Website Advertising??

clusk007

Hi All,

Just embarked on my own website related to wheelchair taxis and I've had a couple of offers about advertising on the site. I'm really not sure what sort of prices I should be charging. Can anyone provide some advice on this?

I also was offered sponsorship of the site but again I'm afraid to over price or under price. I'm currently developing a Mobile application for the site and was thinking about getting sponsorship for the application. Would in the region of €1000 be too much to ask for sponsorship in this regard? In return, the company would get their logo on the homepage of the application, a bit like Gillette on the sky sport app.

Any guidance or advice would be great. You could also PM me if you want to keep things private.

Regards,

Stephen

The Apprentice

I used to sell Advertising at one point in my life but indeed it was Publications

I do know that u can ASK any price you want but the return question is - How many people will see that page/Link/Banner ..
IF you cant justify spending 1000 quid on 100 views a day.. why would this company. Obviously im making assumptions on your views on the site only you can know this, but i do think charging monthly based on this is the best way to gain revenue.

I would suggest a revolving banner perhaps ??
If you have high volume of traffic take a look at done deal.. They get in the region of 250,000 views a day and they gauge their sales by lets say 50,000 views in the car section (insurance perhaps) and can charge 1000 euros for that .. Some sections are dearer and some are cheaper.. The above example is not factual nor correct but thats their business model.

Selling page views instead of click throughs which the company themselves do the worrying etc.

Why dont u drop them a mail to see their rates it might give you a rough guide as to what the industry standard is at the moment . A friend of mine did but i never asked so i cant really give you an more info

You can also sell ads if you have page rank.. do a google search. http://www.linkadage.com/ i cant remember the site i used to use but its similar to what these guys were doing..
They were basically advertising site brokers, you could get upto $500 per revolving banner per month with a decent page rank.. Up to 10x banners

Best of luck with it stephen !!

Cianos

A website has to generate a lot of traffic to make any significant amount of cash from advertising. Unless you're getting 1000's of hits a day, it's probably better to look at other ways of monetising the website.

Ads degrade the user experience on a website, so for the sake of what will be for you a negligible amount (because it's not the kind of site that will ever get massive volumes of daily traffic), you shouldn't go down the banner route.

You have a good resource that connects service providers to customers, so why not charge the service providers somehow, for a heightened presence on the site. For example, if they pay X per month they can have a featured listing where they appear on the top of the search results relevant to them, making it more likely they'll get the business.

clusk007

well the site launched about three weeks ago and there has been roughly 1600 visitors but this will definitely grow. Just to be clear, I wasn't talking about €1000 to advertise on the site, I'm thinking more €50 a month.

The thing about this site is the user is very specific i.e. wheelchair user which is such a niche market that I believe advertisers would be attracted to this. I do not want to overload the site however with advertising because, as the above poster said, it's not very attractive for the user.

I do have other sources of revenue from the site which I'm working on but advertising is a part of the revenue source I have accounted for. I'm still in the dark about prices however, any other opinions?

The Apprentice

May i ask for the link please ?

Ok i can see your points on not killing the site with adds, €50 a month is very low .. im positive you will get more than that.

How about just having one main sponser.. because it has a certain "disability" factor to the service your providing Perhaps getting a Major Wheelchair user onboard that would get a certain user that would see their brand.

Perhaps something like this could be looked at, im not familer with the no1 brands but im sure you can find that information from someone who has pre purchased etc. A main sponser could acheive you 2-300 a month which would be a great start.

Cheers

clusk007

The Apprentice wrote: »

May i ask for the link please ?

Ok i can see your points on not killing the site with adds, €50 a month is very low .. im positive you will get more than that.

How about just having one main sponser.. because it has a certain "disability" factor to the service your providing Perhaps getting a Major Wheelchair user onboard that would get a certain user that would see their brand.

Perhaps something like this could be looked at, im not familer with the no1 brands but im sure you can find that information from someone who has pre purchased etc. A main sponser could acheive you 2-300 a month which would be a great start.

Cheers

many thanks for the great feedback. I definitely have a knowledge gap when it comes to pricing for the adverts so I started with €50 as a guide. I am a wheelchair user myself so I would be well aware of the major brands and I also have a lot of contacts in the disabled community which is a great door opener. The sponsorship route you suggest is a good idea and I have plans to speak with some major companies in the very near future but don't want to go into too much detail about this. The link to the website is http://wheelchairtaxi.ie/
would love to get your feedback on the site if you get a chance. Regards, Stephen

EIREHotspur

Its obviously a niche area so may I suggest as you are not charging people to advertise Wheelchair Taxis, that you actually find as many of them as you can and manually put them into your system.
It isn't as if they will object to free advertising.

I found none in my county when I searched.

There are no listings for Derry, Down, Fermanagh, Kilkenny, Leitrim, Longford, Offaly, Rosscommon, Sligo, Tipperary or Tyrone.

Also a lot of the Home Base details are missing.

With a website it is tempting to go live but also with a lot of people you get only one chance at a good first impression.

I would also urge you to make a simple Ap as a service like this is perfect for that.

I wish you lots of luck.

The Apprentice

Ya stephen looks pretty good from what i see..

The only thing lacking i would have thought was the above comments, Locations that Dont have a specific Wheelchair Service in that area which is not to say disheartening but dissapointing to fellow chair users that need that particular service.
So really all you can do on that note is keep looking for potential suiters for the site, which it is free so i feel you wont have much problems there.
One suggestion is to actually ask if not indeed the list, but potentially get your site with an email to every, or letter to every taxi in the country.
Perhaps the taxi regulator has a database that indeed shows who is and isnt wheelchair accessible ?? Other than that i can give you much added value into getting your name out there with specific taxi companys

Ye as you mentioned you know of the brands which is great, at least your going in that direction i dont see why u cant get a main sponser for the site its ok that u dont want to give away more specific info thats understandable

Keep up the good work anyway