Banner advertising is unique to the online
world. Ads are priced in Cost Per Thousands. (CPM) This means that you pay a flat fee for
every 1000 people that are exposed to your advertisement. The more general the audience,
the lower the (CPM), while a very qualified audience will have a much higher (CPM) The low
end is usually around $17 - $20 per thousand, while the upper end is around $60 - $100 per
thousand.
Most sites measure exposures by impressions.
Every time your ad is displayed on a screen that can be viewed by a user counts as an
impression. The smart approach should be to ask companies to accept your ad and give you
their rates based upon the click-through rather than the impressions.
Most of the major advertising sites that track
click-through report that rates run from .5-3% on general interest sites like search
engines, to 8-13% for special interest sites with targeted ads.
Since location is the most critical factor in
placing paid web ads, testing is vital to success. The best approach is to spread your
advertising budget over a number of sites and track the results to determine how well each
location pulled. An easy way to track banner ads is to create a separate homepage or
"jump-site" for each banner ad that you place. When a person clicks on one of
your banners they go directly to that page and you can easily track the number of visitors
each banner generates by checking the static's for that specific page.
A jump-site is usually just a duplicate of the
homepage with a slightly different URL. Or it can be a page designed for a product or
group of products. I code all of my advertising both online and offline so I can see what ads work and
which ones are a bust.
It is important that you understand that
online marking rarely replaces traditional marketing methods when it comes to making money
in you business. The best use of online marketing is to design your online business to
complement and support your traditional marketing efforts.
Displaying banner advertising from other
companies on your site can be profitable in many ways. There are several companies that
will pay you for purchases made from people referred to them from your site. Also trading
banner ads through a link exchange program will increase both yours and their website
traffic. Listed below are companies you may want to consider:
Companies That Pay Commissions
