$12256 / $11500
I've got a pricing model in mind for advertisements that I'm hoping will be useful and affordable even for non-commercial projects (FOSS or otherwise). I'm looking to get people's thoughts on it.
Essentially, I'll be splitting up ad runs into month-long slots. I'll base the number of available ad slots on the previous month's numbers, and have one slot per 3,000 unique hits. At the moment, we're getting about 67,000 unique hits per month, so there would be 22 slots available to start. This number is generally trending upward. Each slot should get you roughly 3,000 unique views, and probably around 20,000 views total (assuming adblock doesn't start blocking our ads, which I'm keeping as tasteful as possible so as not to attract their ire -- I'm not sure how much it will cut into our numbers if we're blocked). Note that I can't make any promises about click-thru rates, which vary by ad, but current data indicates that they'll probably be from 1 to 5 percent, at least for newer advertisements. Any un-filled slots will link to the page about advertising with OGA.
My current thoughts on pricing (all payments would be in advance -- I don't want to invoice anyone after the fact):
Anyone is free to purchase as many ad slots as they wish, either in series or parallel (that is, you can buy a bunch of slots to use at the same time, or buy one slot for multiple months), with a discount of 25% for 4+ slots.
Prices will be subject to change based on demand -- if we get to the point where ad slots are selling really quickly, we'll charge more for them (this won't affect you if you bought them in advance, mind you). To reiterate, we'll never bill anyone after the fact.
In the unlikely event that OGA is down for a total of more than 12 hours over a one month period, we'll lengthen all of the slots by the number of days of downtime, rounded to the nearest day.
I would also be willing to entertain trading art commissions for ad slots. This would depend on the artists' skill level and how generally useful a piece of art would be, and would need to be approved and completed in advance of the ad run.
Anyone currently sponsoring OGA would also get a small, non-prominent link on the main page, which probably won't draw too many clicks but will be good for your search rank. :)
For people who dislike ads but would like to support OGA financially, OGA would sell supporter accounts for about $5/month, which the option to turn of advertising if you wish. A supporter account would also get you a supporter medal. It would have no special features beyond these two things, as I really would like to keep OGA functioning the same for everyone regardless of their ability or incliniation to purchase a paid account.
Anyway, I'm be interested in hearing what people think, particularly in terms of the pricing model and whether these prices seem palatable.
Thanks!
Bart
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Semantics: I'd probably make the standard rate $100/mo, with discounts of (or even "coupons" for) $50 for commercial FLOSS projects and $70 for non-commercial FLOSS projects.
Good call. Fixed.
1 day for open projects using OGA could have free.
1 day for closed source projects (if allowed) at $10 (same price for each individual day adding up. Discounts one day out of each month and if there are 50 hits to your site in a month you get an extra day with a discount that month for popularity.)
1 week for open projects using OGA at $60.
This is just a figure. The prices would multiply or divide depending on the needs of OGA. For exampl 1day closed at $30 instead.
That is just an idea based on the principals of advertising. Advertise the advertising space mus be done with deals.
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Given OGA's traffic profile, it doesn't make sense to sell an entire single day or week to one advertiser. An average visit to OGA is like 8 page loads, which means if we had a single advertiser, a visitor would see the same ad 8 times. If we don't have a bunch of different ads in rotation, click rates will be terrible, which means we won't be able to sell as many ads. (Note that this is ultimately why I'm not going to go with Project Wonderful. It's caters to sites that usually only get one page load per user.)
I also don't want to get into having to manage advertisements every day or every week. I don't have the time.
I mean a week of the ad being there and picked randomly every time a page is reloaded.
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Right, and I mean I don't want to have to deal with week-long ads, because it's going to be too much work. :)
The ad slots I'm talking about will load randomly.
Usually ads are sold/priced per visitor/lead etc. and not just on a monthly basis. This doesn't change alot to your system but I would suggest to change it to that, because its easier to calculate this way.
So you could sell packages like: 10000 uniques/impressions for $xx,xx
You would need a system to track that, but that shouldn't be a really big task to program. You would also allready have a system that easily adapts to different visitor amounts.
Another model would be to just auction the ad-spot(s) in the forum. Have seen it working in a different forum. There is a monthly auction for a banner, starting with $5 and the highest bet at a given date gets the banner spot for a month.
I don't see how that's easier to calculate than a flat fee.
The main benefit would be that it is easier to compare to other offers because it is the "standard" price model. Imagine someone buying adds, wherever he looks he sees what he has to pay for a click(CPC) or for an impression (CPM).
With the current model you just get a rough estimation on how many views you get. And you would still have to calculate the final price per visitor.
Usually the advertiser knows he can pay: $10 per 1000views and $1.20per click. So don't force him to recalculate his costs.
I know that this is more a professional view, but why reinvent a system when it works almost everywhere like this.
I know that this is more a professional view, but why reinvent a system when it works almost everywhere like this.
I did a lot of research into the standard pricing model, and I considered that. What I discovered was that the hardest part of making revenue by running advertisements is selling your ad space at all. The reason I'm aiming for a less professional pricing structure is to hopefully attract a mostly untapped market. I suspect that finding people to sell advertising space to the normal way will be difficult. :)
I suppose I could have a different pricing structure for commercial advertisers, or perhaps give some estimate of how long the advertisement will run. Even then, though, if the ad isn't running with a lot of other advertisements, there are two problems for the customer:
The above is also why we're not going with Project Wonderful. It makes a lot of sense for web comics, where a typical visit is one page view, but not so much for us.
I want to do a commission for a supporter badge. ;) In all seriousness, I'd rather do a single monitary donation than set up another monthly fee to keep track of.
@Sharm: I'd be okay with a that too.