Paid Ads on Small Websites

For small startups, finding affordable advertising is always a challenge. You may be able to afford $10 a month, but find that any advertising that shows any visible results is going to cost you $100 a month or more. Major marketing firms will sneer even at a budget of just $100 a month.

So you go looking for cheap ads, and find that it is difficult to find something that will get you any clicks. Expensive ads don't seem to get you enough results either.

When you understand that it is not just the clicks that you are buying, and what to look for in a small site ad, it makes it easier to afford what you really need, and to be able to tell whether it is actually working.

There are two sides to ads:

Clickthroughs. You can get direct traffic from the ad, and most people look at that as being the biggest benefit. On a huge site, where your ad gets thousands of views a day, it may be. On a small site, it won't be.

Pagerank benefits. How much of a benefit you get from a single ad depends on a number of factors, which I will cover in a moment, but each ad is more likely to be a drop in the bucket, which will help you accumulate a higher pagerank. When your pagerank increases, the search engines will send you more traffic - a change of 1 full point in Google pagerank can make a difference of 20% or more in your total traffic volume.

Ok, so how do you determine what you can afford, and what is worth it?

Low cost ads are likely to be either on huge directory sites, that will put your link on a page that is rarely viewed, OR, on a small site that is starting up. A small site may have a pagerank of 1, 2, or 3, or it may be too new to even HAVE a pagerank. Traffic may be very low as of yet, but it is likely to grow if the site owner knows what they are doing.

So in order to determine value, look at these factors:

1. Unique visitors and total visitors to the site, or to the page in question. Any competent site owner will be able to tell you this. They may only be getting 5-10 hits a month for the particular page you are advertising on. This is normal for a new site.

2. Pagerank. For low cost ads, you cannot expect high pagerank, unless your ad will be buried on a low traffic page.

3. Age of Site. A site that is less than 4 months old is not likely to have a pagerank. It can take up to 5 or 6 months sometimes to weigh in with a pagerank. If the site is more than that, and still has a 1, then look elsewhere, because it is not being marketed well.

4. Experience of Site Owner. If the site owner has other sites, and those sites are doing well, there is every chance that the new one will do so also.

5. Type of ad. An ad that is rotated through a site using a script will not give you any pagerank benefits. With low cost ads, this is a huge issue, because most of your traffic from the ad may actually be INDIRECT traffic, not directly from clicking the ad. If the site owner puts in a "nofollow" tag, it will also not give you any pagerank benefits. Look for a static HTML ad without special coding.

6. Relevancy and credibility of the site. If the site screens ads, if the site is highly relevant to your topic, and if the reputation and credibility of the site is high, then clicks that come through from the site will be of higher quality than those that come from other sources.

Next, look a the ad price, and terms. Some things you may see are:

1. Permanence. Once in a while, you can get a permanent ad for a one time fee. They are usually ONLY available on small sites, and often only "link" ads - that is, a simple link, nothing more. They usually cost between $10 and $20. They are worth buying, because long term, they will keep on growing and getting traffic for you. Permanent online though does not mean forever - it means that the site owner promises to leave it there, but if the site closes down for unexpected reasons, or if it is sold, it may change. Odds are that you'll get your money's worth though, and that it will stay placed for a few years.

2. Bundle. Once in a while, you can get a nice bundle that gives you multiple ads for an affordable rate. A small site owner may be able to give you more than you are aware from a budget of $10 a year, to $10 a month.

3. Cumulative benefit. If you purchase an ad one month, and the site that it is on grows, your ad power will grow. If you purchase one ad one month, and another the next, they will have the power to add up quite a bit over time. If you can increase cumulative power, while containing costs, you are in a win-win situation.

Paid ads are not going to ever be the only way for startups to build links. You'll still need to keep up with article marketing, directory links, and forum posting, but paying for a few ads here and there, if wisely chosen, can help bring you increased traffic over the long term, and pre-qualified clicks directly from the site.

Written by Laura Wheeler
Owner, Firelight Web Studio
http://www.firelightwebstudio.com 
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