Offering free advertising for small forums, any benefit?

[Anonymous]

Ok, an idea came to me and I thought I would get the opinions of other admins on this one. So let me run this by you.

Say you visit two small new forums just starting out, activity is about the same on each, both have one or two Adsense placements, nothing crazy, but one site has a few 2 or 3 sponsors for the forum. As a VISITOR do you see any difference? Do you feel the site with sponsors has more potential, maybe more attractive? Now as an ADMIN how do you get an advertiser to pay for ad spots on a slow forum? Not likely going to happen, so... does offering free ad spots to new sponsors have any value, obviously not financially. Have an agreement with the sponsors that once page views reached a defined level the spots would cost $X and slide up as Pageviews increased.

Any thoughts on this idea?

 

[glagrow]

I think this has a lot of potential. I started with a web site offering free advertising for a year and depending on growth we would re-evaluate our relationship. Wanting to monetize the site I've included a new forum creating a "community" if you will.

Advertisers are getting 6 months free with stipulations of posting a guest blog to their members, adding a link to my site and a review of statistic in 6 months. Advertising will be set starting at $250 to $1,200 per month with 3 month minimum. We will also offer ppc and impression accounts. I'm hoping this will be profitable in the long run.

 

[OverGaming]

Www.OverGaming.Net

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