Facebook Fan Is Worth $3.60 Annually

FACEBOOK GIFT / QUIZ APPLICATIONS
Each Facebook Fan Is Worth $3.60 Annually
Posted by Raj Dash on April 13th, 2010 3:23 PMShare177 6 Comments Social media marketing platform company Vitrue has determined that the average value of a Facebook ‘fan’ is about $3.60 in equivalent media each year. This calculation is based on having one million Fan Page fans, and is not weighted for brand recognition.

In some figures published in AdWeek, Vitrue revealed how they determined this per-fan value. They made their findings based on the aggregated fans of their client base for their Wall Apps Facebook applications, which is part of their SRM (Social Relationship Manager) software suite. Collectively, Vitrue’s clients have 41M Facebook Fan Page fans. Their study results show that companies with a fan base of 1M find an average return of $3.60 per fan in the form of “equivalent media,” spread out over a year.

The numbers work like this. If a brand posts to their Facebook Fan Page twice a day and have a million fans, that’s 60M impressions per month in the collective “news feed”. Vitrue used a figure of $5 CPM (Cost per Mille, aka Cost per thousand impressions), so 60M impressions would result in $300K/month of media value. I.e., what the brand might have to spend elsewhere to get the same eyeballs. That $300K /month is $3.6M/ year, meaning that with 1M fans, the average value is $3.6 per fan.

These numbers are just averages, but the general statistic is important to those who need to measure social media metrics. Brand notoriety seems to play a part in whether all companies realize the $3.60/ Facebook fan value, or go above or beyond. E.g., a popular brand might get additional impressions from the Facebook news feed, partly because of fans sharing information with friends.

If you want to learn more about Facebook Page-related promotion opportunities, have a listen to our sister site MediaBistro’s podcast interview with Vitrue CEO Reggie Bradford, from early Mar 2010

on Tuesday · Delete Post.FACEBOOK GIFT / QUIZ APPLICATIONS Brands have rushed to attract fans on Facebook in hopes of grabbing up consumer mindshare for a bargain. But when it comes to estimating the value of such efforts, they're shooting in the dark, given the embryonic stage of Facebook marketing and lack of data. Wednesday morning, Adweek tried to address that by publishing numbers from social media consultancy Vitrue, which put a price of $3.60 on each Facebook fan. AllFacebook and AllThingsD have parroted the number. Precision makes for great headlines... the only problem is, the figure is highly dubious.

First of all, Vitrue didn’t publish the study at all, and makes no mention of it on its website, which suggests these are back-of-the-napkin figures(**see update). Adweek’s Brian Morrissey didn’t respond immediately for comment on how he obtained the figures, but I’ll update the post if I hear back.

Second, Vitrue makes money by managing companies’ campaigns on Facebook. If it can make brands feel better about investing in its services, that’s money in the bank. This is not exactly an impartial source.

Third, it seems Vitrue could have easily produced more accurate estimates that would yield a lower value. Here’s how they got the figure (bold is mine):

The firm has determined that, on average, a fan base of 1 million translates into at least $3.6 million in equivalent media over a year.
[…]
The company's findings are based on impressions generated in the Facebook news feed, the stream of recent updates from users' networks. Vitrue analyzed Facebook data from its clients -- with a combined 41 million fans -- and found that most fans yielded an extra impression. That means a marketer posting twice a day can expect about 60 million impressions per month through the news feed.
[…]
Vitrue arrived at its $3.6 million figure by working off a $5 CPM.
Vitrue estimates the average annual impression per fan by taking the finding that "most fans yielded an extra impression," (over what time period?) and then multiplying that by 650, assuming two postings a day. Wouldn't it be more honest to take the average number of postings per day among Virtue’s client base? That would probably be relatively easy to determine. I'm sure most brands don't post twice a day and if they did, they would lose fans fast--at the very least, they'd lose impressions as users remove the brand's updates from their feeds.

Vitrue didn’t respond immediately to a request for comment (update: they declined to comment, and simply referred me to their blog post, twice). In the meantime, I’m assuming the average value of a Facebook Fan is a fraction of $3.60.



Update: Vitrue's post published later Wednesday morning indicates the company does intend this as a serious study, and not just a back-of-the-napkin response to Adweek... which means the flimsy math is even less excusable.


The post doesn't dispel any concerns over its methodology, though it does clarify what it means by "most fans yield an extra impression:

how many impressions can a single wall post receive? To our surprise we learned the average was approximately 1:1 (0.96:1 to be exact). This means our 1 million Fan Facebook Page can average 1 million impressions with a single post to the wall.
Taking that and multiplying by two posts a day is still unrealistic, for the reasons stated above. Vitrue could determine how much a fan worth is worth in reality. Instead, the company opts for an unrealistic theoretical extrapolation that yields a bigger number. That's a predictable maneuver from a marketing department, but it's surprising that Adweek and AllThingsD would give it so much play.


on Tuesday · Delete Post.FACEBOOK GIFT / QUIZ APPLICATIONS Great questions Tauya! Here are my thoughts:

5,000 visitors are worth vastly different amounts of money depending on what niche you’re targeting. If you’re targeting Arizona DUI Lawyer (5 Sure-fire Ways To Know If Your Business Will Work Or Not) then it could be worth a lot of money. If you’re targeting a niche that doesn’t pay very much then your 5,000 visitors are practically worthless.

Here is how I would break down your revenue projection:

Visitors: 5,000
Estimated Click Through Rate: 1% (this would require a prominent ad placement above the fold)
–> # of clicks: 50

How much is a click worth?

According to Google’s Keyword Tool, here are a few examples based on what Tauya gave me:

•Social website: $2.17 / click
•African-Caribbean community: $0.08 / click
•Afro: $0.69 / click
•United Kingdom: $2.33 / click
•Facebook: $0.95 / click
As you can see there is a wide range of click prices. If your content focused on “social website” and “United Kingdom” the cost per click would be over $2.00. But if you target the “African-Caribbean community” or “Afro” then the price drops off dramatically. For sake of an example let’s assume the $2.17 / click price for “social website” which will be at the high end of your spectrum. If you’re using AdSense, Google will now take 30-50% of that as commission for lining up the sale. Assuming they only take 30% then you’re left with 70% of $2.17 which is $1.52. I would note that these estimates are very very high – in reality you’ll likely be seeing 10% of that figure. But let’s say you did make $1.52 per click. Now with the 50 clicks that we’re getting that would mean we’ve made $76 from our 5,000 visitors. Under this very optimistic scenario you’ll need to get 660 clicks to earn $1,000. With the 1% click through rate that we assumed, that means you’ll need to drive 66,000 visitors to your site to make $1,000.
To summarize:
•Visitors: 5,000
•Click Through Rate: 1%
•–> # Clicks: 50
•Assumed Cost Per Click: $2.17 (very high assumption)
•Assumed 30% Google Commission: $0.65
•–> Your Revenue Per Click: $1.52
•Total Revenue from 5,000 visitors = 50 clicks x $1.52 = $76
It can be tough to make a living online! Other factors to keep in mind are that ad rates are falling due to the economic recession and that social media sites tend to have very very low click through rates (way below 1%) because many people return to the site, know where the ads are, and don’t click on them. It’s called “ad blindness” and if they’re not clicking on your ads then you’re not making money. I hope this helps in building your business case! Good luck!
Evan Carmichael
on Tuesday · Delete Post.FACEBOOK GIFT / QUIZ APPLICATIONS It should come as no surprise that the ad inventory on social networks like Facebook are not worth much. A new offer by Lookery, a startup that places ads on social apps inside Facebook and Bebo, is offering a guaranteed ad rate of 12.5 cents for every thousand impressions (CPM). The promotion, which runs through April is probably close to what Lookery can get for ads it places on Facebook. Add in 2 cents per thousand impressions for serving the ads and you get to about a 15 cent CPM. That is probably a good average for the bulk of inventory on Facebook, which makes up the vast majority of Lookery’s business.

This is a market-share play for Lookery. By offering a guaranteed rate, it hopes to attract enough application publishers to get to a billion impressions a month, up from 170 million in December. Lookery is smaller than the other major social-app ad networks, like Slide, RockYou, and Social Media. On social networks, more so even than on the Web in general, advertising is obviously a volume game. And Lookery is trying to catch up to the larger app ad networks, which may very well have higher average CPM rates, by taking all the low-hanging penny inventory that is out there.

on Tuesday · Delete Post.FACEBOOK GIFT / QUIZ APPLICATIONS The average person’s newsfeed reaches 164 friends on Facebook (see here), so each time a Facebook user becomes a Fan, 164 people have the opportunity to also become a fan and learn more about that company.

One way to establish a value for fans is to look at it in terms of what it would cost to buy 164 impressions. If we assume a $5 CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) for 164 impressions, that would cost you roughly $.82 each time someone becomes a fan and has that displayed on their news feed. In the Lamborghini example, they received over 73,300,000 impressions from their 447,000+ fans, which equates to $366,540 worth of free advertising.

Ultimately, if you could conclude that as a result of someone becoming a fan, they influenced another person in their network to make a purchase from you, then that is when fans become profitable. The value is equal to the amount of profit you earn from that customer’s initial order and perhaps all of their future orders. Unfortunately, it is not possible to track to this magnitude today.

There are a few types of tracking available today that can give more insight into the value of fans. The first is to put special offers on your fan pages. If someone reacts to a special offer that is promoted on your fan page and is only accessible to fans, you could tell the number of sales you received from that specific promotion and, therefore, assign a value to your fans. A second method is more rudimentary. When one becomes a fan of yours, you know only a few things about them: First name, last name, date they became a fan. You could put this information in a database and cross-reference that with the name of the customers you receive each week. Anytime you find a match, you can infer that you received that sale, in part, because they are a fan. Obviously, there could be many other reasons why they bought from you, and you may have some difficulty matching just names in an accurate manner.

I’m interested to hear more thoughts and ideas of how others in the online marketing world value Facebook fans.

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11 Responses to “What Is the Value of a Facebook Fan?”
Gab Goldenberg says:
January 20, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Facebook doesn’t get $5 CPM, so you have to cut the numbers. An extremely high CTR ad (0.16% CTR – great for FB) saw 0.49 CPM and n average it’s closer to $0.15. But that is an interesting approach to measuring the value of a FB fan.

Adam Goldberg says:
January 21, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Hey Gab,

Didn’t mean to infer Facebook charges a $5 CPM. I was only using a $5 CPM to demonstrate how one could calculate the value of the free impression one receives when a Facebook user becomes a fan. You can replace that $5 CPM with whatever CPM you are more comfortable with.

Bruce Dietzen says:
August 15, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Adam,
I’ve tried to crunch the numbers every which way, but couldn’t convince myself of any solid way to value a fan. I’m guessing that the ultimate value of a fan is what a comany like Pepsi will pay a developer or advertiser to increase its fanbase so its bigger than Coke’s

Have you heard of any companies paying on a “Cost Per Fan” (CPF) basis yet? Is anyone even using such a term?

Alex Frakking says:
August 16, 2009 at 12:47 am
that $5 CPM isn’t unreasonable considering the “ad” is coming from a trusted source (a friend), and placed exactly where people are looking for information (the newfeed, as opposed to the ad strip).

However we can’t assume an update will reach 164 people just because that’s the number of friends they have. 1) Facebook filters the feeds, 2) some people won’t log on in time so it won’t even be displayed to them.

Good post!

yinka olaito says:
September 24, 2009 at 3:04 am
I like your cost per impression analysis, it speaks volumes about your knowledge. keep it up

Christian Del Monte says:
September 24, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Great post Adam. Couple of items I thought would be worth mentioning….because I had to read your analysis several times before I got it:)

That’s $0.82 per 164 impressions WHEN they become a fan. I’m curious as to what others say, but I’ve been averaging fans for about $2.50/fan while using FB’s advertising program. I believe that the cost/fan relies on several factors such as the product/service, facebook content, and brand. However, you can not deny the fact that when people “fan” a site, they ultimately are advocating your brand and are in tune with your company.

I’m not as interested in the “broadcasting measurement” as you so put it; as I am in the fact that fans have a lifetime value. In your Lamborghini example, that means when a new improved model comes out, 40x (versus Toyota) the amount of people will receive an newsfeed update alerting them to the fact….and keeping mind that they asked to know that in the first place. Lets go a step further and talk about how that could be monetized. What if a new James Bond film came out that featured a new Lambo. What would that announcement be worth to the film producer if that were seeded in Lamborghini’s news feed?

Best Regards,

Christian

Mike Nierengarten says:
September 28, 2009 at 2:22 pm
I would consider the value of a fan not by CPM but closer to the value of adding someone to your opt-in email list (possibly a little higher). You get the benefit of connecting directly with the fan via fan updates. You also get the initial endorsement of when the user becomes a fan, which is much more valuable than an regular impression on paid search or with a FB ad.

In terms of cost/fan, I would add targeting. If you are running very targeted ads on Facebook, your cost/fan should shrink significantly. Also, if you are running a contest or giveaway, you can also reduce costs. With my campaigns, I typically shoot for $0.50 per fan.

Rob Duncan says:
September 30, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Like the approach, but value is never the same as cost… so, it would be a good argument that by getting the exposure to those fans, Lamborghini “saved” itself some amount of money ($366k in your example) that it would have COST to gain the same exposure… of course, many would argue that such a campaign ($366k in CPM spending) would likely not have that VALUE to the company.

The bottom line is the “investment” building a fan base could stay around for a while, instead of the expense in PPC/CPM advertising which has no residual value. It should be used, when possible, as part of an overall strategy.

Akash Pai says:
October 8, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Interesting analysis, Adam. The numbers that you use for number of fans per user – 164 is from 2007. Do you have the latest nums? I guess they must be upwards of 200 now.

spanky says:
January 27, 2010 at 3:25 pm
$5 CPM lol – what are you smoking? Maybe if ALL of your friends are active, high-wealth investors. But your analysis is interesting…

Benjamin Weiss says:
February 25, 2010 at 5:14 pm
It’s a good start at measuring the acquisition of one new fan…but what about the lifetime value of that fan? Every time that the fan “likes” one of your posts or engages your group, the message is likely to be re-broadcast to ~160 users. It’s these subsequent engagements with your brand that make the bulk of the value of 1 friend.

on Tuesday · Delete Post.FACEBOOK GIFT / QUIZ APPLICATIONS Resolved QuestionShow me another »
2 Million page impressions a month, how much can i earn with cpm?
How much can i earn with 2.5 million page impressions a month on cpm ads...isit worth me trying? Im new to webmaster and have no clue..
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dont get this sh*t.
you get 2 MILLION site visits? whats your site? even if you sold tooth brushes at 2p, with 2 million visitors, you'ud get some business? why the talk of cpm, whatever that is?
this is why i dont get it. if you had a page saying ill give you a fiver, you get loads of hits, yet youve got a wothless site. why people think numbers equals profit? its like your saying ive got loads of viewers, however gained, is there a product that will give me money for this? but yet somehow i cant, for all these millions of visitors?
the answer below confirms my misunderstanding of web bullsh*t.
he can make "o" dollars per "pr" so he should email this guy, to make "1000" "$" and no doubt, pay him his per "smooge" fee for "smege", but he'll find the small print much better paginated, and in perfect english, on the direct debit, pay per click mandate, when entering his bank details.

One thing i have noticed on the web, how many adverts that product your show to maximise dollar and you earn in sterling pound, can spaeak perfect small print english on a direct debit madate form?
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by ozzigold Member since:
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If you have that much traffic to a half decent site, you may like to consider NetAudioAds. Simply place the small code within your pages, and your visitors will be presented with a 5 second audio ad. You get paid on every ad played. The best part of this program is that it doesn't rely on "click-throughs" for you to get paid, and it doesn't take up valuable website space, that could be used for other advertising etc. No cost to you to participate.
Source(s):
http://www.sellingppp.com/s.cgi?ppp=1202…
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There are two questions that need to be asked

Is the quality of the vistors good ?

Is the traffic targeted?

Traffic from pop-unders etc is no good

cpm pays from 50c to $150 per 1000 viewers


If you have good targeted traffic can make a lot of money in advertising directly to the visitors. Check out affiliate programs. Or if you want to be lazy try adsense.

Good luck
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Depends on what you do with it. Example, I have one comunity Website, where I get about a $1.00 for every 1000 page impressions using Adsense. I have another website, where it's mostly technical how to's that I grew out of my computer business, where I get as much as $5.00 per click for referring someone to buying a peice of software, or a book. Most of the better PPC deals are on doubleclick, but now that Google has bought them out, I'm wondering if they'll keep paying out as well. The absolute best sites are the ones that are very tightly focused on one particular market segment, and you have someone advertising on there that direclty relates to it. Such as if you run a gaming site, and all you Game reviews, have something they can click to buy the game. Situations like that, you can get you the most. Good Luck
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Are the 2 million page impressions from unique visitors? In analytics it can be a bit misleading as it also can say 'page hits' which aren't unique visitors. Page hits include all the graphics in a single page, for example if your page had 10 graphics, that would be 10 page hits.

If it is indeed unique visitors, well done! You've done well!

There isn't a set price. If you are just starting, some would recommend to go for 0.005c per impression. So 1000 impressions would be $5.00. You can increase the price later when you get more advertisers lined up. But it's totally up to you.
Source(s):
http://www.gooruze.com/
on Tuesday · Delete Post.FACEBOOK GIFT / QUIZ APPLICATIONS So, You Want Sponsors/Advertisers, Huh?


By Joe Burns


Use these to jump around or read it all...


[What Do You Have That People Want?]
[Hits Vs. Visitors] [What Is The Magic Number?]
[How Much Do I Ask For?] [Flat Rate Or Impressions?]
[How Do I Get Started?] [Getting Advertisers]
[Do I Have To Advertise to Get Advertisers?]
[How Many Advertisers on One Page?]
[Final Thoughts]
Note to the Reader: The following is a tutorial that people have been asking me to write for some time now. Below are a lot of my opinions. Most of the information comes from my slant after having gone through the process. There are other ways of doing this. What is below is my way of doing it. So far, it's worked. The topics discussed are from different e-mails I have received.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


What Do You Have That People Want?
That's a bold question, Joe. Yes, but it's a pretty good one. I get letters all the time saying they want to advertise on their home page. I say, Great! How many people are coming in a day? I'm not talking hits mind you, I'm talking visitors. How many? Furthermore, does that warrant someone paying money for your site?

Hits vs. Visitors
When you are talking to a possible advertiser about the number of people that roll through your site in a day, month, or year, the advertiser usually wants to know about "Impressions" or "Visitors." Too often this gets confused with the concepts of hits. Here are the differences:
Hits: A "hit" is a request of the server. Let's say, for example, that you have a page that has five graphics on it. That page is equal to six hits, the page and then the five graphics. Sometimes people report "hits" to a possible advertiser. This is wrong, as it creates an inflated report of site traffic. If I could report hits alone, I could create graphics-filled pages and report numbers into the tens of millions.

Impressions (also called "Page Views"): This is a listing of how many times the ad banner was seen. It may be that one person saw the ad banner three times. That's fine. Impressions are simply the number of times the banner was seen.

Visitors: Visitors are the number of individual people coming into the site. Usually this number is reported right alongside Impressions. Something like, HTML Goodies creates 3 million impressions a month from 1.1 million individual visitors. (True, by the way.)
When I first started Goodies, I made a point of making my pages one hit each, three at the most. The reason was that I sold by impressions, but I paid by hits. I wanted the two numbers as equal as possible. Now I pay by space rather than impressions so I've gussied up the pages a bit.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


What Is The Magic Number?
Ten thousand per month. The question I am asked time and time again is how many people must come through the site for it to be worth selling to an advertiser. The number I kept hearing was 10,000 per month. Not 10,000 hits, but 10,000 individual visitors creating however many impressions. This appears to be the threshold where a serious advertiser will begin to talk to you.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


How Much Do I Ask For?
How much do you need? I don't mean that to be clever, either. What does it cost you in both hardware and time each month to run your site? I add "time" to that list because you must put in time. People want to be able to talk, or e-mail, to a real person. People also want to see change and improvement. It is my opinion that a site must evolve or it will die. I am forever answering e-mail or writing a new tutorial.
Now stop and think how much profits you wish to make. Yes, we'd all like to make 500% profit, but that's not always possible. You may price yourself right out of contention.
Finally, be flexible. You know what you want, but maybe an advertiser would like a break in price. You might say okay if they then offer to buy for five months rather than one, or pay up front. There is always a deal to be made.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Flat Rate per CPM, Click-Throughs, or Impressions?
Your choice. I go with a flat rate per 1000 impressions, called a CPM (cost per thousand). I think it is most fair to the advertiser. I often give more impressions than I offer. That's good for the advertiser and shows good faith on my part. The advertiser also has it easier with flat rate as he/she is able to budget easily and can forecast whether they can remain on your site next month.
If you go by exact number of impressions, you make the cost a floating number and that makes it harder to forecast dollars. It may lead to the end of an advertiser relationship. Plus, with a floating rate you will need to prove exact numbers which are far more difficult to provide than your simply hitting a plateau of visitors.
Selling by click-throughs is another popular method. A click-through is when someone clicks on the advertiser's banner to see what it links to. I've seen contracts anywhere from .20 cents to $1 per click, though.
The problem with click-though advertising is that you need to be able to keep track of the clicks. I do it through a program I purchased that rotates my advertising banners and records impressions and clicks. The program is from Central Ad Pro and cost me around $600. You have to decide if that is worth it to you.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


How Much Does HTML Goodies Ask For?
None of your business. Just kidding! I used to have different costs for each of the pages. When I first created "htmlgoodies.com", if you wanted to be at the top of the main page, I asked for $500. Each tutorial was $200. That was for one calendar month.
That meant I could offer 150,000 impressions for $500. Maybe that will help you decide on the amount you want to charge as you're getting off the ground.
As I said above, I am now using a CPM rate. Plus I have someone selling for me. I actually stay pretty far away from the money side of the site. I believe the rates now run about $30 or better for a thousand impressions. The site's pretty profitable.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


How Do I Get Started?
I would suggest putting together two things, after the Web site of course:
A description of the site (make this detailed). This is a PR-type thing. Say someone asks you to send some information about your site and what it offers. This is the information you would send them.
A Rate Card. This is a listing of every page and its price. Or how much per 1000 impressions, or however you are going to do it. You may only be selling the main page. If so, great. List it.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Getting Advertisers
There are couple ways of doing this. I only use one.

Sell yourself.
Hire someone to sell for you.

Sell Yourself
Get out there! Press the flesh! Shake a few hands! Slap a few backs! Sell! Sell! Sell!
Not much I can say here but to sell where you might find clients. Head to Internet shows. Write to advertisers over the Net. Put your pages on every search engine you can find. Post a rate card for all to see. I've never really done this outside of people asking about advertising simply because the site was there. I personally have never solicited for an advertiser outside of a return e-mail now and again.

Hire Someone
This is what I did. I felt I put enough time in working on the site. I'd head to the poorhouse before I made any contacts, so I hired a company to sell for me. I think it's the best way. The site became fun again when I got out of the money side. I actually came pretty close to closing Goodies altogether in 1996 because of having to sell the site myself.
The one downfall is that you don't get to keep all the money. These people won't work for free, you know! There is always a commission involved. In my case, it's 30% of the gross. Also, usually there is a statement that you don't get paid until the advertiser pays. So you may run a banner for a while, the advertiser doesn't pay, and you lose out. It happens, and it's part of doing business. That said...

Here is Yahoo's Internet Services Page. You can find companies there.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Do I Have To Advertise To Get Advertisers?
I guess you can. I never had to outside of search engines. Plus, you should get some form of advertising from the company you sign up with. People tell me that the Internet Link Exchange is good for some free advertising. The only problem with that is that they want to post a banner, which takes away from space you, may sell in the future and also makes it appear that you have banners already and might not need advertising.
I'm just a big believer in "build a better mousetrap and they will come." Just make a point of registering all your pages so you are fairly easy to find when someone goes looking for what you offer.

Click Here to learn how to register your pages!


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How Many Advertisers Should Go On One Page?
That depends on you, your advertisers, and the size of their banners. Some advertisers want to be the only one on the page and will write that right into a contract. Other advertisers will allow themselves to be around other banners if they themselves are at the top or close to the top. My limit was four when I had the old format of one long page linking everything; two at the top, one in the middle, and one at the bottom. I offered special prices to the one at the bottom.
Now that I use a program to rotate my banners for me, I only go with just a few per page.
Notice on this page, too, that ad banners are different sizes. Smaller banners allow for more per page with less intrusion.
If you do start selling ad space on your site, let me suggest that you also purchase a program that posts banners to pages on the fly. If you assign specific ad banners to specific pages, it tends to make the site look static. The CentralAd program I use can do that for you.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Final Thoughts
It is my opinion that undertaking advertising is more than a hobby on the side. You must look at this as a small business. Not only must you offer something nice to attract people, but you need to continually update and add to what you offer. You need to keep balance sheets for tax purposes. It's hard to hide that you're making money on the WWW since everyone can see it.
Most important of all, ask yourself the question: "What do you have that people want?" The purpose should be providing something people will come to see. The advertising will come easily after that.

Finally, I can give no better thought-provoking information than this: This site was up and running for a year and five months before I made a penny in profit. Now that it is getting established, I am making enough for the site to pay for itself, and a dinner out with my wife once a week ...and that's about it.

May you become rich! I'm certainly not... not yet anyway.



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