Hello. I am hoping that someone can help me!

I run a website that caters to a very targeted, local audience. We are
a free group and because of this, we do not have any real source of
income.

I am planning in the next month to start an NPO which will act as a
parent company to this website and who's mission will be to open more
of these websites  in other cities throughout the US.

In order to fund our mission, we have decided to seek "sponsors" that
will sponsor various portions of our website (certain forums, certain
pages, etc.). In return for a financial contribution (which will be
tax-deductible once the NPO is up and running), we will have a small,
low-key "ad" on the pages they are sponsoring, putting the business
name in front of our audience.

This is a very targeted audience. I want to establish a fair price for
these sponsorships -- fair to the businesses purchasing them and fair
to us! Eventually, they will be able to purchase spaces on multiple
websites at a discounted rate. We are also going to offer a discount
for purchasing a 6 month contract and for sponsoring more than one
area of the website.

I have done some preliminary research on internet advertising (since
this is, for all intents and purposes, advertising) and there is a
vast range of prices that are charged for this stuff. I know that most
people charge based on a price per 1000 clicks. I have seen some
prices as low as a few cents per 1000 clicks and some for as high as
$40 per 1000 clicks.

We have just over 800 unique users in our site and areas range from
about 100 clicks a day (smaller forums) to 4000 clicks a day. Our
membership is growing rapidly -- we have doubled already since the
beginning of the year.

Can you do some research for me and help me determine a fair "$ per
1000 clicks" price to base my sponsorships on? I will then use that to
establish a price for the first six months of our program and then
increase it as the click counts get higher, probably every six months.

This is my first google question, so I hope that I made myself clear
-- I am hoping to start this program in the next month and I just need
to make a final decision on how much to charge.

My current market is Charlotte, NC. I am hoping to get both local and
national sponsorships...

Thanks in advance for your help!

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Clarification of Question by hmeininger-ga on 03 Mar 2005 18:09 PST

Ok, so what would I need to give you to help you help me?

Demographics? Below is a bit of general information. I did do a
demographics survey awhile back, but I do not know how helpful it
would be now, since our membership has changed dramatically since we
did the original survey (and grown at least 300%).

We are a mother's group consisting of 800+ mothers located in
Charlotte, NC and the surrounding areas. The area businesses will be
sponsoring specific forums: forums for specific areas of the city,
forums discussing various ages of children, forums discussing things
like pregnancy, breastfeeding, etc.

An example: One of our potential sponsors is a store that sells
products that help mothers to successfully breastfeed their children.
They are interested in sponsoring the pregnancy and breastfeeding
forums. By placing their "ad" at the top of these forums, they are not
only targeting mothers (their target audience), but specifically
mothers who are pregnant or mothers who are breastfeeding -- the exact
people who frequent their store.

Because our group is also involved in the community, sponsors also
have the benefit of supporting a group that supports their customers
needs and supports the community in which they live.

We have several people who are quite interested in sponsoring various
portions of the site ... I am just not sure how much to charge them. I
don't want to undercharge them for this targeted audience and rip our
group off, but I don't want to overcharge them and rip them off.

Everything about this group has always been free, so asking for money
is something new to me, but it is imperative that we have a working
budget if we are going to expand this outside of our city.

Does that help? Is there more information I can provide to help you?
Just let me know!

Thanks
Heather

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Clarification of Question by hmeininger-ga on 03 Mar 2005 18:12 PST

Oh... and you are right. I used the wrong terms...

We get up to 4000 impressions daily (page views, not clicks).

We have never had any advertising on this website before, so I am not
sure what to expect...

I think you need to step back and understand the terms as a first step.

There are two common ways that banner ads are priced:
CPM = Cost per thousand iMpressions = how much it costs to display
1,000 impressions.
CPC = Cost Per Click 

When you talk about CPC - it refers to paying for people that actually
click on the banner- which brings up CTR - which is the percentage of
people that see the banner vs the people that click through.

More terms - Page views - I am guessing that you actually have up to
4,000 page views per day in some areas - not "Clicks".

With those terms said - assuming you only have registered users, 800
users is a pretty small user base.  But without knowing any
demographics about these users, it would be difficult to value them.

I'm not a researcher, but felt I wanted to put my 2 cents in anyway as
I have some experience with NPO public relations, and also experience
with websites just like yours (i.e., http://www.forums.techguy.org
takes donations and sells advertising to be self-supportive, but they
are HUGE in comparison).

Are you trying to make money to use for other purposes or simply
trying to support the site itself? Perhaps you should investigate in
cheaper hosting if you're paying more than, say, $100/year.

That said, I think you'll have more people wanting to advertise with
you because of the "goodwill" factor than for any real advertising
purpose because of your limited number of users. So, given that, I
wouldn't bother getting involved in the CPMs until you have hundreds
of thousands of CPMs to sell. Instead, offer to put a link to their
site up there for one year for $XX, which is what it'd cost to support
the site for 1.5 years...something like that. Also, other related NPOs
may be able to provide funding if you advertise their services--check
out those avenues.

Get yourself a PayPal account. It costs next to nothing. While your
group may be free, you can accept donations, right? And if your group
is based on low-income-types (like me!), that doesn't mean that one of
their family members or someone else who hears about your site won't
want to donate. Get it on every page, like we have at
www.vbaexpress.com. If you need any help with that, I'm happy to
assist right here. A few donations a year can easily pay for the
hosting and overhead.

These options also keep you from having to disrupt your web with
horribly annoying and flashy banner ads.