Ads and flakes

["Kevin 'Tex' Houston" <hous0042@maroon.tc.umn.edu>]

Kelly Starks x7066 MS 10-39 wrote:

(note:  I made some one-letter changes in Kelly's replies to improve the 
readability.  Edited Lines contain an "#" instead of a ">"  If I mis-represent 
what you meant Kelly, please let me know.  If this bothers you, I'll stop)

> >If all Zenon can afford is 20 zlotys,  Then that's fine.  The money is not
> >the main
> >issue here.  I fully expect LIT to pull in it's fair share of traffic.
> # It certainly seems to get a good amount of traffic compared to other spasce
> interest boards.  The Millenial socyity board is ranked amoung the top %5
> and its gotten 11,000 hits this year.  We've been getting about a thousand# a month and our sites practically dead.
> 
> >> Kelly writes:
> >> > Actually I like the idea of adds.  Besides the money aspect, it gives us a
> >> > more succesful and profesional image.  No one sponcers or advertises on
> >> > fools pages.  So if we can get a couple sponcership icons from credible
> >> > groups (aerospace or space related especially) it would give us more
> >> > credibility.  Not critical, but a plus.
> >> >
> >> Yes, I think it is possibly true -
> >> if the ads were from the credible groups.
> >>
> >> -- Zenon
> >
> >Credible or not, as long as the check is good.  :)
> >Kevin
> 
> I don't know.  If their flaky or weird we might want to think about it.
> Unless its a big check.  ;)

The ads I was thinking of running would be standard Banner GIF's. 400 x 40 pixels
seems to be the consensus among many sites.  Since not too much information can be 
displayed in such an ad, they are not usually very flakey.  As to whether we look 
bad or not, I think most people would understand that they are just ads and the views 
are not endorsed by us.

As to price, I think the best way to charge for the ads is on a per-placement 
basis at $0.01 each.  Since each page can have it's own ad (It doesn't have 
to, just could) our 1000 hits could easily become $30-$40/month in revenue.  
Allowing URLy-Bird.com to place just 1 banner ad on the LIT Site would allow
much of the cost of the site to be offset.  I would say that the limit to ads 
should be 1 per page.  Each ad-space would show a different ad, according to
rotation (assuming we can get more than one advertiser  ;) check out:
http://www.vtourist.com/ads/ for an idea of how another company is handling this.

The CGI Scripts to handle the ads should be fairly simple, and straight foreward.

Kevin