[TIP] Advertising Revenue!

[werehere]

I am not sure how many of you out there currently use this method, but I thought it may be worth posting.

If you are using flycast, burstnet, adflight, advertising.com, etc... you may find it useful.

I currently run some private advertising from time to time, but cannot fill that always, so I choose to run the above companies. Now I think you will all agree that they all run a ton of default campaigns. What I do is use flycast, and I stick burstnet in the private campaign slot, and then do the same with another company in the burstnet private campaign slot. That way they are displaying the other companies ads for the defaults!

It really does work, and I get three paychecks instead of one. I run enough ads that there are still plenty of defaults in the end, but it really works out to be three time the revenue.

I don't know how many people use this method, but I thought it may be worth sharing! :)

[eva2000]

thanks werehere, i am going to use flycast for a new non-anime site i am developing along with selling my own ad inventory (i hope) :D

[Kathy]

Cool werehere!

I'm wondering if you are using a banner rotator to put these in as default? Or is there a place on adflight, advertising.com and so on for the default code?

Thanks for answering...

Kathy :)

[Skeptical]

Flycast's cpcnet SUCKS SH*T !!! I was on it and made $1,600 a month. So then I switched over to valueclick and guess what? $6,000 a month!! And this is on 200,000+ impressions per day.

Trust me, Flycast's cpcnet really really really really s-u-c-k-s! If you don't believe me just try it yourself.

[werehere]

Skeptical,

I agree with that, but that is not what this is about. I am not on the cpcnet.

Kathy,

There are spots that you can specify the default in flycast and burstnet (that is the order I use), and then I use one of the others as the third campaign.

You can just go to the default personal campaign sections (at least with flycast, and burstnet), and insert the Click Through URL, and Image URL.

You could also use a ad server to do this, but I find it is not even needed at all. Might as well just use flycast's and burstnet's server/bandwidth to do it. It is paying off three fold!

[VirtueTech]

Hello,

Skeptical...you must get an unbelievable click thru ratio on your banners. I get around 5 million page views a month on my site and I never thought running a CPC campaign would be good because:

1. it is forums...how many people actually click on the banners.
2. A good banner ad doesn't need to be clicked to get it's point across...that means I want to charge my advertiser on a CPM basis.

Do you think I would get good cash from value click?

[chrispadfield]

You are very lucky if you get above 0.5% click through on value click. Say you are earning $0.15/click and then get 5 clicks per 1000 (0.5%) then you are only $0.75 which is pretty dismall. Also, for forums i find that 0.5% is really not that likely.

Possibly better is amazingmedia.com who pay $1 cpm however they use 5% i think for their own adds so it is $0.95 CPM and if you have a click through rate below 0.4% it starts to fall, still it is better than valueclick for low click through rates. I personally use both, amazingmedia at top and valueclick at the bottom and get the same click through rate on both banners.

[Skeptical]

Well actually my site's traffic isn't maily forum traffic, but still, the ctr's are still pretty nasty. That's how it is these days... Surfers have been around long enough to know what is an ad and mentally ignore them right off the bat, leading to this dismall click-thru rate.

When are ad brokers going to wake up to the fact that "text links" are much much much better than banner ads?

[chrispadfield]

never.. they personally want low click through rates. Branding is good for them (that is part of the reason click through is bad) so they are happy.

That is the advantage of amazingmedia a bit. As the advertisers pay CPM they try and make their banners get clicks, thus the ctr is higher. Also you get more money if you get a CPC so that makes it worthwile putting banner is best place.

Advertising industry just not doing that well at the moment it seems. Still only a small number of firms are actually paying that much in advertising. Look at lots of the adverts out there, about half of them appear to be from sites that only want members to sell more advertising, someone has to actually want to advertising goods and services they can sell somewhere and lots of these places are going through affiliate programs to do that. Not good really.

[eva2000]

amazingmedia was bad for me i tried them for 14 days and gave them 16k/day pageviews but CTR was low <1% and they said they will penalise the amount i earnt if it was below that, and if it continued i would be terminated, so i terminated them fast and moved on.

[chrispadfield]

now they just do automatical peanlising, they just take a % of your banner impressions off if you are under 0.4% i think. I am trying to work out what the rate is, of to get my stats..

um.. not good...

17,672 impressions, 0.23% (!) taken off 2,715.

Earnt from 17,672 $13.45

not good is it really!

[eva2000]

it's okay if that's per day... but remember this if you continue to go under that rate they will terminate the account along with any money you may have earnt ...

[Wayne Luke]

At SitePoint, we just sell Advertising Directly and have it maintained by an outside agency.

Prices are in the MediaKit (http://www.sitepoint.com/mediakit/) but I believe it is currently $1000 a month. This will be the first full month of Advertising after testing it last month though.

[Stallion]

Ah crap :)

I used Amazing Media for a couple months, and for September, had 587,000 page views, but they took off 209,00 of them since i only had a 0.03 action rate. Ouch.

Any ad places you can recommend which will pay more AND accept sites which are JUST forums?

Btw, this isn't for my vB forum.

[VirtueTech]

wluke - I'm interested inn finding out more about handing my ad sales over to a rep firm. What firm do you use? Do they sell your inventory at your prices? Or is it just like an ad sales network like Engage Media and you just put in their banner code?

Please tell me more. I am very interested in giving a comission for someone to sell at our rates

[Wayne Luke]

The company we use at SitePoint is AdRunner (http://www.adrunner.com/)

SitePoint sells all of the ads. AdRunner audits them for us. This allows ads to be tracked across the four domains that currently make up the network (not counting the forums). Ads for the main network are sold by CPM (think it is $50 per right now) for the 468 X 60 banner ads.

We run it and AdRunner allows the customer to see that we aren't lying in our numbers. This makes people trust them more and be more willing to pay.

Currently the Forums are sold on a monthly basis. So November and December sold for $1000 each but at the traffic we get that is about $3.30/CPM.

Check out the AdRunner site, and I am sure they will be more than willing to help you out. Their rates are reasonable as well. They start at $0.00079 per impression ($39.50/50,000 impressions) and go down from there.

[eva2000]

yeah i am thinking of an ad solution for all my sites ... i know wanderer's dot-banner.com script is made to work with vBulletin, but has anyone actually used it live yet ?

no one talks about dot-banner.com and it's strange cause it's made basically for vBulletin in mind :confused:

[Troy Roberts]

The original idea of using one banner company as the default for another works well. We used to do that before we joined the About.com LUNA network.

There is one possible drawback to be aware of: load time. We ran into some problems because many times one or another of the networks would be slow. The final result was a slowing down of the entire forum. We ended up just using one backup network so that the forums ran fast.

I have found a pretty decent response to text offers from onresponse. We don't put them in the forums but on the front page of the site. You could also put links in your vb forum since it has the templates.

The Nextcard deal (one of the options with onresponse right now) hasn't been too bad. They offer a credit card that the user can customize with a personal photo. You can customize the offer to your site. On my Corvette site we say something about putting your Corvette on a Visa card. About 1% of the clicks end up applying and getting approved for a card. Since it pays $23 per approved application that amounts to about 23 cents per click.

I strongly recommend looking into the About.com LUNA program though. If you have a niche site that is very strong in it's category can get pretty decent cpm rates. You need to add some About.com graphics to your site, but it's well worth it.

Email me at troy@corvetteforum.com if you want info on the LUNA program. I'll get you the contact info.

[Edited by Troy Roberts on 11-10-2000 at 08:24 PM]

[eva2000]

Originally posted by Troy Roberts
I strongly recommend looking into the About.com LUNA program though. If you have a niche site that is very strong in it's category can get pretty decent cpm rates. You need to add some About.com graphics to your site, but it's well worth it.

Email me at troy@corvetteforum.com if you want info on the LUNA program. I'll get you the contact info.
hehe Troy ;)

I joined Luna last month... already Nov 11th, so i wonder when my cheque comes :D

[Troy Roberts]

Originally posted by eva2000
Originally posted by Troy Roberts
I strongly recommend looking into the About.com LUNA program though. If you have a niche site that is very strong in it's category can get pretty decent cpm rates. You need to add some About.com graphics to your site, but it's well worth it.

Email me at troy@corvetteforum.com if you want info on the LUNA program. I'll get you the contact info.
hehe Troy ;)

I joined Luna last month... already Nov 11th, so i wonder when my cheque comes :D

:) I got my check for September on November 1st or 2nd. It was a good one. The banners were sold out 100% for the month. I doubt that will happen every month though. But so far I'm very excited about it. It's making it possible to invest in some more things for the site.

I hope it works out as well for you. :)

[VirtueTech]

Hello Troy,

I'm thinking of doing the About.com LUNA thing. The only thing I don't like is putting the About.com search box on the top of my site.

But if the CPM is worth it.....What is your average CPM with them?

[Troy Roberts]

You have mail.

[Skeptical]

wluke, how difficult is it to find your own advertisers without going through an ad broker? I'd like to do that for my own sites too.

[eva2000]

Originally posted by Skeptical
wluke, how difficult is it to find your own advertisers without going through an ad broker? I'd like to do that for my own sites too.

well you can check out similar topic sites as yours and see what advertisers they use and contact them ?

[Skeptical]

well you can check out similar topic sites as yours and see what advertisers they use and contact them ?


I've done that before and gotten no responses. Am I doing something wrong?

[eva2000]

well i think that's the first step, really you shouldn't expect a quick reply or response... first would be to let them know your out there - they'll probably check on your site and keep tabs on ya.

for me I know that potential advertisers related to my sites topic always keep tabs on my site, some reps of those companies have admitted they also check out my site. I am happy with that as a first step - they know I exist :D

eventually i did get a query from one of these companies, but the ad network I was with at the time, stuffed the negotiations up... i left that ad network and now am with Luna. I recently reopened a way of communication with that company, not about advertising but just to say I am here still...

i am not sure if that's the right way for you, but for me I just want them (potential advertisers) to know my sites exist first, then it's up to me to run my sites as best as I can.