Website advertisement question???

Question

Say if my own website is getting 3 million hits a month.

Roughly how much would i charge companies to have their advertisments on my website?

I know its pretty hard to tell, but can anyone tell me how much you usually charge companies to have their ads on your site, no matter what the hits?

Answer 1

If you got 3 million hits every month I would do some adsense.  Divide how much you got paid for the month by how many ads you have and that might give you a rough idea.

Answer 2

The easiest way to do this is just register your site with a syndicated ad service like Yahoo, Google or TextLink Ads.  The market will dictate the price you get - easy.

Another easy way to do it is by registering with a network.  They sell ad space for you once you join their network, or you can sell remnant space on your site to them as well.

If you want to sell ads on your own, the most common way advertising is priced is on a "per thousand" impressions basis.  Starting out, you'll want to be dirt cheap to get advertisers on board, so I would aim for $5 or less/thousand as a starting point, but expect advertisers to work you down to $1 or less.  Double these rates if you have a technical audience or you can share concrete data about attributes of your audience that your advertisers will find desirable, such as household incomes, genders, zip codes, etc.

As you start out, avoid CPM (ad lingo for Cost Per Thousand) negotiations with your advertisers by simply offering a few select advertisers ownership of all ad space for a low flat rate per month.  If you have an email list, let them blast that for free or co-sponsor your newsletter with you also.  Work your way into CPM as you begin to get a feel for the costs of managing ads on your site, and grow your traffic.