Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I am starting up an online magazine and am still in the planning stage. I am trying to figure out a) where the revenue will come from and b) if I need to hire a web developer to build the site or how much I can do myself.

So, I am wrapping my head around selling advertising and I don`t know how to build the pricing structure, what technology is used if I decided to charge advertisers based on clicks, what software to use... my background is graphic design so I think I can at least create the ads, but am lost besides that.

Any input would be greatly appreciated. < ="text/">_popupControl();

Your number one factor in determining ad sales is your TRAFFIC.

Overall, you will make the most money with pay-per-impression advertising, but this is normally restricted to larger companies. For example, my guess is that VISA, Dell and Microsoft on this site pay per impression, not per click. These ads are sold on a CPM (cost per 1,000) basis.

AdWords is typically pay-per-click advertising.

There are companies that do ad serving and sales for you - you just host their ads. Or you can sell your own ads and program your own ad server. Basically, most ad sales provide a cap on costs and some kind of rotational functions.

If you have an online magazine, it would probably be good to provide an RSS feed for your site ... and then you could also tap into the Feedburner Network for advertising sales in your feed. Their ads are typically $5-12 CPM.

You can determine traffic by finding sites similar to what you want, and asking them what their numbers are.

Yes, traffic is your number 1 issue.  If it was me, I`d be tempated to start with Google Adsense, and see what kind of revenue you were generating.  It will be difficult to get advertisers that pay by the month or week to have a go, until you have a track record and proven traffic levels.

If Adsense doesn`t appeal to you, I`d suggest doing a search for "ad brokers" or "contextual ad placement" and see what kind of providers come up.  Most text link brokers will provide an estimate of what you could sell one text link for (on your homepage for example) for a month.  To give you an idea, a website with a Pagerank of 2 or 3 could sell one text link for around $9/month, with up to 10 or so links placed on your home page.  Of course, it`s pretty difficult to get people to buy a link on your site when your Pagerank is 0.  But hang in there and your PR will improve over time.

Best of luck!

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Thank you for the great input.

What is an RSS feed? Feedburner network?

Your ideas certainly make better sense for starting out that trying to sell my own advertising.




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A primer on RSS Feeds

Using Feeds on your Website (last section)

Feedburner

Use a customized blog (like WordPress or TypePad) as your content management system.
When you post, it generates a feed that is then available for people to read, use, or subscribe to.
You can then monetize this feed through a service like the Feedburner Ad Network.

You will probably need some help customizing the content management system and setting up the feeds .. but once that is set up and programmed, you can easily add and update the entries, sell ads, promote your site, etc by yourself.

Either a blog program (like WordPress) or a Content Management Software application would works for an online magazine.

Either of those (after set up) you can manage - add articles - without knowing any programing.

A typical blog application presents your articles in order by date submitted. You can show categories - groups of articles... like this. 

Do you have an idea of what you`d like your site to look like?

~Roland

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