A Tale of 2 WAHMs

For those of you selling advertising, pay close attention here. Unless of course you feel your site is better than Google or Yahoo. For those of you buying advertising, this could be a major reason you aren’t making a profit.

First let me apologize. This might come off a little on the ranting side. I’ve been searching for advertising today, and I’m starting to get a bit frustrated.

I’m not afraid to pay for advertising in the least. But I am afraid to drop over $20 to a site I’ve never heard of. Which is most sites that offer advertising, or I wouldn’t be looking so hard in the first place. I’ve been going through Traffic Secrets slowly, and gotten into paid advertising. Really good information for those who have more or less sworn off paid ads thinking they aren’t worth it.

I’ve been working with Overture with some pretty good results. PPC ads are pretty easy to figure out, and it’s about as targeted as you can get online (I mean really, what better way to put your ad for “blue widgets” to someone searching for “blue widgets”?). Website banner and text ads are always going to be less targeted. Still good advertising, but much less targeted.

So why some website owners think their traffic is worth more than those searching Yahoo or Google is beyond me. I realize the thought process here is not the same, and some might think “well my ads are worth at least $5/mo”. But when I explain my own thought process and math as to why I think that’s too much for a site getting only 200 visitors a month, I seem to be getting back some defensive emails. Not cool. So my advice may not have been asked for, but that’s no reason to dismiss it.

Let me explain my own math for those of you that will understand it.

I run Adsense on a site that gets over 400 visitors a day. Even on bad days, my click through rate is at least 4%. Usually it hangs in the 5-7% range. I’m using 4% on the low end here. Because those are targeted ads on my site in a place I would expect my own ads to be on another site, I use a standard 4% CTR. Actually, it might be way less than that when translated to a banner ad, but I’m giving the benefit of the doubt here.

Now take a look at my PPC campaigns. I mostly pay 10 cents per click on highly targeted keywords. Meaning those people are specifically looking for my product or something similar. So I would expect a non-targeted ad on a site to cost me no more than 10 cents a click, especially since it’s not quite as targeted.

————–SIDE NOTE——————
Let me stop here for a minute and clarify something. When I say ” non targeted site” I don’t mean something that’s not for my target market. I simply mean I have NO idea what visitors are on the site for, therefor I can’t say that ALL visitors are going to be specifically wanting what my banner is flashing at them.
————–SIDE NOTE——————

Alright moving on here…..so we figure 4% click through rate and 10 cents a click. This means if a site gets 1,000 visitors (or page views even) a month, I would average 40 clicks from that. And should pay no more than $4 for that (40 clicks at 10 cents a click = $4).

So when a site tells me their site gets 500 visitors a month and wants $10 for an ad………sorry, but my targeted campaigns cost less than that. No wonder I hear so many say “I don’t bother with paid ads because they don’t work”. Sure they do! You just have to find the right price and traffic. If they didn’t work, I wouldn’t have heard a top marketer say they do! Also I’ve been seeing a lot of really untargeted paid ads on some of these sites. Like business opps on baby sites and what have you. Nope that doesn’t work, and of course your CTR is going to be loooooow.

I even heard someone tell me their rates were “cheap compared to others”. No, not if you look at high traffic sites. Most high traffic sites run campaigns per banner impression, charging $1-5 per 1,000 impressions. Now THAT is more like it. Knowing my ad will be seen in front of a guaranteed amount of visitors for a set cost that’s right on the ball with my own figures. Although personally even still I would not pay more than $1-3 per 1,000 impressions because “impressions” is less valuable than “unique visitors”. The click through rate is probably going to be lower, thus the price needs to be as well.

So why don’t I just shut up and go advertise with the big sites? Because they are expensive. I’m not in a place to spend $100/mo just on one site. That’s my entire monthly advertising budge and then some. Right now I want to test my ads out a little better, and pick some less costly ads. Yes I still want the same low cost per click/impression/visitor, I just don’t want to buy it in bulk.

One place I did find that I’m absolutely in love with though…….AdBrite. I’ve been buying ads like crazy over here, simply because they are low cost. I can pick 10 different sites to advertise on for less than $10. I just set the specific ads and watch the stats……..so far I’ve been VERY happy. The stats show me the average cost per click, and the click through rate as well. I can look at a glance and pick out which sites I want to advertise with, and which I don’t based on the CPC (cost per click). They also tell me up front what the average CPC has been for other advertisers before I even buy from them. While it’s not an exact science because CTR depends on the ads being shown on the site, it gives me a general idea of how my ad will preform. Love it! I just wish there were more advertisers on here offering low cost ads:( . If you sell advertising, do check this out and check out some of the rates by other advertisers. I’m still tweeking my campaigns here for my resource site, but I really do love this place.

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