How much should I charge for banner ad placements?

[Tom Gilleland]

I have a variety of websites and I've had some companies contact me directly to place banner ads on my sites. How much should I charge? I assume that I would just write a little PHP script to count banner clicks, and then charge by the click. Is this what you guys are doing?

I know that I could implement Google Adwords or Yahoo ads, but I'm guessing I could make more money by dealing directly with the advertiser, and I would also get to control which ads I have on my sites.

Thanks for any info.

Tom

[Matthew]

If you end up doing your own ad placement, this is a great tool:

http://phpadsnew.com/two/

I would recommend at least trying AdSense out--it may resonate well with your content and audience (and if it doesn't, you can always remove it).

[DFG]

Adsense will also give you a decent baseline CPM for your site that you can use in your banner ad charges. Compare what you are earning with Adsense against current CPM rates and there you go. Banners are actually a bit better to run to since you are going to get less clickthroughs away from your site.