Should I continue this ad?

[LavenderLounge]

I've been advertising on a friend's site for a few months and got these stats for October. I pay $300 per month for a banner. Based on these stats, should I continue my ad?

54,094 views per day
26 click thru's per day

[Lee]

How much $$$ has the ad made you?

Traffic figures are good but ultimately it depends on how much $ you are making.

If the ad is costing you $300 and you are making more than that then yes, continue it. If it is costing you $300 and you arent at least breaking even then discontinue it

Regards,

Lee

[thetwink]

whoah, that is an abysmally low ctr. Have you used only one banner? tried any alternates? If not, then some new banners could really help... if they don't then the guy's surfers are either numb to your site, dun like your site, or are just anti-banner-clickers.

BUT, like Lee says, if the small amount of clicks that you are getting bring in more cash than you're spending, then you should keep doing it. Also, if that's the case, then trying new banners, etc would only help make something good, better.

[LavenderLounge]

I alway assume that paid advertising will never have an even return on investment. And to answer your question, no, there hasn't been alot of sales directly from the ad.

With that in mind, who else has an opinion?

[Dzinerbear]

I pay a third of that for a text banner on Hunk Hunter for a three-month period that brings me about a few hundred visitors a month. I'd have a hard time paying $300 monthly in your situation. I think you could probably spend that $300 better somewhere else.

Cheers
Dzinerbear

[Pistol]

I always feel funny about buying banner space for consumer/paysites (ie not b2b webmaster resource sites) because if the space results in good traffic then wouldn't everyone be better off using performance based/affiliate marketing instead?

[LavenderLounge]

I'll change the banner and give it one more month.

Thanks.

[desslock]

Mark

I would pitch the following offer - continue advertising but at a lower rate of $100/month. Then maybe haggle up to a rate of $150/month. Maybe offer to sign a 6 month contract, or pay it all fully up front.

The traffic he sends you is probably beneficial, but you are paying too much for it. I would suspect that if you were paying 20 cents or so a click rather then the 30+ cents a click it would make more economic sense to you.

Final thought - this is something I learned from texas cooking and soliciting small food companies for effective ads: Do not make your landing page your front page. Make a special landing page that strongly pushes the prospect to give you their email address. Then you can continue marketing to these people with future newsletters.

Another alternative you could do is offer to pay web sites $1, $2 or more for each qualified email address they send you. If someone pitched that kind of idea to me, I'd think seriously about it for frisky fans.

Steve