Ads money on websites

Something I was wondering about...

Some bands must have a lot of traffic on their websites. Do you know if some of them are making money with ads? Shouldn't they just drop myspace and the like and bring all traffic on their homepage and make some money with google ads?

I was thinking about that today - putting ads on a band website. I think it runs the risk of turning off fans who think the band is trying too hard to be commercial. And how much would a band actually make? If the band is selling loads of CDs and touring for big money, then yeah, maybe they can make some additional money. But if they're not popular enough to sell lots of CDs (i.e a million albums?) then they're probably not going to make enough to make it worth the risk of turning off some fans.

So, how much is a lot? the dating site plentyoffish.com, a free site, has more users than all of the other pay dating sites out there combined. In terms of page views we're talking hundreds of millions of page views a year. Way way way more than say a little band like U2 gets on their site. Plentyoffish.com makes about $5 million/year from online ads. So, maybe if you were U2 you could make a $1 million a year from online ads. Is it worth it for them in possibly turning off their fans to host dumbass ads on their site? Nope. I doubt it would be for far lesser bands. An unsigned local band that's really good? I'm guessing they'd make about 1/100th whatever the CD sales are.

Yes, but ads have evolved so much in the last 15 years, that there's something of a fine line now between a basic banner ad, and one of those annoying ads that covers half the page and follows the mouse / forces you to close it, basically refuses to allow you to ignore it.

Now 15 years ago, a simple banner ad could be responsible for an entire site failing, where as today, people couldn't care less about those simple ones (look at HC....) I can't remember the last time I even noticed one here, but I know they are always there.

I don't think a simple ad would alienate fans, but those ads that 'trick you' (you have 1 message!) masquerading as if they are part of your facebook page, or the ones that follow the cursor.. yeah.. makes me want to disembowel the web site admin.

Any time I even see a "pop up prevented" message, I just leave that site and never go back. It's one thing to put a simple ad next to what I'm reading and another to shove the ad down my throat. I think the fans know the difference too. I don't think many fans would get upset that a band is strapped enough that they have to resort to simple ads to gain some revenue.

I have a moderately active business website (not a band, but music oriented) that gets about 200k page views per month. I have tried for a couple of years to bring in extra revenue with both Google Adsense and affiliate programs from Linkshare and Commission Junction. The results have been insignificant, less than $100 per month. I recently removed all Adsense and affiliate ads from the site.

Ithink if the site increase the traffic the money on ads will increase also..

Well...

I admit that 100$ per month for 200k page views is really disapointing, but I wouldn't call it insignificant!

The problem is I don't think there are many bands in the world who get 200k page views each month!

No I get only around 100 or so.

The problem happens when you are giving you fans away to competing artists and websites for 1-10 cents a click. I have seen Epic's artists and even their official website using Adsense but I really don't think it makes sense at all. Better off exchanging banners with other websites where the websites can open in new windows so you can exchange some fans who may buy something which equals $$ but you aren't just giving you fans away as they click the ads.

I also have the same observation. Band website owners don't have control what ads Google will display on the site; they would end up losing fans with just a click away.

i tried so many time by posting ads in my personal blogs and websites..but i did get any bugs for that one..

I make more money on adsense than anything else I do in the music business.

That makes sense since you give all your music away and make no money at all.

What a surprise.

I can vouch for this. I made $200K in 2007 selling ad space on my website, mostly were for dating websites.

200 000$ ? I call B.S. on this.

I don't think that Ads on your band website are good... I mean if someone clicks on the ads he/she can't download your free single or buy your cds :-D.

but when I listening to these sums lol... 200k$? :-( Then maybe it would be a good idea to give all CDs for free and focus on ads :-D!

$200K. You can say BS all you want, but I have the money... you don't.

So you know though, it was advertising for adult dating websites... which most of them are going out of business. I run a side marketing business, so it's easier for me to get clients like this. Cause of the recession, it's down to $24K.

I think ads should be used for sites that aren't selling a tangible product or service, such as blogs and news sites. Bands on the other hand, should be focusing there websites on selling there own products and services, such as CDs and tickets to shows.

I disagree.

what a load of crap.

That makes sense since you give all your music away and make no money at all.

Yes, but you should see the mailing list and traffic I have to show for it...and the AdSense and affiliate income. My site gets more traffic than many major label artists.

Every time someone downloads my MP3 collections I get a mailing list sign up...60 in the past 2 days! Thats because my site got "stumbled" for having a song that was used in a author's book trailer...and yes, it was free under creative commons. But guess what - I also got a very nice paypal donation.

That simply does not happen by charging people for music from an artist they have never heard of.

Poker99 - you do not even have your Website in your sig! How much are you making with that! LOL So you have a better plan for making money with your music on the Web that involves not even telling people about your site?

Man, I spent years doing what most of you guys on this forum do - the myspace, the itunes, cdbaby, blah, blah, all the stuff you read in books about what you "should" do. Got me nowhere, heck its not even getting major labels anywhere. Excuse me for trying something new.

Guess what - NOBODY cared about my music until I gave it away (a persistent complaint on this forum). Now I get fan mail from all over the world every day and my songs have been used on hundreds of YouTube videos and has been downloaded over 50,000 times on p2p.

I think I will keep giving my music away, even though apparently on this forum that makes me naive.

Peace,

Dan-O

AdSense doesn't pay that much. You would need 500,000+ unique hits a month just to make around $5,000, lol. If you had those numbers coming to your site for your music you would make more selling downloads. IMO.

I don't think you're going to alienate fans, MySpace and Facebook both serve ads on your band's networking page and I think the target audience for most bands fall into a demographic which accept that as the norm. However, if your expecting a windfall you might reconsider.

Unless you run a very niched site for which advertisers are willing to spend a lot of money trying to generate traffic, then I wouldn't expect much if anything.

I run AdSense, Chitika, and Widget Bucks on FrugalGuitarist.com which is averaging around 10,000 visitors monthly and I barely cover marketing and bandwidth. In addition to people actually being interested in an ad and clicking it, you now also have to contend with people running ad blocking plugs.

But you never give actual money figures. How much money do you make each month?

danosongs

I'm still waiting.