Attracting Advertisers For Your Site

By Author: Todd W. Winslow
Total Articles: 2
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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 an example of an Advertise With Us page, see
http://www.taddgroup.com/newsletter_advertising.htm or go to our sister site
http://www.mysticbeagle.com/advertise_here.htm


About the Author Todd W. Winslow is the co-owner of TADD Marketing Group, L.L.C. He is also
the founder of TADD Publishing Group which publishes a variety of e-mail
newsletters http://www.taddgroup.com, and is co-creator of The Mystic Beagle
- a romance and relationship advice web site http://www.mysticbeagle.com