10 Benefits of Using an Ad Server

An ad server is a software platform used to manage the banner ads displayed on a website. These servers are designed to make it easy for websites to sell ads. These are 10 ways working with a good server can benefit your business.

1. Keep it Simple - Adding a new ad, removing old ones is simple with a few clicks.

2. Mixing it Up - Multiple ads can rotate and display together in one placement, including those from your own advertisers and from ad networks or affiliate programs.

3. Stay in Control - You know for sure where each ad shows on your website and how often each one takes from your available impression inventory. Moreover, this server can optimize using your chosen criteria so that better ones display more often.

4. Try it Out - You can test multiple ad versions (colors, words), or locations (left vs. right) to see which is better for your advertisers and for your revenue.

5. Make your Advertiser Happy - Your advertisers have their own accounts to view impressions, clicks, CTRs, and visitors seeing their ads. This is a benefit to them since you put your advertisers in control. Or you can schedule an automatic email report to their inbox weekly so they do not have to lift a finger.

6. Target your Audience - You and your advertisers can target a very specific and narrow group of visitors from a specific region, city, time zone, or interest.

7. Sell it Smart - You can try and experiment with different pricing models: CPM, CPC, CPA, or the simple flat rate. Different ad formats can have different rates. For example, charge more for an expandable flash ad than a text link ad.

8. Display In-House Ads - You can cross-sell and up-sell other related products or promote your own advertising opportunities in the same spot. This server is a very flexible tool to manage and display ads so keep your ideas alive.

9. Report all Numbers - There are many different types of reports and statistics on your ads and your visitors. You can see clicks, views by the hour, view breakdown reports for each ad placement.

10. Maximize your Savings - By outsourcing technical operations to a reliable team of experts, you can cut costs, focus more on selling ads, and deliver better value for your advertisers.

If you are a serious website owner planning to run a comprehensive campaign or just display few ads, make sure that you get the services of ad servers - the most intelligent ad tools on the Internet today.

Making Money From Your Website: Are Banner Ads for You?

When you have a website, you hope that people will flock to your site to buy your product or service. To facilitate this, you aim to develop an attractive, easy-to-navigate website that will be a useful marketing tool for you. Wouldn't you like to make money from your website itself, even as it was helping you cultivate sales of your product or service?

Since the 1980's, when Prodigy first tried online advertising to promote Sears and other companies, opening a website to outside advertising has been a growing way to turn website space into revenue. By the early 90's, the ads were clickable banners that ultimately became traceable for advertisers. In the early years, the advertiser paid the website owner based on impressions, but later this model was changed to ad response. Currently, Yahoo and Google AdWords have perfected tracking ad response and related it to keywords.

The principle is that you can sell banner ads on your site for a fee, which you set based on how much traffic your site commands. This might be the $5-10 range per thousand page views (CPM), but increases if your site has a highly targeted audience. If you generate 20,000 page views per month at $5 CPM, you might make $100, while for 1 million views, you would receive $5,000. According to Dr. Ralph Wilson writing for Web Marketing Today, banner advertising works best on sites set up to deliver a lot of information, such as news sites, hobby or industry-related sites, directories, download sites, databases, or movie listing sites. These sites tend to pull a lot of traffic, which makes them interesting to buyers.

As a website owner, banner advertising is not just a cash cow that grazes on your site. You have to feed and clean up for the cow. Assuming your site generates enough traffic to make banner ads pay off, you need to either work with a banner advertising agency or buy the appropriate software to manage the ads. You need to capture accurate statistics on the number and type of visitors to your site so that advertisers can judge if your site is a good match for their ad dollars. Unless you are working with an agency who does this for you, you will need to aggressively promote your site space and pull in advertisers who are a good fit for you. In short, you need to devote a combination of time and money to develop banner advertising as a steady revenue stream. You have to ask yourself if the return will be great enough to justify the costs involved in setting up and maintaining viable banner ad sales program.

As a website owner, the fundamental question to consider before selling space on your site is whether it will dilute your message. Will visitors click on the ad and never come back to your site? Is it worth earning a few dollars if potential customers drift away from you site, where you are selling a $100 product, and never come back? Considering that the "click through rate," which measures how many customers click on the ad, averages only 1-2%, this is a small risk, but flashing banner ads can be distracting. If you think about the flack caused in recent years when doctors and lawyers have resorted to consumer advertising, you might also consider if banner ads are in line with your general image.

If you have a site which generates sufficient traffic to make banner advertising successful, you might consider selling space. Like any other business decision, you must carefully consider whether setting your website up to make money will be cost-effective and in line with your vision of how you want to promote your company.

Using Flash Banner Advertisements for Your Online Business

When it comes to having a business on the Internet, you will have to take the time to make sure that you know what the best ways to advertise are. There are numerous different ways that you can go about advertising online, however, you should keep in mind that not all of them work as you would hope. For example, most businesses no longer use pop up advertisements because there have been many blockers that have been made to combat this form of advertising. You should consider using banners as a way to advertise for your business.

It is essential that you take the time to set up your banner correctly in the beginning before you even start searching for a website to use it on. You should make sure that your flash banner is interesting enough to keep the attention of individuals; however, you will want to keep it simple as well. You should make sure that your flash banner has a headline that will make people want to know more. If you take the time to include graphics, you will not have to worry about catching possible visitors' attention.

Once you have attracted attention, then you will have to make sure that you are able to keep it. There are a couple of ways that people decide to go about this. Two of the main ways that people use flash banner advertisements is by first incorporating a rotator into the banner. This will allow you to use graphics that will change at even intervals. You can also use either a game or a video because this is a great way for you to advertise with a banner advertisement. You should remember that you would want to do something that will make people want to know more.

Once you have your banner advertisement set up the way that you would like, you will then have to make a decision on which sites you will like to incorporate your banner onto. Before you make a final decision, you should make sure that you take the time to speak to the webmaster to find out how much you will have to pay him or her to be able to place your flash banner on their site. If you do not have the amount of money that you will need to pay to have your banner placed on another site, you can still place it on certain sites such as social networking and article submission sites.

Writing Winning Ads That Will Attract

Dynamic, magnetic ads that stand out from the crowd! This is what we all want!.

How do we go about it? What are the guidelines?

Let's start with understanding the goals of your ad - three of them. A good ad attracts the people you want to attract - when you know your target audience - these are your best prospects. What are the goals of the ad?

1. Generating clicks from qualified traffic/visitors

2. Discouraging those people from clicking on the ad who are not likely to become your customers.

3. Establishing the expectations of your prospects so that your website gives them more than they expected - they are satisfied.

How do you attract the right prospects and yet discourage the wrong type? The clue is in the offer in the ad itself, not the sale. You can't make a sale in an ad but you can make the ad itself so attractive that their attention is captured. This is the first step of the ladder if you like.

The follow up is done with e-mails, your website and possibly phone calls, but not the ad itself.

If you are paying for clicks on say, Google, then you don't want to pay for the wrong clicks! A lot of money out with nothing coming in!

So how do you start with making your ad unattractive to the wrong person? Negative qualifiers for example. State who should not apply - ie only for serious entrepreneurs, no get rich quick schemes - if you are looking for this - dont click here.

Then it is important to manage expectations of your visitors. ie if your ad is conveying playfulness for example, then you can't send your visitor to a serious, ultra-professional looking landing page! There has to be congruency - if you are making a particular point of a particular benefit then the landing page needs to focus on that benefit. Make sure that your prospect understands that you will keep your promises - even the smaller ones that are in the ad - it is all about building a trusting relationship.

Your ad is the headline of your landing page if you like - ensure that it shows the absolute benefit that someone will get when they click through into your website.

Using the keyword and tuning to it is of the utmost importance. Who you are selling to - your target market - this is where your keyword comes from. Keep it as personal as you can to them. The Ad is all about (you) them.

The keyword is defining who your market is and what they want. It is also the message that gets through to their desires and their perception of their identity. Keeping your ads in tight groups can pinpoint more exactly the target market and therefore the tone and style of the ad; the message and then the offer can relate to what each market will respond best to.

This is a difficult market - the most competitive one there is on-line. How do you cut the cake differently? All ads appear together on Google - no differentiation into sections as there is in the white pages or yellow pages. That would definitely make life easier!

Ad Words has been likened to the game of tennis - Google rewards relevance in the ad with lower prices and a higher positioning.

Perhaps the most important rule when trying to stand head and shoulders above the crowd is, you go the opposite way to everyone else - zig and zag. Always keep in mind your prospect's biggest question of why they should click on your ad rather than someone else's - when you are composing it.

Study your competition - search for your 5-10 top keywords - print out the results. Keep studying them - note down your thoughts about each of them:

What is the tone?

What is the emotional appeal?

What is the big promise?

What proof is offered?

What features are highlighted?

Is there a logical appeal?

How do each of these ads try to position itself as different from the others?

What is the call to action?

Different is good, but perhaps not enough. Your ad must be better also! Your goal is to write an ad that sets you apart from the other ads in such a way that it will connect you with your target market. Offer what they are not after you have checked out the competition on AdWords.

Your market research can show you ideas about what your niche wants and what is currently being provided and talked about by your competition. Now you can write ads that focus on needs that have not been met by anyone else!

What are your goods and services? Can you offer them at a better price?

Slice the niche differently. Do your research. Break it down and offer differently with a better first offer than the competition. Even though the ultimate goal is to buy, the first step can be to offer something else that will whet the appetite of your prospects - advice, newsletter,reviews, samples etc Just ensure that this 'magnet' will attract prospects rather than the non-prospects.

Finally, no matter what you sell you can always position yourself as an expert in the field. Your customers are searching - which shows there is a gap in their knowledge as far as they are concerned. If your ad offers to guide and educate in this rather than just selling - then your offer can stand out because you are offering the most important thing of all - value!

Here's to your success

Where Are the Best Placements for Banner Ads?

An important thing to consider when thinking about how best to optimize advertising on your website is the best placements for banner ads. Where you place, how you position banner ads and the content of these ads can have a big impact on how many people look at your ads and click on them. You have to put yourself in the position of the user of the traffic you are targeting. In order to increase your CTR (Click-Through Rates), it is important to consider these suggestions.

The first thing one must consider is ad placement and positioning. Where you place the ads is crucial to engaging users and achieving higher CTR's. Ads that are placed close to content tend to be more successful than ads that are placed farther away from the content of the page, especially on the periphery. Heat maps of websites are good evidence of this. Ads that are placed above the fold are usually much more successful than those that are placed below the fold. Essentially, what is initially viewable when the page loads, without having to scroll down gets a lot more of the user's attention.

You must also think about the amount of ads on your website. Now, this is an avenue where you can go seriously overboard. A website with too many ads is off putting for users and for potential advertisers. Not many users will be interested in low content websites and find the large amount of ads distracting. Also, advertisers may not like competing with a massive amount of other ads.

Another thing that's important is to know your user, know what target you want to traffic. This is where doing research is absolutely essential. Decide who exactly you want to target and research that demographic. Advertising what suits their lifestyle; basically what ads would interest them is an important way to optimize your banner ads.

Ads that are animated can be useful for grabbing a user's attention; however, it is important not to go crazy. Animated ads with automatic sound can come off as startling and irritating. If an ad does have sound, it is best to make it optional as to not alienate potential customers. You don't want your website to be considered the website with the annoying ads. Also, a powerful heading for your banner ads can be a useful way for grabbing a user's attention and encouraging them to revisit your website. Also, interesting illustrations can grab a user's attention and an incentive for more information can make the user want to explore the offer further.

It is also important to consider the size of your banner ads. Larger sizes such as leaderboards (720x90) have been found to perform better since they tend to get prominent placement (header of the website) and stand more since they are larger. Other sizes that also tend to perform better are rectangles (300x250). Banner ads that are 486x60 tend to produce the worst results which may be because they are smaller than other ads and therefore are less noticeable and tend to be buried in content or since this size is the oldest size, users have gotten used to it and now ignore ads like these.

When thinking about the best placements and positioning for your banner ads there are many things to consider. Some essential things to consider include; ads placed above the fold and near content tend to be more successful. Also, one must know what target you want to traffic and also think about content of the banner ads and what will grab the user's attention. Size of the banner ads also plays an important role as larger banner ads tend to perform much better than the smaller sizes. If you would like to learn how Monetize More could find the most optimal AdSense creative combination for you site, contact us at: http://www.monetizemore.com/contactus.

Do I Need A Corporate Identity?

The short answer is YES! Regardless of the size of your business, it is vitally important that your customers recognise your branding, particularly in the increasingly competitive website marketing culture. This can be anything from your colour scheme and images to your company logo and tagline. Having a consistent look and feel to your website, brochures, newsletters, emails and so on, creates an identity that customers and potentials gradually associate with you and your business.

Many new business owners often underestimate or spend far too little time on this aspect of their business development. Large corporate organisations with big marketing budgets frequently spend astronomical amounts of money on creating a strong corporate identity. So how does the small business owner compete? Well, you do not need to! You can just as easily create your own logo using software such as Adobe Photoshop or similar (or get a professional graphic designer to do it for you from about £150.00), then keep a consistent colour scheme, fonts and styles along with some carefully selected images throughout all resources, marketing materials and your website. It is all about customer perception and although there will always be competing businesses, your branding and how well it penetrates into the customers psyche is the true identifier of a successful business.

While many logos and colour schemes work well on printed materials, quite often these do not translate as well for the web so you should consider whether the size and style of logo and colour scheme will work on a website too. Make sure your logo is scalable or can be disassociated with the business name so it can stand alone to represent your business as your brand is established. Choose colour schemes that can be adapted to use for the web taking into consideration element such as background colours or heading styles.

If you have a specific logo, which is often an abstract design, initially this alone may not be sufficient to create a strong enough identity or web presence. Introducing a strapline or tagline that reinforces and explains what your business does or what it sells, makes a significant difference to customers. Customers simply do not want to waste time looking at a website only to discover that it does not actually provide the product or service they are seeking.

If you envisage that in the future your business may evolve, it is important that the branding can encompass each new area or can easily be rebranded to do so. You do not want to spend a fortune on designer fees for your whole company branding only to recreate it a few years down the line. This may also result in losing customer confidence in your brand.

Simply going through this process often helps business owners focus on what direction they want their business to take and hone down the best marketing techniques to achieve it.

When a good web designer creates you a website they should always start with questions about branding, colours schemes and styles that are either already used in your business or that you like about other businesses. If you already have suitable branding then that can be extended through to your website. If you do not have a branding, then suitable colour schemes, layouts and styles that compliment your business type can be recommended that re-enforces your identity to create a strong web presence. This is one important element to get right ensuring your website attracts the right audience, i.e. prospects AND turns them into paying clients.

How to Block Ads With a Multiple Ad Network Strategy

As a publisher, it is difficult to track down unwanted ad creatives when running many ad networks simultaneously. It is essential to have a strategy to efficiently track down these ad creatives, the advertiser and the ad network it originates from.

There are several tools at your disposal. If you're using Google Chrome you can simply right click on the ad and inspect the element. If you use Firefox, you can download an extension called Firebug and right click the ad and inspect the element. When you inspect the element it will show a pop-up of the pages generated code. It will highlight the specific generated code that has come from that ad unit. You will need to search through the code for a recognizable ad server url. It will look like a base URL in the middle of a mess of generic code. If you're not able to attribute the URL with any of your current ad networks, copy & paste that URL into Google Search and see what results you get. The results should show one of your ad networks. You will want to print screen the image with the generated code and a view of the ad.

Another piece of evidence in the generated code is the line item name within the code. You will usually find this towards the top of the code.

It is easy to tell if the ad is coming from AdSense or Google Ad Exchange. Those ads are signified by the blue triangle at the top corner. Chitika also has this as well, however, the Chitika ads also have a specific look that is completely different from Google. If the undesired ad is coming from Google AdSense or Ad Exchange, it is important to hover your mouse over the ad and view the bottom left corner of your screen. You should be able to see the destination url from doing this. You can take this destination URL and put it in the list of blocked URLs in the AdSense or Ad Exchange bank of blocked URLs.

If the undesired ad comes from a different ad network you will most likely have to notify your ad rep. Some ad networks have a manual URL or advertiser block list within their reporting interface. If so, you can simply block the advertiser or creative yourself. If not, send an email with the above pic of the generated code and ad creative to your ad rep requesting him/her to block the ad creative or advertiser ASAP.

It is also important to proactively block advertisements if you have an idea of a specific category or vertical that you don't want to be on your site. You can do this on Google AdSense and Ad Exchange proactively on your own. Ad networks like ValueClick, Tribal Fusion, 247 and Casale allow you to block advertisers proactively on your own. For other ad networks, we recommend sending a list of blocked URLs to them when you start the relationship. It's important to continue to compile a master list of blocked URLs. If you prefer to block categories, you should discuss this with your ad rep and they should be able to accommodate your needs.

You can be proactive when blocking ad creatives, advertisers and categories of ads when dealing with your ad networks. It is also important to have a reactive strategy for advertisements that slip through the cracks. No matter how proactive you are, you will not catch them all from the start.

Online Classifieds Portal in Uganda? Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Outside Looking In

I was minding my own business as usual on Facebook (liking every random comment and reading every link) and then I saw an advert on my side bar for an online classifieds portal called dealfish.co.ug. I clicked on the link and it took me to the site which said I could post a free advert. I immediately created an advert for this website. I got an error message: "Sorry www website addresses are not allowed." I was very upset and sent an email to them querying this and they told me they don't accept the classified adverts to include a web address reference. Well unlucky for them, I discovered Kampala mart.com It's when I realised that finally the internet revolution is taking place in Uganda. Online classified portals like eBay.com and gumtree.com, the largest in the UK have been around for some time. In Uganda, these are starting to take off big time because of two very important things:

1) Africa is starting to finally get connected to the rest of the world via huge fibre optic cables being laid under the sea all around Africa. 2) Mobile telecom companies continue to provide cheap internet to their customers on their mobile phones including using 3G technology.

Internet and the opportunities available to an internet entrepreneur are so serious that it is being projected that according to an article I read at wired.co.uk ("get rich move to Africa")] Africa may soon have its first internet billionaire, I agree and immediately tell you why to invest in this sector in Uganda but first;

THE CONS(of course)

1. Internet stability and usage in Uganda

Usage and computer illiteracy

Whilst it is well and good that our internet usage is growing increasingly by the day, there still remain millions of people who are below the poverty line, are computer illiterate and/or cannot afford to have internet. A large portion of people still access internet from office rather than home which can hinder the convenience aspect.

In the UK for example internet usage is over 82% of the population. Almost everyone has internet in their home. By comparison in Uganda, it is about 10%, but it is growing significantly because as per ITU statistics, internet penetration in Uganda has grown in leaps in bounds. In 2000 only 0.1% of the population had access to internet. It was still low in 2007 where only 2.5% of the population had internet but this has since then significantly increased to over 9.6% in 2010!

Stability and cost of internet

Internet stability in Uganda is very tricky. Many times internet is slow and where it is not slow it is expensive. This of course is changing but till then, this remains the main hurdle for potential users. I however expect that with increasing internet on mobiles particularly with the telecom companies rolling out 3G, then this shouldn't be a problem especially if the online classifieds portal invests heavily in a mobile version, that is, one that is very easy to view on mobile phones and not just the smart phones. This is critical because mobile phone usage including internet is probably going to be the next revolution in Africa and Uganda in particular. It already is under way anyway.

2. The little fish will be coming after you....

I later on set out the cost of start up for a serious online classifieds operation but the reality is that this kind of business can be done from a laptop in someone's bedroom. This is a typical "briefcase" type of business.

Low cost These days so many web hosting companies offer you a free website and even allow you to host your website for free say for 6 months. They will in addition provide you with a free domain. The cost of this all? £8.99 for 6 months. 1and1.co.uk for example offer just such a package.

Therefore with a little assistance from a programming friend if you have no IT knowledge, you can set up your website and have it hosted for free!

As for advertising the site to reach Ugandans, easy! There is an advertising revolution going on and it is no surprise that Capital FM, the leading Ugandan FM station is losing advertising revenue [if you are to believe a 14 September 2011 Redpepper article on the same.]

I cannot comment on the accuracy of the figures in the Redpepper article but they are certainly right in the sense that worldwide advertisers are shifting from traditional advertising of radio, TV and newspapers. The reason is simple; with online advertising, you can measure how many people are "seeing" your advert. You therefore can set an advertising budget and only pay for people who are interested in your advert because if they are they will click on it, hence "pay per click". In case you didn't know this, you are years late to the party! This is how Google has been making its money and it is likewise how Facebook makes its money.

Now how will you advertise your website to Ugandans? Well Facebook has a "clever" computer. It knows where a user originates from and so when you choose to advertise with them, they will tell you how many "Ugandans" you will reach with the maximum advertising budget. They also give you a rough estimate of a good minimum advertising budget you can set. You can however choose what you can afford.

On the basis of the above, you can therefore set your advertising budget in Facebook at even $2 (they will simply show your advert to less people). If you set your advert to run for 30 days, that is $60 which at an exchange rate of $1 = Shs 2,605 works out at Shs 156,300 a month.

You can therefore technically start this business with your old laptop and only Shs 156,300!

That is a good thing right? Yes, but so is it for everyone else. You can therefore expect that there will be many of these in no time and I mean MANY OF THESE ARE COMING SOON, YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO WANTS TO GET RICH (OR DIE TRYING).

Let's see how many online classifieds portal I can find with Google search:

dealfish.co.ug kampalamart.com kwatadeal.com classifiedsuganda.com easyuganda.net/about-us.htm tagsaleuganda.com/ majestysdirectory.com/

And counting!

Now the catch It means therefore that for the investor, you have to ensure your site stands out from the crowd so as to attract both advertisers and visitors.

You will therefore have to employ various marketing strategies so that your website has sufficient customers coming there and then you can lure in the advertisers (where did you think you were going to make money from duh?). Gumtree the leading online classified website in the UK for example has clear statistics on their website to show their customer reach. This information should be sufficient to convince an advertiser.

Alternatively you will need to consider developing a niche. autotrader.co.ug for example is one such site. They have focused solely on cars.

3......the big boys are coming too!

Unlike a traditional business model say farming or taxi business, online business are not location dependent and therefore whilst the buyers and sellers may be in Uganda, the business owners may be foreign. After all, hosting a website doesn't need a Ugandan presence and neither does "pay per click" advertising. As an investor in this sector, you can therefore expect that once you start, you will be competing with the really big fish who in their global expansion will most certainly look to tap into this market. Can you for example compete with Craigslist or eBay should they choose to focus on Uganda? What about Schibsted? Not heard of them? Well you should know them because in this business, they are not sleeping, they are expanding.

Even dealfish.co.ug for example is the "Ugandan" branch of the Dealfish brand which at last count is in 9 countries.

I will not be surprised if even local newspaper giants like The New Vision(with Government's deep pockets) and The Monitor (which is backed by the mighty Nation Media Group) soon venture into this sector. New Vision for example has the enteruganda.com portal (under construction as at date of this article) which can easily be spun into an online classifieds website and the Monitor now has an online business directory which can easily have a classifieds section.

So the business is expected to be tight but is it the real McCoy?

And Now the PROS

1. Excellent profitability and return on capital in less than 1 year

And now you are about to find out why everyone is looking to go into this sector. I set out below my projections of the estimated profitability, start up cost and return on capital that can be achieved for this sector.

I have used the Kampalamart.com website as a model. Their model is this; Customers can post ads for free. Some can however choose to enhance the visibility of their ad to three locations on the website: The top most banner The side banner or A featured ad banner on key pages

These three prominent places unlike the other ads within the myriad of ads in the categories cost money. These are the ones financing the company and it is this model I use to show the profitability of this sector.

You should of course be aware that there are other models of getting revenue:

You can for example charge for certain categories. For example on gum tree.com where rentals and job postings(by employers) are charged. You can use a pay per click concept whereby certain "adverts" are targeted to specific customers depending on their online behaviour (behavioural advertising).

I therefore set out my analysis as below. In the model below I present two totals columns. The present position and the projected position.

I project that there will be a 60% growth in revenue and a 25% increase in costs. The growth in revenue is based on internet usage growth in Uganda between 2008 and 2010 as per ITU statistics.

Analysis 1: Profitability information

(exchange rate of $1=2,605 used)

Total revenue:

Current: 5,522,600. Projected: 8,836,160

(based on 6 top banners, 6 side banners, 16 featured ads each charged at $200, $100 and $20 per month, respectively)

Expenses

1. Rent and service charge: Current:1,237,375. Projected: 1,237,375.

(Based on 25sqm in worker's house, a "grade A" building which charge rent at about $10-$18 per square metre(psm) and service charge of $2 psm.)

2.Web hosting: Current: 36,859. Projected: No change

3.Salary: Current: Shs. 1,800,000. Projected: 2,250,000

(3 staff comprising of manager/IT personnel and office administrator)

4. Marketing: Current: 656,300. Projections: 820,375

(including Facebook advertising and other marketing techniques)

5. Transport, communication and other: Current: 800,000. Projected: 1,625,000

(Estimated)

Total Expenses. Current: 4,530,534. Projected: 5,969,609

Total Monthly profit (revenue less expenses). Current: 992,066. Projected: 2,866,551

Total Annual Profit. Current: 11,904,792. Projected: 34,398,612

Analysis 2: Start up capital information

1. Website development: 3,907,500

(estimated at $1,500 for a good website to support online classifieds and e-commerce)

2. Rent(6 months in advance): Shs 6,642,750 3.

3. Office equipment: Shs. 8,495,000

(computers, office desks, UPS, internet installation, multi purpose machine, legal costs, signage) 4.

4. Miscellaneous: 849,500

Total: Shs. 19,894,750

Return on capital (Total start up capital/profit): Current: 1.67 years. Projected: 0.57 years

2. Gain on eventual sale

A savvy investor will tell you that if you want to get wealthy quick, start a business with the end in mind. In other words, prepare for when you will eventually sale it. When you eventually sale the business you have successfully built, you will make money from the acquirer who will most likely be one of those big boys like Schibsted? Not heard of them? I told you, you need to find out about them!

3. Low start up costs

I did mention as one of the pros the low start up cost being able to result in a lot of competition. If you are one serious investor, this however shouldn't deter you. It should only spur you into action. The low costs can be to your advantage.

You therefore don't necessarily have to start with the Shs 20m as per the information above. You can start like I mentioned with as little as Shs 156,300 and go on to become successful so go on, what are you waiting for, do we not all want to be billionaires so freakin' bad?

SUMMARISING AND THE FINAL WORD

First the numbers.

On the basis of my analysis:

Capital investment(A): Shs 19,894,750

Profit per year (revenue excluding all expenses) (B): Shs 11,904,792

Return on capital(years to get capital back or A/B) is 1.67 years

If you look at 60% growth, you can however look to recover the investment in 0.57 years!

Now the basics you must get right before investing.

Excellent website design. You need to invest in a good website that will make it easy for users. You need to remember that not many Ugandans have internet at home and so will most likely be browsing in office, in an internet cafe or on their phone and so a simple design which can support mobile phone browsing is most likely

Appropriate aggressive marketing. You will need to move fast or smart to capture the market with different marketing techniques otherwise your website will get drowned in the crowd. I am not necessarily saying splash out on huge newspaper adverts(which we know cannot necessarily be measured for success). There are numerous methods for example a free press story, interviews, article marketing, Facebook advertising et al. A clear target market. Who do you want to reach? You need to know who you are targeting and then go on to develop your service with that client in mind. A good example I gave is auto trader.co.ug.

FINAL WORD

Despite the threat of the big competitors coming, this is truly one of those sectors where even the little guy can win and go on to be the next Google, the next Facebook. You don't need to capture a huge portion of the market to be successful. Kampalamart.com for example at the date of this article had about 388 Facebook fans. If this represents their market share of an estimated 304,000 Facebook users in Uganda[early 2011] then this represents only 0.13% of the market BUT from the analysis above, they would already be profitable! Need I say more, go on GET RICH (OR DIE TRYING).

And now the disclaimer: While I have taken steps to research this information as well as based on my experience, you should not rely on the information given here to base your investment decisions. You should seek business advice from a professional knowledgeable of your specific circumstances. I shall therefore not be held responsible for any loss you may incur when acting on this information.

General Points of Banner Advertising

Banner advertising is one of the oldest forms of Internet advertising. The advantages of this method of advertising for the site were most evident in the early era of Internet advertising. The first banner ad campaigns were quite primitive - simple manual exchange of non-standardized advertising images with links between webmasters.

After some time, there have formed standard sizes for banners:

468 x 60 - big stretch, it is one of the oldest and most popular types of banners. These banners are supported by all banner exchange networks. The largest and most visible type of banner, allowing not only to attract attention and interest to the user, but also to convey sufficient information about the advertised site.

100 x 100 - "square banner." Became popular as an option for placing a banner in the website navigation bars, but eventually got the status of the standard. Not supported by all banner exchange networks, but is quite popular with manual banner exchange.

88 x 31 - "button" - this banner exchange is very limited in supported exchange networks, particularly by large, but has become almost standard "de facto" in the exchange of banners and links.

120 x 60 - "small banner" - not available to all banner exchange networks, but they are quite common in the direct sale of advertising space on websites.

234 x 60 - "half a large stretching." Situation is similar to the banner 120 by 60.

"The eye" is the banner of arbitrary shape with navigation elements.

These standards remain relevant today. With this standardization occurred the opportunity to build the most effective banner exchange network. Banner exchange networks have emerged as a logical consequence of the desire to simplify the webmaster banner exchange to "cross" advertise their resources. As a result, there has been created several mechanisms for the exchange standard of banners, acting on a "show other people's banners on your site and we will show on your other sites." Thus the profit banner networks formed and are composed of a certain percentage of impressions (usually from 10 to 30), which are allocated to the impressions of commercial (paid) banners, raised a banner network.

The first banner ads did not have any opportunities to target - show "all and for all." However, in view of the unemployment market efficiency such advertising was high enough. The main indicator of the effectiveness of banner - CTR (ratio of impressions to clicks the user) was from 2 to 10 or even more percent. For comparison - in the current banner networks is considered a good indicator of CTR at 1 percent. Naturally, together with the growth of the market changed and banner ads, adapting to the requirements of advertising specialists. Today's networks have extensive opportunities to target, often narrow specialization, as well as highly customizable displays. There is an opportunity to choose not only the desired theme sites, where you would like to see your banner, but their geography, display time, the type of operating system user, etc. All this has allowed banner networks to remain competitive enough.

Nevertheless, many experts prefer to manually ad paid banner placement on the resources that are considered promising in terms of getting targeted traffic. This method has both advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage - theoretically much greater efficiency than in the case of banner exchange networks and there is no need to allocate site locations

If in the case of banner exchange costs are practically zero (excluding the cost of manufacture of the banner) in the case of purchase displays in the network are measured in units of dollars per 1,000 impressions, in case of direct purchase banner space for the costs can be ten times more and not be measured in clicks or shows, and in time intervals. For example, $ 30 per day or $ 200 a month. However it is possible to return the money at the apparent failure of the campaign is not possible.

On the other hand, manual tracking and placement of banners can provide a higher CTR, but some sites allow and pay "per click", whereby you only pay for visitors. You can call this method of advertising the most effective of all methods of banner advertising. True, it requires an order of magnitude larger budget than the use of banner exchange networks and redemption shows through them.