Banner Advertising

Big Nasty

Hi,

I'm thinking of starting my own business in the near future. I don't want to go in to too much detail yet but the basic idea is to provide free advertising for a particular market. There is huge potential in this market for advertising, and the website will have good content because it is free.

The plan should attract huge traffic because the need to do multiple searches within this particular market will be eliminated due to all (or most) available products being available on one site. I plan to make my money primarily from online banner advertising from manufacturers in this market and possibly forming partnerships with other related companies which will draw extra revenue.

The only major worry is my set up costs. The site itself will need to be capable of searching thousands of different products so will be quite costly to set up. Also the concept itself will have to be launched. To be honest I would expect at least 500k individual users per month once the site is established so I think there is good money to be made - in fact I think this is the future of online advertising.

My questions are:

A. Very roughly how much capital would be needed to design a website of this nature?

B. About how much should one put aside to market this product?

C. How feasible do you think it would be to expect to make a decent income from banner advertising alone (based on 500k users)?

I know there are many people well experienced in the business world on this site and it's from you I would appreciate advice.

For those who are wannabe experts and have nothing constructive to say please don't bother wasting my time and yours.

Thanks in advance for your help people!

W!zard

Fair play in looking to start up and I hope it goes well for you. Do keep us in the loop when you get close to release!

From a development view: You need both a Web Designer & Web App Developer, both will cost a good deal and I am just throwing a wild number out for you between 10k - 20k at least each to just get the site developed for launch. Expect to keep your designers on hand through-out the first year of post-launch because your site seems to need regular updates to keep up the level of what I think you are looking for. Your costs might come down abit if you build in a 12 month contract of site & updates. Keep a strong focus on Community areas of your site so you can track, give value back (not just once but many times) to each visit, & increase your marketing base with customer referrals.

If you are looking for extra tech knowledge, post in the web design forums on the boards because its a really good idea to get a sound footing on the tech side even if you don't have the skills.
Best wishes with your new venture! :pac:

Big Nasty

Hey Wizard!

Thank you very much for your reply. I was reckoning on the guts of €20k to commission something like this but I was presuming that when designing a site of this magnitude that IT support would be on hand until all teething problems and testing has been put to bed.

I am at present trying to put together budgets / forecasts for this project and I have already factored in the cost of constant IT support after the fact, as it were!

Any more help / advice would be greatly appreciated!

betonit

alost if good info on this site about all aspects of web biz.

On banner ads alone you'd need alot of traffic. Look also at affiliate marketing and pay per click.


http://www.irishwebmasterforum.com

D.W

betonit wrote: »

alost if good info on this site about all aspects of web biz.

On banner ads alone you'd need alot of traffic. Look also at affiliate marketing and pay per click.


http://www.irishwebmasterforum.com

I'd agree. Personally think the days of banner ads are long gone. If you are going to attract 500k visitors per month (which is a staggering figure IMO) then I think you will make far more money using affiliate programmes. My two bob's worth anyway.

Big Nasty

betonit wrote: »

alost if good info on this site about all aspects of web biz.

On banner ads alone you'd need alot of traffic. Look also at affiliate marketing and pay per click.


http://www.irishwebmasterforum.com

Can you explain affiliate marketing to me (sorry - bit of a novice) - I've never heard of it before!

Thanks!

Big Nasty

D.W wrote: »

I'd agree. Personally think the days of banner ads are long gone. If you are going to attract 500k visitors per month (which is a staggering figure IMO) then I think you will make far more money using affiliate programmes. My two bob's worth anyway.

The banner ads aren't gonna be just random ads. They are specifically for the particular market. E.g. - The site is advertising every toaster on sale in the country, therefore in theory it is the first and best place to search for a toaster online, giving it a lot of traffic in the toaster world. You are a toaster manufacturer so it would be well within your interest to advertise on my site. No?

Tuvok

In the Internet marketing world, you will likely take on the role of an Affiliate unless you own a product, in which case you would be called the Merchant. Affiliates and merchants have a direct relationship and it is very important that the relationship is a good one. The term "affiliate" stems from the fact that you are "affiliated" with a company, and are working for them, though you don’t usually have a contract. At any one time, you may be working as an affiliate for many companies, promoting a large number of different products.

Affiliates work for merchants by bringing customers to the merchant’s front door (in this case the website) and earning money in the process. If you are an affiliate of a company and you send a visitor to the merchant website through your special link, you are now eligible to be credited for anything that the visitor buys while at the merchant website. When a visitor buys something, the merchant will pay you a commission. I hope this helps!

D.W

MCMLXXV wrote: »

You are a toaster manufacturer so it would be well within your interest to advertise on my site. No?

Well of course that would depend wouldn't it... Where will your site rank on Google, what kind of traffic will it get from people searching for "toasters", how much will an ad be, do I even offer a shipping/postage service, what sort of CTR will my ad have etc... I think you are dreaming if you think you will get 500k unique visitors a month and banner ads are old news no matter what way you sell them.

Affiliate marketing is about selling other peoples products and making a percentage on each sale that origionates from your site. Basically in a nutshell there is very little you could not sell... You sign up as an affiliate for whatever site/product you want to sell, get your unique code, add it to your site, articles, email sigs etc.. and everytime someone clicks and buys you earn. Have a look at Commission Junction and TradeDoubler as a starting point. I'll bet ya 10000 quid you could sell toasters via at least a few of the affiliates listed on both sites.

Anyway best of luck with the idea. Be realistic though... 500k a month would make your site one of the most popular in Ireland and I don't see any new site doing that kind of traffic.