Question for advertisers...

[WebSlave]

As many of you know, most of the financial support for this site comes from the people paying for the banner ads here. What it is drawing in now is paying for the two servers I have, but does not leave much room for the custom programming I pay for now and again. And of course, the lawsuit thing is going to be an ongoing drain, apparently.

So I am considering adding a couple of banner ad spots at the bottom of the page. My question is, would they be worthwhile? I'm figuring on maybe two, side by side, 468x60, or four 120x60 spots for something like $10 per month. Or is this going to start getting into the overkill level with the number of graphics banners on this site? Loading speed from my laptop across a dialup isn't too unbearable, but each graphic I add, will add to the load.

Traffic has picked up significantly in just the last few days, but this might just be a blip on the radar screen.

Oh, one other thing, the domain hosting I am offering was originally designed to help me pay for the one server I am running everything on. However, when I took a look at the loading stats, I was afraid I was going to bog down my main server with EVERYTHING running concurrently. So all of the hosted domains are running on a separate server, which I also use for the faunatopsites program and use as a backup repository for the backup data files I do each night. Just 12 more hosted domains and that server will be paying it's own way. :/

Of course, if traffic keeps increasing at it's present rate, I can see where I will need yet another server just to put the MySQL system and perhaps the banner ad system as well.

Fortunately I started with very fast servers to begin with, but the downside to that is that I don't have any wiggle room to think about upgrading to something even more robust. Maybe going to 2 gig of main RAM would help as well.... But then again, that is an additional expense.

Anyway, let me know what you all think about the additional banner ads at the bottom of the page. And don't forget to look into those Sponsors pages I set up. They don't get a huge number of hits, but the clickthrough ratio is immensely better than the regular banner ads are getting.

Thanks.

[HerpVenue]

maybe put one where the topsites counters are at now.
Then move the top sites counters to the bottom.

there are some websites where putting ads at the bottom would be good.

But for this site.....I honestly do not look at anything past the reply button.....well very very rarely anyway

[dwedeking]

How did your google ads pull? That will give you a good guide into how well banners will pull down there.

Personally I agree with Ritchie that utilizing your counter space for an ad would be more beneficial than at the bottom (put me in for one if you do that).

[WebSlave]

I actually discontinued the Google ads a while back. Guess that tells me something right there about how much ads would actually be viewed at the bottom of the page.....

One thing I have discovered about the topsites banners is that the closer to the top of the page you have them, the higher the numbers will be on them. This is because many people will not wait for the entire page to completely load before they click on a link to go elsewhere on the site. So anything at the bottom of the page may not even load before the screen changes.

That's why most sites charge a LOT less for bottom of the page advertising. It's a tradeoff, I guess. Some people might not mind spending $10 per month for it, though, I suppose.

Actually, I'm a bit surprised that the Sponsors link line at the top of the page isn't used more. Click throughs are WAY higher there than they are on banner ads, probably because people going there are specifically looking for an advertiser. The best click through ratio on the rotating banner ads is "WantaPet" at 0.58 percent (1,042 clicks on 179,646 impressions). On those small banner ads in the sponsors links area, the best click through ratio is "RitchieReptiles" at 13.06 percent (1,237 clicks on 9,472 impressions).

As a direct comparison, Scales has a vertical banner ad that has a 0.11 percent click through (867 clicks on 783,248 impressions). However on the sponsor banner link, the ratio is 12.07 percent (1,119 clicks on 9,261 impressions)!

Considering that most paid search engine links will cost you roughly 10 cents per click, this is a hell of a bargain at only $50 per year!

Anyway, if I were to move the topsites counters to the bottom of the page and put in a banner ad spot(s) in place of them, what would be best: another single 120x600 vertical banner, or a series of smaller 120x60 mini banners? Probably the smaller banner ads would be more cost effective, from my standpoint, by charging $10 (or even $5) per month for each of them, but will I be running into the problem of banner ad overkill on this site?

Thanks for the input on this...

[dwedeking]

Another site places a special for one of my competitors across the top portion of the page. This is a text link that is offer specific. I am sure this pulls really well and would be worth an additional amount but you would be limited to a single ad and it would require you changing the ad on a frequent basis.

[Clay Davenport]

From the looks of it, at my screen resolution at least, there's room for another 120x600 under the topsites icons if you don't want to move them.
Surely another 25 or 30k wouldn't hurt load times too much.
An extra one that size could carry the same charge, but allow for twice the potential impressions for any given advertiser.

For me, I don't actually need a banner at all. I only have one for the sole purpose of supporting the site. Aside from roaches, it'll be three months before I have anything at all for sale.
A side bonus though is that it is cool to load a page and see my graphic there :D

I'll have to admit though, it would be difficult for me to be able to justify keeping it up for a full year. I sell out of my offspring pretty easily, so a banner isn't actually going to have any room to generate me more sales.
The sponsor page looks appealing to me, and I hadn't thought of that. I think I'll grab a spot there.

I would think product specific ad Daniel mentioned is a definately good idea.
Add another bar under the "Inside Fauna Classifieds" bar at the top and increase the font size with perhaps a slight change in cell color to draw attention.
I've often wondered out of curiosity what that link Daniel was referring to costs the advertiser.
I would think it could easily be worth $50 per month, or set it up weekly for $20 or something.
Say I had a special on roaches, or Daniel was running a sale on his digital scales for a week. A text link in that position would easily be worth $20 to promote the sale.
Increasing load times with a text link wouldn't be a concern either.

[WebSlave]

Dan - could you point me to the site that has this ad link you are referring to?

Now, would this be a static line of advertising, or one of those scrolling lines that you see here and there?

And what would something like that be worth to you guys and would you really use it if the price is in line?

I would have to pay my programmer to implement this, so I would want to be sure I'm not just throwing my money away (i.e. the highlighted ads in the classifieds section) for something that will not be used at all.

Thanks.

[HerpVenue]

I would use it.
I just have nothing to use it on.

I also want to get me one of those big banners on the side.
But at this point it is not really conducive to my finances or logic.
because I have nothing to sell.


I was thinking. If I buy lots of ads right now......
people will come to my site and see nothing for sale.
But when I do finally have something for sale.........they will not come because they remember I had nothing.



okay that add up there in yellow.
I like it. how much is it? a week? a month? a couple of months?

[WebSlave]

I'm till working out the particulars on that highlighted text ad. I want this to be used as a high profile special sale sort of thing for advertisers, so I will limit the run for any particular ad to only one week. The ads will rotate through, but will be limited to no more that 5 or 6 different ones within that time period. The click through ratio will likely be very high for those spots.

I'm thinking about charging $25 per week per line ad, first come, first serve. If response warrants it, I will set up a calendar so people can reserve particular weeks for their ads in advance.

This advertising stuff is new terrain for me, so please bear with me.

But hopefully this will be a relatively painless way for me to drum up more funds from this site. I guess paid advertising will ruffle a lot less feathers than any sort of admission fee or charge for using the classifieds sections.

[HerpVenue]

I think that would be good.
SPECIALLY for special sales or what not.

and if it too high or too low....it can always get adjusted