Banner Ad Question

[Justin]

I have checked out a few sites that pay for banners displayed on your site. I have never done this before, and I have a few questions for anyone using this to make extra cash.

First of all, is it really worth the 8-12 cents per click for the lost visitors, or do they generally come back later anyway?

What is the best method, pay per click, per lead, or commission? I guess that depends on a lot, though, but on average?

Any recomendations for which companies to use (music software site)? I've requested info from a couple of companies, but I'm still undecided as to whether or not I really want banners taking away my visitors... although a lot of my visitors are repeats, looking for new info/updates/support, so they will likely be back.

Any help would be great. My site was on Geocities prior to FQ, and I was so glad to be rid of banner ads, but then again, I can generate a couple extra packs of smokes a month out of it now http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif

Also, what to look for in a banner company? I'm not really worried about exchanging banners or anything, just scoring some extra cash from my traffic http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif And banners are everywhere, so you come to expect them anyway. I usually ignore them all - I've never clicked on a banner at all.

Oh, well. There's my question of the day http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif


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Justin Nelson, SFE Inc.
http://www.vdj.net

[hearts]

Hey Justin...

I know what you are saying about clicking banners. The average is very low for click throughs.

However, I know of a FQ member that might be able to help ya. You know him too. Email Mike from flower source as he is into this and is having great success with it.

webmaster@flowersource.net

and a little off the subject, but not too far... I would like to thank Deb and Andrew for the banner they display for me for Insperation Internet. I know that is working wonders, as I get emails from folks telling me they are clicking through via AOTA. I never pay attention to my stats. http://www.aota.net/ubb/wink.gif





[This message has been edited by hearts (edited 02-21-99).]

[flowersource]

Justin,
I started out using a couple of flower related advertisers, (I have a flower related site), I was pleasantly surprised at the results. The click thru rate is MUCH higher than I would have suspected. I have just gotten started in this a few weeks ago and I have averaged $25.00 per week. Initially I thought that only 'pay per click' was the way to go...but I discovered that half the money was for a couple of commission sales. I am now leaning towards commission advertisers. I tried several 'affiliate' programs, but settled on...

http://revenue.linkexchange.com/

Yep, the dreaded link exchange...I do not participate in any other link exchange programs (banner rotation etc) I like their "Revenue Avenue" program because it is super easy to track your clicks/bucks and they pay you for all of your advertisers.

They have large and small, national and 'mom and pop', 'per click' and commission.

Let me know what else you find out there, I am beginning to like this advertising thing.

Good Hunting,
Mike

[Justin]

hehe - I should've thought to ask you first, Mike. I have seen your site a time or two http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif so I know you have banners. My only problem is that your banners are targeted - I don't know if that is necessarily a good or bad thing. It will result in a higher click-through ratio, but they are generally offering the same type of services that you offer (I guess), so it would seem like you're giving away potential customers for 10 cents each!

I know that most of my visitors are there for support, updates, etc, so they will be back - what I offer, they probably won't find elsewhere (support for my software - if someone else did offer that, I'd be greatfull!!). So they'll be back for sure. That is, as long as no banners for similar programs pop up... not likely, though.

Anyway, I went ahead and put banners from TechnoSurf Ad Wave, for a few reasons. Number one, they were the first to respond. They pay decent (12-15 cents/click), and the accounting is updated in real time. Plus they know, after a while, which ads are most effective on a given site, so it's like natural selection. That's cool.

Plus, there's no contract, no obligations, so if another company responds with a better offer, I can switch easily. Or I can use both...

I refuse to put more than one ad per page, though, and I have to use the same company on all pages - that's my own rule, because it's in my header file, using SSI - one file update and the whole site is littered with banners!! hehe http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif

Thanks for the advice. Still, if anyone knows of a good company that pays mega-bucks or something, let me know - I'm still in the shopping around test driving stage. It's a medium traffic site (I guess?), not really high but not exactly low, if that helps.

<edit>
BTW, if anyone does decide to use TechnoSurf, please use this link http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif

http://www.teknosurf2.com/cgi-bin/refer.cgi?vdjstudio

Is this ok here?? If not, just leave off the referer.cgi part - I get 1 cent for all clicks from anyone who signs up with that link, plus a dollar or something like that for the signup - I think. Need to read some more http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif
</edit>

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Justin Nelson, SFE Inc.
www.vdj.net (http://www.vdj.net)

[This message has been edited by Justin (edited 02-21-99).]

[Justin]

Well, I don't think I like Teknosurf (yes, they spell it with a "K") as much now. I decided to click the link for advertisers, just for the heck of it. Here's what they tell advertisers:

Over-Delivery

We charge our advertisers based on "unique clicks". A "unique click" is defined as a click by a visitor with a unique IP address within any consecutive 24-hour period. This means that websurfers from large ISPs like AOL, who use blocks of IP addresses for their 13+ million members, will often not be counted toward your bill.

Our network, on average, delivers 30% more unique clicks than raw clicks. This means that as advertisers, you will receive 30% more visitors to your site FREE!

For some strange reason, I do get a lot of visitors from AOL. This also explains why in the same 24 hour time period my stats showed 500+ pageviews while their stats showed only 200 impressions. There's a banner on every page, including the UBB, and I doubt that 60% of my visitors have images turned off.

They could at least hide that fact from the webmasters on the other side of their business. I'm a little ticked off about that little minor detail - basically they're telling the advertisers that they screw the webmasters. That's real "friggin" nice.

Oh, well, I'll leave them on long enough to get my first check from them. Meanwhile, I'll try to find another company.

BTW, they pay 12-20 cents a click, but given that about 30% of those clicks won't count, that results in 8-14 cents a click. Not as good as it first sounded, huh?

Oh, well, just another reason to be weary of everything on this web of ours... at least we've got FutureQuest http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif

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Justin Nelson, SFE Inc.
www.vdj.net (http://www.vdj.net)

[This message has been edited by Justin (edited 02-22-99).]

[auteur]

Justin:

For the best return on your website real estate space, I would suggest targeting associate programs that your visitors would be interested in. Banners are best with click thru pricing. A recommendation will usually bring in more money than a simple banner ad alone, but that's all up to you.

That's my 2 cents... http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif



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Elizabeth M. Miller
Getting You the Attention You Deserve!
www.123marketing.com (http://www.123marketing.com)

[DB]

Hi Justin... you need to read the fine print on these ad broker sites and check to see what other people's experiences have been like.

http://www.markwelch.com/bannerad/ - This is a pretty good resource site. As you'll quickly see, many ad brokers don't deliver on their promises.

ValueClick (http://www.valueclick.com) has a pretty good reputation and very little "fine print." They pay 12 cents per click and (usually) mail your check promptly at the end of the month. Some places will not cut a check until after (if!) they collect from their advertisers, which can add months to the time between when banners are displayed and you get paid for them.

Burst! (http://www.burstmedia.com) - This is one of those companies with the long delayed payments. I signed-up with them in November and have only collected $30 of the $138 earned to date. Occasionally their servers appear to be down or busy, in which case no ads are displayed. From what I've heard (so far) they are honest, but I'm going to take a wait and see approach before deciding to keep 'em or delete 'em.

The only problem you may have with ValueClick is that they recommend appending a different banner number to each page you run one of their ads on. This works well for me since a different banner will be displayed on each page, increasing the chance of getting clicks. But if you are using SSI it isn't going to work for you.

That's my .0015 cents worth. I would love to hear about other people's experiences in case Burst goes Bust.

Good luck... maybe there is gold in them thar URLs.


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--Tom aka DiamondBack
http://diamond-back.com

[Justin]

What is a good average click through ratio? I'm getting .45% right now, so in the last week I've earned about a half a pack of smokes. That sucks. If this is the ratio I'm going to get, I'm definately going to find a better company, with ads a little more targeted to my visitors.

I want my slice of internet revenue too!!! http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif I'm just barely picking up the crumbs right now...


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Justin Nelson, SFE Inc.
http://www.vdj.net

[auteur]

Justin...If you seriously want to
I want my slice of internet revenue too!!! I'm just barely picking up the crumbs right now

Then instead of using affiliate program style of advertising, you should consider pricing out ad rates for yourself. Unless you don't want the hassle and if you don't have a high traffic website.

http://www.adresource.com/
is a perfect place to start for information on how to's and what's out there for internet promotion ... including pricing for banner ads.


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Elizabeth M. Miller
Getting You the Attention You Deserve!
www.123marketing.com (http://www.123marketing.com)

[Justin]

Considering my site has been up a total of 2 months now, I don't think my traffic is bad at all - but it has yet to steady out to an average that I can base prices on.

I dumped TeknoSurf just now, because I signed up with 3 companies. Teknosurf was the first to respond, and they are out to screw webmasters.

Burst didn't accept my site - they said they get far too many shareware sites that wish to concentrate the focus of their site to their product instead of the advertisers - I guess they expect me to use my program as a lure to get people to click on ads?? Sounds stupid to me (for my particular site, anyway. I know a lot of sites are there only for ad revenue, and I have no problem with that).

So Bach Systems (yes, there's no "T" in bach) has about 30 different companies to choose from, each with their own pay rate. You choose what banner(s) to use. You don't get paid per click, but per signup. All of them offer a free something or sweepstakes entry, so that's not too bad. They pay from $1.00 to $1.50 per lead, and since I can pick what banners to display, I can target it pretty well.

I wrote a perl script to randomly pick them, so it rotates nicely. I chose 5 companies, each having 3 to 6 different banners, so I have a nice selection. I also decided to put one on top and one the bottom of each page. Once in a while it's the same banner, but oh well http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif

Hopefully this will prove to be more effective.

My other problem with TeknoSurf is that half the time during the day, their server was so bogged that the banners wouldn't load at all. With Bach, I downloaded them and put them in my images directory where the script calls them. If for some reason the script fails to fetch a banner, it defaults to my own banner http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif So far, so good though.

Oh, if someone downloads a free trial of Turbotax99 I get $15 and Quicken99 I get $10. I wonder if it counts if I download once? All this financial talk in the other thread, I might need both http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif

Well, as you might tell, I'm very tired (up since 2am). That's what makes me ramble. That and being awake...

Justin

[hearts]

okay.. i searched this topic so i wouldn't have to open a new one. ;)[nbsp][nbsp]

Here i am sitting beside myself.. pondering this banner thing. I am pleased with my site's increasing popularity. For me it is doing great and I don't care how it compares to others like mine! *grin* I am just elated with my own progress!

People keep suggesting to me to add banners. I am reluctant because I find banners so annoying.

http://www.linkshare.com/ this is a company that i am looking at for banners as I am not interested in getting involved in a bunch of legalities of worrying how much i will charge someone for ad space, and I really don't understand the lingo. I am rather tied up for the next couple of months to get into trying to understand something I am not too happy about doing.

However, if this site keeps climbing upwards, it would be nice to generate some income to keep my site up and running.

I like this company's set up and the choice is mine who I have displayed.

I am also pondering having a page up of the companies that i choose, and calling it something more welcoming other than please visit our sponsors.

What concerns me about putting banner ads up is losing my visitors, as this is one thing that my users really enjoy, NO BANNER ADS. I guess my question should be, would banner ads take away a person's interest in coming back to your site? Or are they reaching a point of being rather invisible now, because they are so common? *overlooked*

I would appreciate whatever thoughts or experience. Not sure when I will get back again to read up on this.

TYIA for your input.




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hearts
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Heartistic Wishes[nbsp][nbsp][nbsp][nbsp][nbsp][nbsp][nbsp][nbsp]www.heartisticwishes.com (http://www.heartisticwishes.com)[nbsp][nbsp]

[This message has been edited by hearts (edited 10-11-99)]

[Tatu]

Surprising that noone else decided to reply to this thread, even I just sorta lurked.

Well, Hearts, I would have to say that adding banners doesn't really turn away visitor-return (VR) interest if they think that the free service you are providing them is worthwhile. For instance, I think that me running a free auction that is busy with items/bids would seem &quot;worth seeing a few ads&quot;... not saying that my little B4B is busy with items and bids (which it's not, and which is one of the many reasons I am closing it down).

Maybe next time I will wait to build an audience before I try to sell ads, not saying of course that simply doing that would make my ite popular. :-)

-Tatu

[Justin]

My traffic over at HostFacts has been *very* steady - nothing special, but enough, and very steady. The average has been about the same for a few months now, which is exactly what my VDJ site did after a few months.

I personally like this though, because I feel secure that my averate pageviews will be about the same next month as they were this month and so on.

When I added banners to VDJ.Net, my traffic was not affected at all - although I took them down for other reasons...

HostFacts was started pretty much with the banners as a part of the design - sadly, most sites are this way any more, but it seems to work.

I prefer, now months after starting this topic, to sell the banner space myself - you lose nothing this way (other than my credit card processor) - no middle man to take a cut. And lately sales have been picking up, too, so I can't complain ;)

I tried TeknoSurf and some other company but found it is not worth their 10 cents / click. I work with my sponsors, and even helped one with his graphics - eg, I helped his banners perform better (used on other sites, too) and thus gained his trust/confidence/business :)

That's my take on it, so I guess this is almost a follow-up on my original question :)

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support