What if one just wanted to rely on banner ads for income?

[besimple]

Hi Geeks,

I'm in a new dilema, a client of mine is wanting to invest money in sites that rely on Advertising sales alone, (i know this is not wise but still).

This client has approached a gaming site (entertainemnt) and has bought several developer related sites as well as running or wanting to run a PPC engine themselves.

Now they pose the question to me to design them a site that would be very much in demand by the large advertising sponsors.

All i could think of was entertainment, as it never seems to die and u can almost serve anykind of ads.

Would you agree with me on this or is there any other
so called "TYPE" of site out there that they are looking for.

Obviously traffic levels will need to be increased

Thanks in advance for reading this post and even replying if you can

Besimple

[TDNetworks]

Well running a entertainment site is good but a lot of networks aren't looking for entertainment sites. They are looking for non-profit sites, health related sites, business sites, and just about anything where it isn't entertainment related i guess. Not sure if this answered your question or not but I just feel like trying to help someone.

[Edwin]

I would have thought that an entertainment site is one of the top 5 WORST sites you could build to meet your client's requirements. In no particular order, here's that Top 5:-

- Entertainment sites
- Free stuff sites
- Humor sites
- Cheats sites
- Sites that rely on (essentially) illegal or perceived-illegal activities such as MP3 sites, CD cover sites, etc.

What is the factor that is common to all the above sites? Their audience ON AVERAGE is not likely to be very interested in paying for things and therefore forms the least-desirable segment of the Internet population from an advertiser perspective.

Don't get misled by the siren call of large volumes of traffic! It should be possible (if both sites are of good quality) to make more money off a pure webmaster-related site (not a webmaster freebie tools site, but an actual site with real content aimed at real webmasters) that does 25,000 uniques a month than off an entertainment (or other Top 5 Worst) site that does 1,000,000 uniques a month.

As to what your client SHOULD be looking for, well anything where the audience for that niche will already be predisposed to spending money, AND where a number of advertisers compete for the audience addressed by that niche.

With the proviso that I'm only talking about a quality site with in-depth, quality content and a decent promotional push behind it, here are some niches that should do proportionally well from an advertising perspective:-

- web hosting
- webmasters
- health
- small business
- finance
- property
- employment

[Gumyeelo1]

is web hosting your opinion? cause I don't know why would a webhosting service would even want to host other webhost banners, when they know they could loose business.

and if you are talking about banners on freehosting, if they are demand, how come many free hosting service when out of business?

[masm50]

I think Edwin means a type of hosting comparison site, my favourite of the moment being URL=http://www.hostingcatalog.com]Hosting Catalog[/url] which is run by one of the members here.

They seem to be doing quite well at the moment, as there is still a lot of competition in the hosting industry, so companies will advertise in that industry to gain their market share.

Just me 2p

Tim

[Edwin]

Tim's spot on, that's what I meant!

[jnestor]

If I were looking to build an ad supported site right now with the idea of making money I'd build a parents site. This is a HUGE, HUGE business with tons of money being spent. Sponsors like Pampers and Similac are always looking for people to put on their mailing lists. The downside is that competition is pretty tough.

Other than that - anything that appeals to women say 18-40. This is really the audience that seems to be targetted the most but all sorts of advertisers.

The kids and teens market while it does get a good portion of overall ad spending doesn't seem to get much online spending right now. Personally I think it's daft. If I were putting out a teen oriented movie I'd plaster ads for it all over the internet. As it is only Yahoo seems to get these ads now.

[hobbnet]

If I thought I had the appropriate knowledge and tools necessary to drive traffic to a Finance related site I would probably do that.

Finance related businesses seem to be some of the largest advertisers at the moment. One thing I like to do when I am driving south on 880 (it goes right through silicon valley) I like to see who is advertising on the billboards and right now its mostly banks and other financial services.

Also, if you go to CJ.com and look at the entire list of advertisers and sort by EPC you will find that most of the top merchants are finance related.

[Furton]

What is the factor that is common to all the above sites? Their audience ON AVERAGE is not likely to be very interested in paying for things and therefore forms the least-desirable segment of the Internet population from an advertiser perspective.

Not that true, especially for gaming sites as they have to buy the game first, which, if you target your CPA ads (like Amazon ads) you can make a decent amount of money from orders and pre-orders. Another point is that the avrage age of a Game Cube owner is 24, something to think about.

[Just some Webjunky]

What they wish to create is similar to what I have, in a sense.
Two sites that are on music artists. However, I rely on popups as well. Banners would pay the bill but there is little profit beyond that. *Hosting costs me 12$ a month and I use ever bit of that 60 gb transfer (*1 of the sites alone.) It is very do-able but not using popups is not a great idea, ad companies are moving more and more towards popups and are devalutizing 486x60
Just my 2 cents.

[besimple]

Thanks dudes,

So in other words, entertainment is ok as long asit is more orientated towards providing solid information on a particular subject.

It just seems to be easy to pull traffic with entertainment sites and then use it for other purposes, yes its less quality but the vast numbers usually compensate for it.

Junky, sorry, when i usually say banner reliant i mean, everyting from popus to text links and even ads in the newsletter, just not direct selling of your own products or services

Besimple
PS. my special thanks to Edwin for that long and ofcourse very informative post.......i have come to now realise how busy one can truly get and now appreciate everyones time very much