Text-Link-ads.com has a link ads calculator that purports to tell you how much an ad link on your site (or someone else’s) is worth.
For example, I plugged in aplawrence.com and pointed at the area where I sell text link ads for $20.00 a month.
The calculator says that spot is worth $138.00 a month. No, I’m not undervaluing: that spot is shared by up to 5 rotating ads on my site, so the $20.00 figure is on the money.. maybe a bit cheap, but pretty close.
What was most interesting to me is how the website category chosen affects the value. Apparently tech sites like this aren’t worth half what a gambling site would be worth. Finance comes in next highest, but tech is way down the bottom.
Position also affects the value of ads, and folks do disagree about values. For example, Performancing Partners would “autoprice” this site at over $250.00 a month for an ad in the top left column. I think that’s too high, and offer that position for $150.00 instead.
See those links just above this paragraph? Those are $20 a month ads. To illustrate the value of position, the ad space earlier on the page (“above the fold”, as they say) is easily worth several hundred dollars per month, as is the space at the very top and the top portion of the sidebars. Don’t undervalue your space!
Don’t overvalue it either: you need traffic to be worth that kind of money, of course.
So can you sell links? Probably: How To: Sell Links On A New Blog has some suggestions for how to get started.
If you don’t yet have the traffic volume that would let you sell links, consider buying them.
Most links are placed by those trying to sell something, but some are simply for the purpose of building traffic. You can do the same thing. And yes, of course you can buy them here: see Advertise Here for more information.
*Originally published at APLawrence.com
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A.P. Lawrence provides SCO Unix and Linux consulting services http://www.pcunix.com
