Need web ad biz plan help

[Texoz]

I’m drafting a biz plan for a website and I need to calculate revenues based on ad sales. The site will be similar to Google, but for shopping. Initially, I do not plan to charge a registration fee or sales fee. All revenue will be derived from ad sales.

My question is, what is a reasonable way to calculate that? I have some familiarity with the web biz, so I know there are differences in unique visitors vs page hits, etc. Plus, I’ll be able to assure the vendor that their ad is target specific, like a google or yahoo page result.

I’m guessing the rates are based on unique visitors?? So, then I need to estimate how many people will visit the site, register, and use it?

Are there any websites that offer comparative analysis of web advertising?
thanks

 

[hornface]

Sorry Cheif: froogle

 

[zzzz]

In reply to:

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[Texoz]

hornface,
froogle is close, but i've been researching for many, many hours and no one does what I propose. hopefully i can get out the door early enough to snag a market share before the big dogs get going with it.

zzzz,
thanks for the info.

 

[dustin_c1]

Internet advertising is broken. It has always been that way.

In late 1999 it was insane. Most ad agencies didn't understand the difference between a hit, an impression or a unique visitor. A relatively popular site (think something the size of HornFans, probably even a bit smaller) run by a few people could easily earn $50,000 a month. Then it all crashed.

Internet advertising is picking up VERY fast, but only for the large and established corporate run websites. You can offset costs, but you can't really expect be profitable by getting your ad revenue from an ad broker. Unless you have contacts, or hire FTEs with contacts that can sell ad space directly to the businesses you want to sell ad space to, you can pretty much forget making money through advertising.

I can tell you what is wrong with your business plan. This: "All revenue will be derived from ad sales." Only a few companies can do that, and they all have entire departments full of employees selling their ad space.

 

[zzzz]

My advice is that if you are going to do any type of search site it should be in some kind of niche and have some sort of distinguishing feature.

As for a general shopping site, have you seen shopper.com?]The Link

 

[Texoz]

Nick,
No I’m not familiar with that, but now I’m curious. My plan is to seek an angel investor if I can draft a solid enough business plan. I’ve already spoken to close friends about the premise and all of them gave me a “wow, great idea,” especially the ones that do a lot of online shopping.

And a little bg on me. I began working at a start up retail website in late 1999 (until 2003), so I’ve seen a lot of what goes on behind the curtains. That site, babystyle.com, is one of the very few to have survived the dot com implosion.

I’ve pondered other revenue streams for the site, but for now I wanted to keep it simple and explore the potential for ad-only based site. I figured that it was considerably less than other fees.

 

[zzzz]

Tell me more about this grant competition...

 

[zzzz]

Wow. That sounds great. Congrats on pulling off the win.