A Tale of 2 WAHMs

I got an email a few weeks ago from someone wanting to advertise on Idea Queen. I was actually pretty excited about this, because I already know what certain pages are worth and here was someone contacting ME to discuss pricing.

I think I’m a pretty fair person, but I also know what I can get out of my own advertisements (aka Adsense and affiliate links). I have several years worth of stats to back this up, so if you want an ad you had better be prepared to pay me what Google does (and actually, it’s going to be less than what you’d be paying THEM to advertise because I only get a cut of what it costs the advertisers).

So I’m excited about this, hoping it’s going to turn some of my traffic into instant cash. I shot an email back asking which pages in particular so I could pull the stats. What I got back wasn’t what I expected.

Apparently they already had their own price in mind for some specific blog posts (which just HAPPEN to rank very well and each pull in several visitors a day to the blog). The price was down right insulting, and what’s worse it was a ONE TIME fee they wanted to pay. The price? $10 per page. A whole $60 TOTAL (remember they wanted to only pay this ONE TIME and get a life time listing) for 6 ads on 6 different pages.  We are talking an average of several hundred views a month for their ad. Forever.

Now just to give you an idea of what this is REALLY worth, take this into consideration. On average I make $4 for ever 1,000 page views on any given page. That’s average is a little low too, and I’m talking about just adsense, not affiliate links. What they were offering I could make MORE in adsense in a year than what they would pay me.

I actually do not even use Adsense on my blog, but occasional posts with affiliate links. This does MUCH better for me than Adsense, since I get more than just a few pennies a click. I do not go overboard with it though, and keep the posts to a minimum (maybe one a week or two). Whenever I DO post, it pulls in several affiliate sales immediately. It also keeps pulling them in long after the post drops.

Now if I were to put these ads up, my affiliate income WOULD suffer slightly. Instead of clicking MY ad or areas of my site, the other ad may get clicked. Which is kind of the idea of a offering advertising on your site - you are getting paid for that space, so it’s not a big deal. But when YOUR income potential is greater than what they are offering, that’s a BAD DEAL.

Also I feel the need to point out what kind of weight a link on a blog holds. They are getting a boost in the search engines from where their link sits. Using my blogs weight to boost their own. YES that deserves compensation, and YES I know this is what of what they are after (or else they wouldn’t have picked my blog and the pages they did).

Anyway, I had to get this off my chest because I was just floored how little respect was given to my site. They know darn well my income potential is more than what they offered me, but I know they were hoping I didn’t. Sorry, I’ve been around too long to accept that little of payment for something that could earn me 10 times as much.

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