Low traffic: Start up web sites, and business 'leaflet' type webs that give you a well presented run through of company and product, with contact details if you want to make a first approach to the supplier (just as in the real world, this does not happen often). 

 

Medium traffic: Fairly established webs with 10,000 to 50,000 visitors a month. These sites have some of the most targeted visitors as most of the visitors come by 'word of mouth' or by reports in other web sites newsletters who have recommend a visit. They do not have a significant degree of 'surfers' at this stage of development therefore most visitors have an interest in the contents of that web site: its like the 'passing trade' that a shop would expect to capture in a prominent position which sites like FreeServe (UK) and MSN (USA) rely on. You can expect to pay from £50 - £300 for a banner advert that will be seen at least 10,000 times: this means that the page/s that your advert is on will be seen 10,000 times. There may be 50,000 visitors but they only accessed the page with your advert on it 10,000 times.

A further benefit with using a medium traffic site is their approachability. If, for instance, you found little response to your advert after 10 - 14 days you should be able to talk to the web site host and look at a better location: after all, the web host wants you to stay next month and they want that reason to be that you were successful, not because of desperation.

High traffic: Over 50,000 visitors a month IS a big web site when the site has targeted traffic i.e. a garden web site that has 50,000 gardeners looking at it every month is worth up to 1,000,000 visitors to say, FreeServe or MSN in terms of those interested in buying garden ware. Or put another way, only 1 in 20 visitors to MSN or FreeServe would be interested in garden ware. You will find many sites with over 50,000 visitors that you can place an advert with for the price of a glossie monthly magazine, and less if you look long enough. Sites in this category may well have marketing agencies dealing with the placing of adverts and therefore the cost will be inflated (you will be welcome to go direct, and lets face it, most of the web hosts are with the agencies as they cannot get suitable marketing revenue. Only large web sites use agencies to save their own time and cost). 

The 'medium traffic' webs offer real opportunities and also offers the best prospect of finding out how well your product is suited to web marketing. But do ensure that the web host is prepared to respond to your realistic need for information (and not just when they take your cheque).

Go to your favourite web site that is common to your business, or enter a search in any large search engine. Sites with lots of adverts are probably quite affordable, but too many cooks... Look for the web site that has a modern feel, with room for your advert without being lost in the masse.

There is a very effective and efficient way of doing this: send an email to the contact address on a web site and simply, but of course politely, ask 'what advertising can you provide for, say, £200 per month'. You may receive one of four answers:

1. 'Sorry, nothing doing for that figure.'

2. 'A full banner on our home page, and a mention in our newsletter.'

3. 'We can accommodate your request for advertising with a small banner on our Gardening section at a rate of £200 for one month, after this period we would require £300 per month to continue.'

4. 'The figure you quote is lower than our normal charge, however, we are prepared to provide a small banner on our sub-main page for three months if you pay it all in advance'.

This is a period of settling down for most web sites and costs need to be met from sales and advertising revenue which means most web publishers will consider deals that meet them half-way.

To fully utilize Net marketing a web site needs to link to another web site: a web site for a 'loaded surfer' is a destination that most buyers would expect when accessing the Net. But is it a necessity to have a web site? No. There are two areas to look at:

1. Telephone prompts: present technology can have a potential buyer call direct to you from the click of a 'phone button' and the extreme of this would be a free-call phone number (UK 0800) that you pay for. That said, is there an absolute need that the surfer must call you there and then? Again, unlikely. We must not believe that the surfer looking to buy will only deal with an on-line presence: not in a world where having a real world presence (bricks & mortar) shows that you are more than a virtual business.

2. Web page leasing: the future for many businesses will be as a member of one or another 'shopping malls'. The business will be represented as a shop within the mall, or even a whole row of similar shops in a multi-site, say, for garden wares: the most profitable survive. Of course, these malls will also be local, regional and national, thereby ensuring maximum web coverage, and more importantly for the technology investors 'usage': be that customer or supplier usage.

Web page leasing is with us now with many sites offering to provide an advertising banner with a link to a page within their site that gives further detail of your product. The advantages of having a lease page is in not having to cover the marketing resource required: cost, time, material and staff. 

They say you need to see the name of a brand at least 11 times in the Newspaper, TV and radio world: reports of 7, or as low as 4 have been touted for the Net. Whatever the figure, one thing a buyer wants to see is a continued presence and thereby see brand status, reliability and (strangely) trust by doing so. A good website can attract a return visit rate of 1 - 2 times a month: look at the web site that you are interested in advertising on and ask yourself if a customer of yours would have the need to return to that particular site, is their sufficient updating of the site, will visitors look at the page your advert is on: i.e. is the page updated with information or is it used for linking to other parts of the web site.

It is more important, for visitor figures, to have an advert on a popular page than the specific page that might apply to you i.e. with a garden site, having your plastic tubs advertised on the plastic tub page may seem logical, but having a banner on the main page will be more successful: with a choice, have a small banner on the main page with a full banner on the plastic tub page.

The idea of a referral fee is that a banner (or just a text link) is placed on a web site and anyone clicking on the banner (taking them to your web site) will be identified as coming from that site and any subsequent sale will earn the originating site a referral fee.

Simple, not really. To enable the tracking of individual customers, programming and software is required at your end to identify who bought what, when and how much.

It is easy to tell how many people came to your web site from another web site by looking at the web site statistics all sites get: but of course there will be no record of any transactions.

Further, your business may not be about a product or service that someone could buy over the Net: plumber, electrician etc. You can ask customers where they heard about you, but trust is the key area here.