David Mullings — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:47:50 GMT

It depends on what your long-term goal is. I run my own site and the point is to draw traffic that you can then monetize.

We wanted to present a professional image – your site will ALWAYS be compared to a bigger one and the bigger ones don’t use Google AdWords.

Nothing says ‘start-up’ or ‘strapped for cash’ like AdWords, and it isn’t the quickest to way to ad revenue as some would like to think.

We sell our own banner ads – the companies come to us, AND we have a company that serves other ads for $4.80 cpm minimum guaranteed – but that comes AFTER you get traffic.

Your job right now is to NOT put any ads at all – they aren’t going to make any money right now so why hurt the user experience at this stage?

When your pageviews start approaching 2500 per day you can check out networks or ad auction sites to see what CPM you can get – but check the terms, they often pay Net-30 or Net-60 so you have to factor in that delay in receiving cash.

Once companies start approaching you directly – we use an online form for advertisers to contact us and have had companies like Universal Records contact us through it – then you charge a MINIMUM of DOUBLE what the networks are paying you because that is closer to what they are charging.

Our cpm rate is $15 but we chose a strong niche. I hope the advice from someone running their own site and handling the monetization strategy is helpful.

David Mullings — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:55:26 GMT

I agree as well – many people don’t understand how to take constructive criticism, they just see it as criticism.

When I founded my company, I brought on advisors that didn’t understand the web but I avoided saying that they “just don’t understand” and then firing them. They were vital because they also asked “Why are you trying to do it that way when you could do it this way?” and in the process provided less costly methods based on solid business principles rather than what the other ‘web’ companies were doing. They also forced us to justify an expense or a strategy.

I now have an angel investor as an advisor and the other day he indicated that based on his criticisms we might not want to continue our monthly meetings.

I responded by saying we DO want to continue because he forces us to justify decisions and also tests our pre-conceived ideas of what will or won’t work. I love criticism because it forces me to think harder than compliments.

Found+READ: Comments by David Mullings