Posted by Dr. Bob on February 22, 2001, at 2:31:49
In reply to Re: Cost to have this site hosted., posted by Lorraine on February 21, 2001, at 14:18:53
> Here's what I found out in my digging around.
Thanks, I really appreciate your taking the time to look into this. Ditto for the babbler who's researching grant possibilities (but who hasn't posted that they're doing that, so I won't say who they are here). Time is what I have the least of!
> The first is to do a traditional advertising campaign, which typically requires that you have 500,000 impressions per month. The process of selling, running and billing for ads, however, can be cumbersome for small sites (that's us). In addition, you need ad tracking software, which can be simple or complex.
> The other way to go about advertising might be to selectively target a few advertisers whose content match your goals with this site and pursue them individually.
A "traditional" campaign wouldn't selectively target advertisers? In fact, Psycho-Babble hit 855,628 last month:
http://www.dr-bob.org/stats.html
So maybe we wouldn't count as small anymore... What could we get for that many impressions per month? If ad tracking software can be simple, that's good...
> Affiliated programs were initiated by Amazon and there are several more out there now. They pay some sum of money for click through. I believe you already have Amazon... Does it make sense to beef up the book referral section and display a link to it prominently on the site to beef up revenues here? Also does it make sense to pursue other affiliates?
>
> Regardless of which direction you want to pursue, you may want to place a banner on the page soliciting contributions from members now on a voluntary basis to help fund the site. This would be a good "stop gap" approach if it doesn't pan out for full site support. You would need to consider how you will collect the money--eg secured server for credit cards and the administrative details of that.I've felt uncomfortable about soliciting, which is why the Books (Amazon) and Support (donations) links aren't more prominent. Maybe it's something I just need to get over?
Bob
poster:Dr. Bob
thread:619
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20001124/msgs/711.html