might the advertisers make profit off of a sale from your site? You dont want an ad so high priced that the advertisers dont make money off of your site.

One thing - set up a page on your site explaining your ad rates and basically selling your site to advertisers. You can create your own or there is a hack: Advertise Page For Your Forum (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=137531)

Things you want to mention in your ad page are things such as monthly PAGEVIEWS - which translates into how many times their ad will be seen (if you have their ad on every page) and monthly VISITORS -- You can get both statistics from your cPANEL stats.

I prefer to set ad rates on an annual basis, but most sites do it month to month.

I also prefer (as do my advertisers) to display ads on every page in a sidebar instead of in rotation. Even members get used to referring people to the ads that way. I use this hack for that: Put a Column on the RIGHT side of every forum page (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=91888)

What you might want to do is this. Offer a 3 month rate and see how it goes. Maybe $100 for 3 months for a 160x240 size ad. Then - you can change prices if you need to, but offer your first advertisers the ability to have their rate stay the same for at least 1 year as long as they keep their ads up.

You can fill extra space with Auctionads, Adsense (BTW - You might want to try AuctionAds (http://www.vbulletin-faq.com/forum/auctionads.php)) or an affiliate banner.

Hope that helps a bit.

Thank you very much for the reply and information. I decided against the hack you linked to because it isn't supported and there's a question about who the real author is. I think I'll be installing vB Ad Management, so I'll see what I can do with that.

The statistics I mentioned did come from my cPanel - Host Gator provides AWStats and Webalizer, each of which give conflicting results. AWStats are far more detailed, but there doesn't seem to be any display options.

I use vBadvanced CMPS, so adding a column on the left or right shouldn't be a problem or require a separate hack. I have plans for a new style that will include a permanent left side column on most pages, so that will be a good place to put some ad blocks.

Although AuctionAds seems to have some bad press right now, I decided to open an account (yes, I clicked through via your link). I will try it out. Like you said in another topic, I've got nothing to lose.

Thanks for the help. This issue isn't solved yet though, if anyone else would like to offer their views or advice, I would appreciate it.

Thanks Joey,

Jim

Don't go overboard with your ads, and do not get too intrusive. I've been to sites that suddenly had (in your face) ads appear so I left.

I also went and got another image host because mine was playing video ads. I'm on dialup (and there is no cure here) and loading a video ad while uploading video was too much to handle. I emailed them, and now strangely, I do not get video ads. I'd have left there as well.

Joey has about as many ads as I can possibly handle, though if it went from no ads to what you see here, I bet your userbase would explode into anger. (Ask Joey, I've PMed him several times over ad changes here ;) )

So whatever you do, keep the end user in mind, and ease into things. Never get too intrusive, and never use anything that pops up (or under) or installs anything. You'll have people fleeing in horror for the next free alternative.

Hi Jim,

The first thing we did with the DJ board is prepare a media kit. We never advertised the fact that we were soliciting advertisers and in fact waited for them to come to us. This way if for what ever reason we didn't want to do business with a company, we would quietly deny the request for a media kit.

My media kit isn't very detailed, it just outlines advertising packages and has a brief statement on the forum, it's members, and standards. I actually did the opposite of Joey and don't mention any stats.

If you would like an example of a very detailed and well put together media kit look at DaniWeb is a tech community and has a very nice media kit: http://www.daniweb.com/mediakit/mediakit.pdf

If you'd like to take a look at mine, drop me an email (dan{at}bigdan.us) and I'll send a copy your way.

Good luck,
Dan

That DaniWeb media kit is very impressive. Thanks for the link. I sent you an email and appreciate your willingness to share.

Jim

The statistics I mentioned did come from my cPanel - Host Gator provides AWStats and Webalizer, each of which give conflicting results. AWStats are far more detailed, but there doesn't seem to be any display options.
Try Google analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/#utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-webmaster_central&utm_medium=et) instead and it'll display better results. AWStats aren't all that accurate. Google analytics is more accurate though.