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findmyhobby
03-07-2009, 11:56 PM
I'm going to start offering paid ads on my websites and thought I'd ask the phpld community what has worked best for you regarding ad revenue..

My ad serving software is really flexible so I can basically serve any ad type I want (text ads, banners, google style text, buttons, html ads, etc), and of course I can decide where in the templates to serve them.

So my questions are:

1) What types of ads sell the best for you?

2) What placements sell the best?

3) How did you determine what to charge (competitive cost analysis)?

4) Any other tips or tricks for someone not experienced in ad sales?

Thanks, Joe
bruleo
03-08-2009, 12:21 AM
In addition to the normal link sales, by far the most ad revenue I've earned were from:-

1) Ads in my site emails. I set my mails to HTML so I can have banners or text ads and have done VERY well with this, although currently no live advertisers at the moment. I have a mod for this in the forums. ;)

2) Selling a block of text in certain categories. The company wrote the unique text in the form of a very small article and paid me $75 for placement for a year. With u-hits, we negotiated at $5 per link over 5 sub categories, for a total of $75. Same price was negotiated for front page of another site at $75 for just two links in total. Example here: http://www.u-hits.com/sport-fitness/fitness-training/ (below the listings) and at the bottom of the A Way Away front page.

In both cases, the companies approached me with offers through my contact form. With the block text placement, I negotiated the price up from $50 and they suggested the placement, which is quite good as it's below the main content, so fairly unobtrusive.

Bruce.
findmyhobby
03-08-2009, 08:46 PM
Bruce, thanks for the ideas.

Content visible to registered users only.

That's a great idea. :) I'll have to look into this.

Joe
findmyhobby
03-21-2009, 08:18 AM
Anyone else have ideas or thoughts on this subject? No one else monetizing their directories? :)

Joe
infdir
03-21-2009, 08:23 AM
By far and large, the best way to monetize your directory is to give solid incentive for people to pay for a review or listing. Ads are great, but they do not come close to equaling the power of paid reviews. This is not even mentioning one of the small incentives to place paid reviews, is the LACK of ads in their face.