Advertising on a club website

[Zulu]

Lads is there anyone who could give me a bit of information on what I might charge businesses to advertise on a club website, is it generally an annual thing or what? And while I'm at it how do I go about getting businesses to sign up to it, any tricks of the trade or types of businesses that I should target? Any help would be realy appreciated, thanks.

[AbbeySider]

AdSense from google could be a good way to start.
It works on a pay-per-click basis. When someone visits your site and clicks and advertisement then you get paid.
The Ads themselves are filtered to be appropriate/relevant to the keywords on the page.
So the ads on this GAA board for instance are usually GAA related. 

AdSence is something I will be using myself as our website progresses (im working on templates for a new site).

It was suggested that Local businesses advertise on our club website but im not sure how easy or hard this is.
If you go to your own countys hoganStand main page you will see local businesses advertising.
Perhaps email lynn publications or one of the businesses and ask them how it works. 

[Zulu]

Thanks AS, I'm hoping the site will make a few bob for the club but I haven't a clue what to charge local businesses to advertise on the site.

[magpie seanie]

In my experience (and this might not be very helpful) you charge them what you can get out of them!

[Zulu]

  That's as good a policy as any MS.

[Lar Naparka]

I think Abbeysider could fill you in on Google AdSense prices better than I can.
I have a working idea of how the concept works alright but I've never had reason to check it out.
However, I have had a sense being there before when I read Zulu's opening post. I found myself in a roughly similar situation, about twelve years ago.
An old friend had much the same problem as Zulu; he was a county secretary at the time and he wanted ways of getting extra revenue for his county board. He wanted to discuss ways with me of using the website to drum up extra income.
I was not and still am not a web guru or marketing expert. I used to write a piece for the INTO magazine on IT matters. I'm a Microsoft Master Instructor and can waffle on about Word, Access and the likes all day but don't take my advice on website advertising as being the last word or anything like that.
Things were a lot less complicated back then but I'd imagine some things still hold true today.
Your club site is not likely to generate a huge load of traffic, is it?
I'd imagine  that you won't stand to gain much from Google's AdSense program unless loads of visitors click on your site and this translates into click throughs on the ads being displayed.
AbbeySider may be able to give you a better breakdown on likely returns here but I'd doubt if the income you get will be significant.
Me and the buddy came up with a JavaScript program- a banner rotator one.
Such scripts can be had for free and there are plenty of them around. We managed, between the pair of us, to get the affair working and he went off to drum up business amongst the business community.
He got very little.
The big drawback was the lack of potential returns for the sponsors.
The program worked a treat, back then anyway, and it was pretty sophisticated. You could build up a number of advertising graphics and store them in a JavaScript array. They'd then be displayed in random order as the page in question was being viewed.
Most people who saw our end result liked it alright but those who were approached on a business footing were not prepared to invest worthwhile money on advertising that would not bring in an adequate return for them. Those who might support the idea out of loyalty to the county would regard their investment as part of what they chipped in every year in some other way.
The idea never really got off the ground
Today, you can get Flash banner software that can do the same job more easily and do it better than the JavaScript program that we had to work with back in the mid-nineties.
Flash Banner Maker is one such program and I think it costs under $30.
I've seen it in action and a child could create a banner slideshow with it as long as you had a program like PaintShop Pro to create the banners to be included. Making banners would not be hard with the software to be had today.
The problem, Zulu, would then be to go out and promote the sponsorship idea. Show your clients a trial run and get their reaction. This way would not involve Google or any outside agency but you would be able to trouser the total income.
The success really will depend on the visitor numbers your site is likely to generate.

[An Duin Abu]

I totally agree with 'Magpie Seanie', make hay while the sun shines!