advice for direct advertising

[dimitrisvb]

Hi,
I use vb 4, I run adSense and I'm kind of happy...

Never the less, I'm wondering whether I can come in direct agreement with a couple of companies, and advertize them directly, in means of banners...

I suppose, in that case, both parties would care to know the clicks made.. and I suppose that I could also charge for the banner exposure...

Any such experience? any suitable mods? I?d appreciate any advice on the matter.

Thanks

[RichieBoy67]

I use revive Adserver to serve ads and to rotate them, keep stats, etc.

As for experience, I just contact companies who i think would be interested. It sometimes takes a very long time but usually many of them end up sponsoring.

Also, ad something to your site to announce you have banner space available to people can also contact you if interested.

[HM666]

There is an excellent mod to handle banners & rotating banners on your site. You can find it here: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...ghlight=banner. This is by far the best one I've found and I've installed pretty much all of them on personal sites & client's sites. This mod will still handle adsense as well as if you would like to start selling banner ads. It keeps up with clicks and other various stats you need to serve ads and have paying clients for them. This hack would also work if you were planning on joining an affiliate. Joining an affiliate is better way to make money off your site than Adsense. Google Adsense folks have a nasty tendency of denying people money owed to them and making it where you can no longer use them if they deem that you forced users to click on ads even if you did not. So personally I would start winging myself off of Adsense unless its makes you a boatload of money currently. Affiliates usually payout more and you can share in revenue that they make off your clicks in some instances.

If you want to serve ads and have your own advertising clients there are a few things you need to consider first.

1. How much traffic do you get to your site? If you do not have a lot of traffic, members, posts, threads, content, etc then serving ads yourself will most likely not work too well as most people who are looking to buy an ad spot want their money to gain them the best exposure and that is really not an option on a site that does not have a lot of traffic.

2. If you have a busy site, many posts, threads etc then you would need to sit down and come up with a plan for your advertising. Do some research online. Look at sites that have a similar amount of traffic like you and sites that have similar content to yours and see how much they are asking clients for ad spots. You do not want to charge too much and you do not want to charge too little either. There are numerous good webmaster forums such as Digital Point that you can advertise your banner plans & get good info on how to decide on a price and a plan of attack.

3. Decide where you are going to place the ads on your site. I suggest that you do not overdo it. Don't put 25 ad spots on each page. Too many ads annoy visitors, they really are not concerned for if you are trying to pay for hosting, web designers etc. Put an amount of ads like possible 4 spots (header, footer, sidebar, in between certain posts). In the sidebar you can probably get away with placing smaller banners to help with space.

4. Come up with an advertisement page on your site. If you run vBulletin Suite then use a CMS page to create an advertising page with all the info needed for a possible client to advertise with you. Have set amounts for each spot that you have set up. Typically header banner ads will cost a client more money because most people will only look at the top of the site, so header banners get more exposure and clicks usually. Footer banner likewise are usually the cheapest spots as a lot of people do not always scroll down to the footer and look at a banner. Set your prices according to your traffic, content (adult content ads are always usually more costly), and positioning of the banners. If you do not have the vBulletin Suite then you can find information on creating a vBulletin page without it here: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=315788.

5. Look at how other sites have their advertising page set up. See how they sell the ad spot especially if they are competitors sites or sites that are similar to yours. Do not copy and paste it but make sure that you engage the reader and give them good reasons they should advertise with you over your competitors. What can you offer them that is better? What kind of return can they expect? How many hits, page views etc does your site get? how many possible views will their banner get? and so on. Give them as much info as you can. The more you seem to know what you are talking about and doing the easier it is for them to sign up with you over your competitors.

I hope this will help you get set up somewhat and I hope I have not created more questions than answers for you now lol.