How to Create a Banner Ad Revenue Estimate

Does your Web site make you money? Turn off your order-entry system. Now does it? Well, it should. Web page banner ads have been around since the start of the Internet and the number of people using them continues to grow. They're a great way to earn your company extra revenue. How much, you say? It depends only on several factors such as Web banner ad specs (e.g., size), your Web site traffic and how targeted your audience is. No, you don't have to know how to create a banner ad that works. You just need a Web site. Join Big Picture Web today as we estimate how much extra income you could make with banner ads.

How to Create a Banner Ad

Oops. Wrong topic. We're not going to learn how to create a banner ad. Others have done that. WorkZ posted a great starter piece on how to sell banner ads on your site. Web Marketing Today also did a great intro on banner ads. Head over there if you need help on how to create a banner ad program. Today, we're here simply to gauge opportunity. What could we be making if we had banner ads that work to make us income just by being there?

Banner Ads that Work to Make You Income

(click to access the spreadsheet)How to create a banner ad vision of the future? Banner ads that work for you? I've created this Google Docs Banner Ads Revenue Estimator to assist us today. (You'll need a free Google Docs account). It's a spreadsheet with much of the math already done so we only have to focus on just a few things. If you love it, be sure to get additional free tools like this in the future by joining Big Picture Web's mailing list (There's a sign-up box in the right margin). Now then, let's begin.

Money on the Web. Banner Ad Specs

Remember, we're not here to learn how to create a banner ad or discuss web banner ad specs. We're really only going to learn enough to answer four questions:

1. How many monthly page views make up your banner ad real estate? Much of banner ad math involves these page views, or impressions. Certain Web banner ad specs may not allow you to display an ad on every Web page. Furthermore, you may have some banner ads that work particularly well only on certain product category pages. Locate the exact pages on which you wish to advertise and then track down the monthly impressions in your Web Analytics software.
2. How many ad slots do you have? Do you only have room for a super tall "vertical skyscraper" in the margin or is there room for an 4x4 display of "square button" banner ads? Your Web banner ad specs may be constrained by your your overall Web design. Determining how many banner ad slots there will be on your page is an important step in calculating how to create a banner ad fortune.
3. How much will you charge? The basic banner ad unit of measure is CPM or "cost per thousand impressions" (the M is Roman numeral for one thousand). Your CPM could vary widely, anywhere from $10 - $150. It's all a matter of demand. If you have minimal traffic or a very untargeted audience, you may get something closer to $10. Higher traffic? Focused audience? Perhaps large Web banner ad specs? These factors can increase your expected CPM dramatically. It can be hard finding your starting CPM. Look at some of the examples below to help you out. If all else fails, call your competitor and ask them!
4. Will this banner ad space be shared? Will you be doing any advertising in these banner ad slots? If so, what percent of the time will your ads be there? Also, will advertisers' banner ads show each time the page is viewed or will they rotate from a pool of advertisers? Know your total number of advertisers in order to know what to charge each one.

How to Create a Banner Ad Income

Once you can answer these questions, you can just plug them into the Banner Ads Revenue Estimator and know your banner ad income potential. All that and we didn't even have to know how to create a banner ad that works. Nice. Let's check out some examples of how this might look.

Example 1:
This popular Web page wants to advertise a banner ad on their home page only. They have a slightly targeted audience and plan to advertise this space exclusively.

Example 2:
A highly popular blogger has a reasonably targeted audience. She has a 2x2 ad slot available on the home page and all of her blog posts, which add up to around 100,000 page views per month. She wants to get a group of eight advertisers rotating in on these ad spaces each month.

Example 3:
Finally, a B2B site with great traffic boasts 300,000 page views in its ad space each month. It has a very targeted audience and its web banner ad specs are a single, large banner that is highly coveted by advertisers. This business wishes to advertise its own services 25% of the time and break the rest up among three top business partners.

So there you have it. Do you have questions about banner ads? About your audience? Your banner ad revenue prospects? Post a comment and let the discussion begin!

How to Increase Website Traffic with Search Engine Optimization

You have the impossible task. You've been told that this is the year that you need to do more than ever. You have to get more sales, increase Website traffic and perform a verifiable miracle with last year's budget. Did I say last year's budget? I meant 90% of last year's budget. If all of this seems impossible, I assure you it's not. We can begin to address these challenges by answering one simple question, "What does SEO stand for?"

What Does SEO Stand for? Part I.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is the process of getting your Website to appear higher in the search engines' results pages and ultimately increase Website traffic for a given search keyword phrase. Sounds easy, right? Don't worry. We'll get to how to do it in a minute, but for right now, let's discuss why it's important.

Articles on SEO, but what about Search?

Other articles on SEO often breeze past a critical point when talking about SEO: search engines! There are now 15 billion searches performed each month on the main search engines. Users performed 9.5 billion Google searches in April '09 alone. And in all of those searches are people trying to find information about you, your products and how to buy them. Do you know how much search traffic you're getting from these folks or how much you could be getting? Are you doing your part to find them? To bring the proverbial horse to the water? Your competitor is. Guaranteed. They've read articles on SEO and have probably even hired SEO agencies. And here we are: "What does SEO stand for?" There's no time to spare. Read on for a crash course in SEO.

What Does SEO Stand for? Part II.

Now that we're all headed in the same direction, let's do it. Let's actually increase Website traffic through SEO. Some of what comes next is technical, but don't worry. I've placed links to additional resources in the margins of this Web page. With the start you're getting here at Big Picture Web and the next steps you could take by buying the resources mentioned, you'll conquer the learning curve in no time. Ultimately, it's simply a matter of having an SEO-focused content creation process, having plenty of links to your site and architecting your site to be search-engine-friendly. Let's discuss these three steps.

Increase Website Traffic in Three Steps

1. Have a content creation process.  People use specific search "keyword phrases" to find things on the Web (e.g., "flights to MSP" or "dental equipment"). You should know what these keyword phrases are for your business and then jump at any organized opportunity to include these words in the actual text and images of your Website. Write product descriptions, blogs, articles, about us pages and everything else with "dental equipment" somehow baked into the words of the pages. This is what the articles on SEO will tell you to do to increase Website traffic. Get it? Notice the bolded phrases from two sentences ago. Now do you get it? Once you've done a little homework, you can set up a process that looks like this:
2. Have plenty of links to your site.  The best way to describe why links are important is this. Imagine that Google is looking out into a crowd of Websites trying to determine which should be the first one presented when someone searched for a particular keyword phrase. The Website with its hand raised highest will be the one selected. Every link from another Website is like a tiny leg-up to help your site gain some visibility. The site with the most links towers over the rest in Google's eyes, which will earn it the top spot in search results for the keyword phrases you're targeting. You'll want to build links to your site by creating link-worthy content, asking your business partners to link to your site and encouraging customers to link to you as well. Do this and increase Website traffic, you will!
3. Get your technical team involved.  SEO requires that your website be built on a specific foundation. This foundation includes creating an appropriate navigation structure and addressing how the individual lines of HTML, Javascript and CSS are arranged on the Website. (Please don't assume that your technical team knows all this. Encourage them to reference articles on SEO or resources listed in the margins.)

What does SEO stand for? Part III.

Once you get some links built up and have a process in place on an optimized website, you'll see that SEO is an easy process to implement and track. You'll increase Website traffic regularly and spend less and less time (and money!) doing so. The increase in traffic will in turn lead to more sales and you'll be the hero. See? It wasn't impossible.

Business Internet Strategy - Two Reasons to Start

If you're still only doing traditional marketing and advertising, you're probably starting to get a little stressed out, right? Times are tight. Budgets are thin. Advertising spending in the U.S. has dropped by 4.1% in 2008. Magazine advertising is down by 7.5%. Newspapers are down 11.8%. The only place where spending increased in 2008 was Online, which experienced 4.6% growth. Either companies are having success only here or trying to throw together an approach to Internet marketing for business. Either way, what's your business' Internet strategy?

Internet Marketing for Business

Internet marketing for business is becoming the norm for smart marketers these days. E-mail campaigns, social media, affiliate marketing, Google AdWords (pay-per-click advertising), Search Engine Optimization (SEO)...these tactics and more are all part of the new media mix. What's the big deal? There are two fantastic reasons to dip your toes in the waters of Internet marketing.

Measure your Business' Internet Strategy

The first check in the "pro" column for a business Internet strategy is the ability to measure it. You can track costs and revenue down to the penny using free tools like Google Analytics. Whether you want to gain subscriptions, leads or sales, Internet marketing for business can be tracked. And if you can track it, you can improve performance and meet goals. Everyone loves reporting solid numbers to the company brass, especially in down economies.

Big Results with Little Investment

The second boon to Internet marketing for business is the bang for the buck. There's no need for the big tools of yore. The aforementioned Google Analytics installs in just five minutes and can provide insights to everyone from the Webmaster to the marketer to the designer. It's free. Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook are also free and very much a part of internet marketing for business. Constant Contact will run your entire e-mail marketing campaign and even teach you how to incorporate e-mail marketing into your business' Internet strategy for $15 a month. You get the picture. You can access insights to drive your business forward for little to nothing.

What other compelling reasons can you think of to start the ball rolling on your business' Internet strategy?