One of my friends recently asked a question about making money from his blog by selling advertising space. He asked, “How many hits per month would justify selling advertising on my website?” Unfortunately, since I didn’t have actual web analytics data and only his website address to go by, I could only give him an idea or approximation of what he could charge based on what I knew about his blog already. Determining if a website is worth advertising on, cannot simply be based on the number of hits, visitors or pageviews. It really depends, there are so many more factors.

Things to know about this website before I begin (nothing too specific though):
Type of Site: WordPress Blog
Blog Topics: Food, Leadership, Projects, Music, Technology
Content Age/Blogging Since: 7 months
Guestimated traffic based on really rough data from http://www.serpanalytics.com/

Here’s a little industry jargon. The process of determining whether or not to advertise on any given website is called a POV or “Point of View”. In a POV, its the responsibility of the reviewer to determine if spending money on a particular website will generate ROI or “Return on Investment”. Now, depending on an advertiser’s KPI or “Key Performance Indicators” or what the goal(s) of their campaign are, will also be a determining factor when considering a site to be included in an online advertising campaign.

Top 5 things that advertisers consider before advertising on a site:

Target Demographic

Who is visiting your website?

• What geographical area are they from?
• How old are they?
• What ethnic background do they come from?
• What are they interested in?
• How much money do they make?

Traffic & Exposure

How many people visit your website and how do they get there?

• How many unique visitors does your website get per day / per month?
• How many impressions can your website deliver?
• Do you promote your website on other websites, google adwords, banner ads on other sites or other advertising channels like magazines or posters?
• How many subscribers do you have?
• How often do you publish new content
• Is your content positioned high in search engines?

Ad Visibility

Where will my banner be placed?

• Where will the ad be placed within the website layout?
• Above the fold? below? placed within the body of the content?
• Will it be shown on every page of the site (ROS or “Run of Site”), specific categories or specific pages?
• What ad-sizes are available? are they IAB Standard (Internet Advertising Bureau)

CTR, Conversion Rates

Will people click my ad and will I get something back (ROI)?

• How are your other advertisers doing in the same space?
• Are there any types of ads that don’t work as well over others?

Competitive Pricing

How much do you charge and am I getting a deal?

• Do you charge by CPM (Cost per one thousand impressions)? monthly tenancy? CPA (per acquisition?)
• How much are other sites charging with similar traffic, content, exposure?
• Does your site offer anything else of value? can you offer free impressions? or a free month of advertising?

Basically, if you don’t have enough information to base a decision on about advertising on any particular website, my advice is don’t do it. But, if a website can provide you with accurate demographic information, traffic and exposure numbers, give your ad great ad visibility and positioning at a competitive price, I say go for it.

Unfortunately for my friend, I didn’t have much to go by so this is what I replied:

I don’t know how much about the site you want to sell ads on for; if its for your personal blog, I could say $2 to $5 per month or $2 per 1000 impressions. But that’s based on a guess that your site receives about 90 visitors a day, which means you probably have anywhere from 2,500 to 3,000 pageviews a month (it depends on the type of content), your demographic is between the ages of 30 to 40, split between men and women, the age of your blog 7 months, and your site’s focus is too spread out. If you had a site that only talked about programming or food, then I could see more value in it.

One thing to keep in mind is that there are millions of websites out there, if you want to sell ads on your website, its a good idea to think about what advertisers are looking for so when someone does come knocking at your door to advertise on your website, you have facts and can justify that advertising on your site is worth it because of all the things I discussed, not simply just on hits.