Cash is Good!

I have taken a part-time job, and it's definitely affecting my blogging time. I'll continue to post here as I am able.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

What is a Reasonable Ad Price on a Blog? You Tell Me!


There is great disparity in prices for 125x125 ads on blogs. I am curious to see what people think about what an ad should be worth.

For those who use Project Wonderful, most ad slots seem to settle in at 2 to 3 cents a day, which translates to less than $1.00 a month. A few blog with very high traffic seem to be able to command a higher price.

I've seen people advertising private sell ads for anywhere from $3.00 to $6.00 a month.

Many bloggers are familiar with Entrecard and CMF ads which use an internal accounting system. CMF has recently switched to a cash system rather than points. Many ads there run 50 cents a month, but ads are likely to be shared and not get full-time exposure.

Adgitize ads seem to cost more at $14.00 a month, but with the incentive to click on other ads in the system the cost can be recouped for those who also wish to take the time to do so.

Of course, the worth of a blog as an advertisement venue also depends on the amount of traffic a blog receives. Ways to evaluate this might be Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank, unique visitor count, or pageviews.

I am adding a poll to my sidebar to run till I get home from my next hike. Let's assume that a blog has a Page Rank of 3, an Alexa Rating of about 150,000, and receives 150 pageviews a day from 80 unique visitors. In other words, this would be a blog that does a bit better than average. What do you think would be a reasonable price to charge per month for an ad on that blog?

web ad income Sept 11 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing):
Adsense $.31
Adgitize $.56
Project Wonderful $.02
Clixsense $.07
______________________
Total: $.96

2 comments:

John | Make Nothing Online said...

I had two blogs on CMF Ads at $0.25 and the only got one or two ads per month.

I dropped one down to $0.04 and the other to $0.09.

The blog at $0.04 now gets 25 ads per month (total $1.00 up from $0.50)

The blog at $0.09 now gets 9 ads per month (total $0.81 up from $0.50)

The worth of an ad depends on a number of factors. How many unique visitors and how many competing ads.

I don't want my ad to be lost because I'm advertising on a blog with 20+ 125x125 ads in their sidebar!

I'm happy to pay about $0.05 CPM to advertise my blogs. If I was selling a product or service I'd consider paying more.

Sharkbytes said...

Wow... that is a huge drop. I think when they changed to real money there was a perception change. 2 credits seemed very reasonable. In fact they used to suggest asking 5 credits per month. But now those 2 credits = 50 cents and it looks like more. I just dropped my price... not sure I'm ready to go as low as you yet.