Does a website make money when someone visits it?

Former_MSE_Penelope

This is the discussion to link on the back of Martin's blog. Please read the blog first, as this discussion follows it.

Read Martin's "Does a website make money when someone visits it?" Blog.

Please click reply to discuss below.

456789

A well written article

borders_dude

456789 wrote: »

A well written article

They usually are IMHO.

kingmonkey

Does it stem from the dot com boom where businesses were valued based on their hits?

MSE_Martin

kingmonkey wrote: »

Does it stem from the dot com boom where businesses were valued based on their hits?

I suspect some confusion does come from that.

fishter

Some sites make more money by charging more for their prodcts, depending where you found them from.
http://bountii.com/blog/2009/11/23/negative-cashback-from-bing-cashback/

The article notes the difference in displayed price depending whether or not you've used a particular search engine to find the product.

garffy13

You have said that sites dont normally earn money unless people click through to the advertised company... and if they do have banner advertising that pays per ad impression or page impression, then this will be minimal.

This is not strictly true. It depends on whether a site is generic, or quite targeted, and has a clearly defined demographic.

If the site is generic, then you are right, for a highly visited site, you may expect 50p per 1000 ad impressions, if going through an agency, possibly more if the site is selling directly to the advertiser. This works in a "scatter approach" normally - a spray and pray model, where advertisers will pay small money to get their name out there, on any site. Obviously, this doesnt add up to much at all.

However, with a dedicated sales team, or an agency that is specifically selling that website's ad space, selling targeted advertising, a lot more money can be achieved. Dependant on the industry, and whether the sale is through an agency or direct, you could be looking at £10-20 per thousand ad impressions (number of times the ads are seen in any given time period). For example, a rugby sporting site having a company selling rugby boots advertising can expect a lot more money for the same ad space than if a well known mobile phone operator advertises!

There are additional ways of money money from advertising on sites - including pay per click or affiliate advertising and many more, which Martin did mention in his article.

Hope this helps! (we are a publisher of many websites!)

Gareth

EdInvestor

The role of Google in web advertising seems to be important these days.