When someone offers to pay you for advertising on your site, it’s most likely a competitor or similar non-competing services. Keep that in mind when negotiating how much they will pay for the ad space monthly.

How much should an advertiser pay you?

I always consider the other person’s services first. How much would that person make off of just one referral from my site? How many views is that page currently averaging? If a particular page is currently averaging 100 people per month (which is easy to figure out if you use Google Analytics) then you know that person has a chance to receive 100 referrals per month from you. If that person’s services they want to advertise on your site is worth $20 per customer that means if one in a hundred people purchases their services after being referred from your site they will make $20/month.

Next I determine if those are services or product I sell, or ever intend to sell. If I don’t then no big deal, but I also consider how much I could make if I where to be an affiliate for another site. How much would I make off one referral from that person’s competitor? Taking these two factors into account consider that the service to me is worth $30/month. That means if someone who was considering using my services leaves because I mentioned a competitor I’m losing out on that money. Most of my services are based on an ongoing retainer so I have to consider the possibility of losing a long term relationship, not just a one time sale. These numbers are just based off one sale, but even there I’m losing $10/month. What if that was ten people or all one hundred people? I have significantly more then 100 people who view my site and posts monthly. This is why I offer my advertising pricing individually per each of my sites (I have somewhere around 30-50 sites and no desire to go counting them just for this post).

A few other factors I consider in pricing:

your ad here

Where do they want the ad on my site? The index page? A subpage? Every page?
How do they want to advertise? A giant link? A BIG banner? A little ad? A BIG banner at the top/bottom of the page?
What is their goal? Sales, branding or SEO? If SEO they are probably going to expect me not to put a rel=”nofollow” on all of their links because that wouldn’t help them.
Do they want me to write a review of their services in a blog post?
Do they also want me to mention them in social media? Or advertise on my social media?
Are they willing to pay all upfront for 6 months to a year or do they want me to invoice them monthly?
How do they want to pay me: check, Paypal, Google Checkout, other?

Other Considerations if you’re new to Interactive Promotions:

How many links do they want- should I discount for multiple links? (that is up to you)
Don’t sound spammy or deceitful. Don’t let someone push you around for $6/month. It’s better to not accept an advertiser then to compromise yourself, your site, or because someone wanted you to write something you don’t agree with.
Make sure to review sites and advertisers before promoting them.
Remember the new FTC rules for bloggers that you need to disclose if you are getting paid to promote another product or service. Make sure this is obvious and does not blend in with your own.