How much to charge for Ads or sponsors??
 

6 months into this endeavor, I am ready to move to a dedicated box and am hoping to be able to peddle some apace to some sponsors to defray my costs. Trouble is, I have no earthly idea what to charge??

I have thought about a strategy where I could have premium spots like on the homepage, coupled with rotational banners for those with smalle budgets. What will the market bear???

I would like to secure a 1 yr term so I do not have to rely on cash coming in each month, but I guess I could offer a higher monthly cost as well.

Help guys!

Thanks

$5 a month for a rotational premium spot
$3 for a rotational spot located elsewhere

Its not much, but you will get alot of people wanting to have their banners;)

Satan

I just had a guy that wanted to advertise on my forum, i am curious too, btw it is www.sexualforums.com

Why move to a dedicated server? Your site doesn't really look active enough to warrant the need.
I usually charge $20-$40 per month for rotational ad banners and guarantee 300,000 exposures during the month.

I am contemplating the move to dedicated as the shared space that I am currently occupying has been getting loaded up as of late. My site may not warrant the space to myself, but I believe others on the same box do and I am being impacted accordingly. I frequently see the loading at 12-15 and I am afraid that if I get too many more on when this happens that things may get dicey. Maybe I will hold off a little while longer....

Thanks for the input!

You're talking about your server load, right? You might want to try to find another host instead. Ditching vBportal would probably help as well (the script's horrible and generates a LOT of queries). One host I can highly recommend is Pixie Host. I've had more than my fair share of problems with hosts and server loads and I would have to say they are the first that's been able to handle my site. 3,600 members, 370,000 posts, average of 40-50 users online at one time and the server load rarely rises above one. Right now I have 53 users online and the serverload is 0.26. :D

Not to mention they're VERY cheap. 5 gb of storage, 50 gb of bandwidth, cPanel and all that good stuff for $35/month. :)

it all depends on your traffic. We currently charge $10/month for personal sites, $25/month for corporate and $100/year (personal), $250/year (corporate). 2 free months if paid annually.