websites that make money

[sellinggalveston]

My site is now getting about 1.3million hits a month, and 15,000 unique visitors... I have thought about having ads/banners on my site and have one or two... but I have no idea how much to charge... is my site large enough to have ads on it?? if so how much do I charge... Please give me any other money making ideas with my site... I would like it to pay for its own upgrades

[webmaster]

Are you talking about your own real estate site, or some other site?

Also, throw the term "hits" out the window, as it is not really all that relevant to ad interested traffic. What stats program are you basing the 15,000 unique visitors on? I use Google Analytics and swear by it, has some really nice screen caps to use for promotion when selling ads as well.

Why not go the easy route to start? Some Google Adsense

That way you can see what kind of ad placements produce the best ctr, and find out of your site users are all that willing to click on ads.

[Micheal Pannell Realtor]

why adsense, would that put competors on your site.

[sellinggalveston]

Yes it is for my website... http://awstats.sourceforge.net/?seenIEPage=1
that is my stats provider... very detailed and accurate. I get about 100,000 page views a month... is that a better description. I have tested that and it is right on. Anyway I was approached last week by a online phonebook who wanted me to pay 1000 to be on their home page... so I asked how much traffic do you get and she said 500,000 hits... So I had never looked at my hits before so I showed her my 1.3 million hits and suddenly she wanted me to trade banners with her. So I started thinking hmmm how much is my site worth. It does not matter what the business is - but in Galveston we can come up number one under anything... So should I have a lot of banners on specific pages... for example one on foundation repair. We used to come up number one under galveston foundation repair... So I could charge someone to be on that page... and on a "information list" or something... so any suggestions?

[webmaster]

I think what she meant by "hits" was actually visitors, people get them confused all the time. Maybe I am wrong

If you are selling ads, you might go the CRM model (Term?) whereas, you charge X per thousand views of the ad. CRM is anywhere from $.50 for very low, and $10 for very high (This would be on something like webhostingtalk)

[Michael Paul Eau Claire]

Hey Jason, congrats on having such a dominant site.

I do sell adspace on my site (in a "service directory" area, not the home page) to help defray costs. I charge advertisers a monthly, semiannual, or annual fee.

Be careful how you set up payment -- in my state (WI), pay-per-click could be construed as a RESPA violation. And even promoting these other businesses on your site can be an implied recommendation. Check your local laws to be safe.

[kid disco]

For sake of time and ease of use, I usually monetize my sites through the affiliate route.

[seoai]

If it's your own site, I think it would cheapen it by placing ads on it. Hopefully, some of the leads, coming from the site, that later become buyers or sellers offset the cost, right?

[focusagent]

You could also consider adbrite.com. I use them for some of my sites and they seem to work well. Easy to install like google adsense.

[sdhomes]

100k page views and you need to sell ads to pay for upgrades?

If it's your own site, I think it would cheapen it by placing ads on it. Hopefully, some of the leads, coming from the site, that later become buyers or sellers offset the cost, right?

One would think so.