Advice on advertising for niche website

[Loppy42]

I understand that most advertising agencies are looking for web traffic of 100k + per month before they will consider putting a website before a client but does anyone have any advice on the best way for smaller, niche websites to attract advertisers and how to price opportunities?

 

[NickGrogan]

Adsense.

 

[positivesparks]

Hi Loppy, as Nick says Adsense is a great way to start monetising a website. Also, for smaller traffic sites I believe they have to focus on making that traffic very niched. if you can achieve this, then look to offer advertising opportunities to a target market who would greatly benefit from your ultra niched audience. Also, focus on getting data, entice your visitors to signup and start running a monthly email newsletter - this in itself becomes an extra avenue of monetisation as you can look for sponsored contributions to the newsletter each month.

 

[mediaguy35]

I understand that most advertising agencies are looking for web traffic of 100k + per month before they will consider putting a website before a client

Not at all, we get lots of agencies using us, about 10% of our business comes from agencies who are happy to use us, and we don't pull in 100k of traffic per month either. The secret is to be of quality, to serve a large enough niche to be worth doing but to be big enough/control to attract agencies. In other words you need to be No1 in your sector is best.

If you can prove superiority to your clients and deliver value, then you'll do fine. Ofcourse this takes time to build a site and get the traffic to the stage of 100k per month, and few achieve this.

It takes years of investment in time and money, you can't do it in a few years..... looking at a £10k spend minimum, absolute minimum and I feel that's a struggle.. A good start will be Public Relations ( I see you have some good mentions already) to attract Uk traffic first, then niche traffic later on.

http://www.thescholarshiphub.org.uk/

is this your website?

 

[CubeSEO]

Adsense is an okay place to start - it can give you an idea of the depth of the advertisers in your area and what they are willing to pay. Bear in mind that Google are taking about 40% of the share - in many cases well worth it - but in some it is better to note the advertisers and then contact them directly.

All that said I think that ad only sites are some of the hardest ways to make money online. If you can add some affiliate it helps or even better your own product, ebooks etc.

 

[RealEcon]

Adsense.

^^^This

 

[Ruler Analytics]

As others have suggested, AdWords is a great solution for both small and large websites. Smaller websites can also use specific affiliate links to relevant products and services within or around their content, or maybe even sign up for a marketplace such as BuySellAds where advertisers can directly find you by relevance - some will want high traffic, some won't care.

 

[JackDavis]

I use AdSense or sell advertising space on my tutorials website Cart Advisor which works well and sends a reasonable amount. I think AdSense is great to start off with and when it picks up enough then look at selling advertising space directly to businesses or sign up to somewhere like BuySellAds.