Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Greetings all, wondering if anyone can point me to a place where I can see a rundown explaining various online advertising sales models... I`m essentially looking for a pros-cons comparison of per-click & per-impression, and/or ways these integrate (or not).

Also, for those of you who run content sites, what are/were your traffic goals? How long did it take you to meet them?

Sorry, I`m not actually looking for proprietary info... so much for that communications degree eh.  

I am interested in understanding the process of determining realistic traffic projections over time, and how this relates to setting advertising rates.

thanks,
—paula
...only an idiot sometimes...

If you run a content site, CPM is better for you.

I`m working on a site that will be launching in the next month or so ... the goal is about 300-500K pageviews per month by the year mark.

Thanks Nikole that`s very helpful.

Well, now that you changed the question ...

I don`t think a site`s traffic is/should be proprietary information. I mean, your finances have to be transparent for the sake of your investors ... is not the traffic an indicator of the health of the company? I also think that any advertiser should know your traffic too, for the sake of knowing their ROI.

As for determining traffic rates ... what I did was look at the traffic of other sites in similar niches, looked at the market saturation, etc. I also considered how long it would take me to build traffic, what a realistic time span for building traffic is, etc. That just comes from experience and knowing other people in similar situations.

When you talk advertising, it`s not just visitors. It`s how many visitors per month, how many pages they view on average, how you can stretch them into viewing more, how many repeats vs new visitors you get, etc. Your goal is not just the most people possible, it`s stretching out every visit to maximize the dollar potential.

proprietary > sure, but I think there`s a difference between making that info available to stakeholders and announcing it on a public internet chat forum. Everybody`s traffic stats are available at Alexa anyway, but that`s not the same as whether you`ve met your goals and such. Don`t people even go to jail for letting out that info when it pertains to public companies?

site visits > do you happen to know if dropdown/flyout menus are of any help or hindrance in regard to stickiness? Or are they just trendy?

thanks again,
—paula

They are annoying.

And Alexa is okay for general trends, but completely unreliable as solid data or in terms of real numbers.

Why is this thread generating a vastly disproportionate share of the SuN traffic to my site? Do I have a wad of hair gel on my ear or something?

—p

You`re interesting?

I`m paranoid I`ve committed some faux pas here.

No, its just that most folks have no idea what you are talking about ... or since the question is and can not turn to be "All About Them", then most are not interested.

I find it interesting that a large number of folks here think that selling stuff on the Internet is easy. I recall an old say ing ... "If it was easy ... everyone would be doing it."

Anyone can put up a web site ... but it takes hard work, longevity, a strong design and implimentation team, perseverance, passion ... and a little bit of luck ... to make a success on the Web.

I wish you the best of luck ... sorry I could not be of much help .. other than to offer that if you are doing better than the national avg of 4.2 page views per visitor than you are doing well. Use the avg of 4.2 page views per visitor as a guide.