Selling Flat-Rate Ads on Your Site

Due to the number of questions I receive about flat-rate ads, I thought I’d blog about this topic today.

First of all, flat-rate ads have a fixed price regardless of impressions, clicks, etc. So charging someone $50 per month for an ad on your site would be an example of a flat-rate ad.

In this post I want to discuss three different ways you can host these kinds of ads.

1) AdBrite

As you may know, AdBrite will host and manage your flat-rate ads for you. Of course, the catch is they take a percentage of the revenue you earn from each ad.

However, the positive side is they manage the addition and removal of ads based on the start and end dates so you don’t have to remember to physically add and remove the ads.

You simply create your ad zones, set your prices, and paste the AdBrite code into your pages. AdBrite does the rest, including processing the payments.

I’m currently using AdBrite to manage some of the ads on my left and right columns of 2 Create a Website. You can click the “Your Ad Here” links to get a feel for how the process works.

Note: Yes, it is OK to use AdBrite’s flat rate ad system in conjunction with AdSense. I emailed Google to verify this before signing up.

2) Ad Management Scripts

Installing an ad managment script will give you the most flexibility. Everything is managed on your own domain name and you don’t have to share any of your revenue with a third party.

There are several free scripts available that you can install to manage your ads. OpenX (formerly OpenAds) is probably one of the most popular, open source ad scripts around.

For a list of more options, check HotScripts.com.

You must have a domain name and shared or dedicated hosting plan to use these kinds of scripts. Installation and some configuration is usually required.

With many of these scripts, your advertisers can create accounts so they can manage their own ads, review click-thru reports, purchase new ads, etc.

Most are also compatible with billing solutions like PayPal, although in many instances you’ll need to install a plug-in or add-on.

3) The Manual Method

If you don’t want to bother with installing scripts or using ad management companies like AdBrite then you can manage your flat-rate ads manually.

In other words, you put the ads up and take them down yourself while managing the payments with a 3rd party billing provider like PayPal.

Yes, in case you didn’t know, PayPal has a subscription payment option. So if someone wants to advertise on your site, you can simply login to your PayPal account, go to “Merchant Services” and select “Subscribe.”

This will allow you to setup a recurring billing/subscription payment for your advertisers. PayPal will automatically bill them for the chosen amount every month. Of course, you can cancel the payments at any time.

How Much Should You Charge?

“How much should I charge for my ads?” is a question that comes up a lot on my forum.

One way to determine this price is to look at your eCPM statistic from affiliate networks you belong to (CJ, LinkShare, etc.) or from programs like AdSense or AdBrite.

Let’s say your eCPM for AdSense is $3.00. That means your site earns $3.00 for every 1,000 ad displays. So if your site gets 5,000 visits per month then you would charge $15/month ($3.00 x 5) for the flat-rate ad.

Of course this is not the only way to determine your price and you may want to adjust it based on the kind of traffic you receive, ad placement, etc. However, this is a good starting point for setting your prices.

A Note About Traffic

A lot of new Webmasters and Bloggers consider selling advertising space on their sites before they even have any traffic. This is a big no-no.

Would you place an ad in a magazine that had no subscribers or circulation? Of course not. So build up your traffic first and then be prepared to provide statistics about your traffic to potential advertisers (traffic numbers and information about the type of visitor).

As I described above, your traffic levels can help you determine the price of your ads. So if you have no traffic, how can you ensure your prices are appropriate?
Other Options

This is not an exhaustive list of methods you can use for flat-rate ads. If you use WordPress, there are even plug-ins you can install to manage them. So feel free to share what you use for your site or blog.