So far this morning I have answered (or archived) 5 emails.
Two of them are from what I would describe as Cheapskates - the people who try to get a bargain or barter their way to a lower price.
Three of them are clients - the people paying the base price (or more because they offered more money than the base price).
When selling advertising it is important that you know what your advertising is actually worth, and the amount of time required to both place the advertising (and eventually remove it*).
* No advertising is 100% permanent. Anyone in the marketing industry knows that. It disappears over time. Webpages get deleted. Whole websites become defunct and eventually deleted. Some websites might be sold to a new owner and get redesigned, and the new owner doesn't have any deal with the advertiser to keep the advertising.
How individual websites set the base price for advertising varies on a variety of factors:
- The type of advertising being shown. Eg. Banners, side links, links within content, sponsored guest posts, etc.
- How popular the website is. More popular websites = more money.
- The type of thing being advertised. Eg. Many websites charge a premium to advertise online casinos or gambling, and the online casinos can afford to pay the higher rate for quality links.
- The mood of the individual person. Eg. Some people might be willing to barter/bargain with the cheapskate, but other people might find the attempts to barter annoying - which means attempting to barter is just wasting time for both parties.
We fall into the latter category of people who get annoyed by people attempting to barter. We have a base price for advertising on our websites for a reason. We KNOW what our websites are worth. We KNOW what our time is worth. We're not interested in wasting time with someone who wants to barter.
Another thing we don't like is when a client shortchanges us the amount that was agreed upon.
Eg. Let's say we agreed upon $60 USD for the cost of advertising on the Art History Archive for 1 year. That is our non-casino rate for that website. Then when it comes time for the client to pay for their advertising they only send us $55 USD.
Hmm.
What is the proper response to that?
Delete the advertising? Keep it? Make a mental note to overcharge the person an extra $5 next time?
Here's what we do... The agreement was to keep the advertising on AHA for 1 year for $60 USD, but the client only paid for 11 months worth. So when 11 months go by we remove the advertising.
They still got what they paid for, they just didn't get the full year because they didn't pay for the full year.
Makes complete sense.
It also means we don't bother contacting the person to renew their advertising because we know they're a cheapskate who shortchanges us on the agreed upon amount.
Someone who is starving / needs more money wouldn't care so much, but for us, well, we're running a profitable business and we're not starving.
Answering Emails
So as I said earlier, I received 5 emails so far this morning. 3 from clients and 2 from cheapskates. Knowing this, guess whose emails I spent time answering? The clients.
Guess whose emails I archived, marked as "Cheapskate" and didn't even answer?
The people trying to barter.
No point wasting time on them.
But I did apparently feel like venting by writing this blog post.
...
If you're looking for advertising bring your wallet. Advertising isn't cheap or free. Quality or Quantity is always going to be more expensive.
If you don't like it, go bother somebody else.
