Free Classified Script

[eluser]BrianDHall[/eluser]
Pardon my ignorance, but what currency is R? South African Rand, or Rupee? If Rupee, is it INR - Indian Rupee?

If it's the Rand that's 2000-3000 USD, but of course if its the Indian Rupee that's only $430ish USD.

I found this pretty good article with links to a study on estimating CPM ad payments: http://blogs.yankeegroup.com/2008/08/14/...vertising/

With Google though, I've heard many complain they only get $0.25USD CPM, which is payment per 1000 impressions delivered (according to Google's rules).

At that frightfully small payout, it would take 2,000,000 impressions delivered to Google to get $500USD payment. Expecting 2 million impressions in the first few months of a new site is not a very good bet - if you _really_ need the money, it's very foolish.

Now of course if you work the systems, which takes times and an established well trafficked website (many advertising publishers require at least 10,000-100,000 impressions per month to even accept you into their affiliate network).

According the referenced study:

Average realized CPMs on ad networks ranged from $0.60-$1.10,
versus $10-$20 in direct-sold display inventory, or only 6-11% of
direct pricing

"Direct pricing" means selling the ads yourself - you get a LOT more money, but it is a whole business unto itself - the study notes it requiring significant staff and system to manage, and that publisher's report it being hard to keep 'inventory' (sold ads to display) and 'yield' (actual money made) stable (ie, they might do good one month and terrible another).

However, again I've heard some say they get as little as .13-.30 CPM for their ads, and Google is often said to be the worst paying (just the easiest and fastest to setup).

Still, even at $1USD CPM, that's still 500,000 impressions over 2-3 months.

That might be doable, but you are going to be split 3 different ways. You will need to develop and maintain the site, promote the site to get more traffic somehow, and manage/optimize your ad networks to make sure you aren't wasting your precious ad space and impressions on poor paying networks.

On getting traffic, its very hard to promote without spending money, even if you are literally giving away your service (like free classifieds).

Sites such as free classifieds are "platforms", and suffer the Platform Dilemma - you have to have people using it (posting ads) to get people to want to use it (looking at posted ads). So you have to have traffic to get traffic. This usually takes time, a unique strategy, and/or luck to build. Or money.


So yes, it's doable, but no guarantee. It's a risk that if you just need a few hundred bucks it'd make more sense to try looking through the various Job boards and try to get some cheap $100USD type jobs, you'd only need a few.

Now if you meant that you need to make $2000+ USD, then that is not at all easy. Just do the math