What Should I charge for an advert?

I have a good niche website in relation to one aspect of UK law. I've been running the site for a few years now and get approximately 1700 hits a day of really good quality traffic.

I don't sell any advertising on the site, but lately I've begun to wonder what it would be worth if I did.

For instance, there are quite a few lawyers in the UK who specialise in this particular subject of law. The cost of the keywords they pay to get such traffic is insane. I'm certain that not only could I send them regular high quality traffic with a banner ad, I could provide them with an even higher quality traffic via e-mail referrals. I routinely have to deal with people's problems in this field via e-mail and often, when I know they have a claim, I tell them to seek a lawyer. As I don't endorse any lawyers or even mention them on my site, I never give anyone the name of a lawyer to contact.

I often have e-mails from people asking me if I know of a good lawyer. I reply telling them I'm not sure if there is such a thing as a good lawyer.

Lately I'm realising that so many of my readers could greatly benefit from an adverts on my site pointing directly to a highly recommended law firm.

So I've drafted a very professional e-mail and sent it to the first firm on my list who I think would be most appropriate. I have offered to show my stats and design the banner for them. The problem is though, I didn't give them any indication of pricing for the banner as I have no idea what it would be worth.

How do I even begin to calculate what the cost of the banner would be worth to a firm of lawyers. Do I just take the Google price on adwords for that niche and start from there? Should I charge them a monthly fee or a six monthly fee? And should I only offer the banner to one firm of lawyers and none other?

Any advice would be gratefully appreciated.

Make a page dedicated to lawyers that you endorse.
Contact lawyers you want to endorse. Show them that you receive 1.7k hits a day of traffic. Shiw tehm that you can bring them an insane amount of clients with your website, and charge 1k-2k a month for a spot on your oage. Rinse and repeat with a few more lawyers. 5 lawyers paying you 2k a month, now youre chilling at 10k a month for building one page

You could also contact some of those lawyers and offer to sell them leads instead of advertising. They know how much such a lead is worth to them especially if they pay such high advertising prices.

Presumably you already have Adsense on the site? If not, it sounds like it would be advisable to do so.

Not only will it generate revenue, but it will also give you some valuable data that you can use when you are negotiating with the law firms

I'd do some research and find out what the typical / average fee a lawyer would charge for services in the niche you are in.

From what you are saying, it sounds like there's a lot of competition in the industry for these types of clients and I'd use that competition as leverage in my negotiations.

I also would not approach a lot of the firms at the same time - I would approach them one by one and learn from each call.

And finally, don't commit to too long a deal with one firm, unless you're sure you've got a good deal. There are always more clients out there and you don't want to get stuck with a poor deal.

Especially with lawyers - that's one group of people you will find it difficult to extract yourself from a contractual agreement.

OP, sorry but 1.7K hits is not really a lot. I'd say for a sitewide ad not more than U$ 30 / month.

Thanks for all your replies.

Firstly, I don't have adsense. I figured that 1.7k views a day wouldn't really make it worth having. I know very little about it. Would a banner campaign and adsense conflict with each other in some way?

I respect that 1.7K isn't much for some websites, but nearly everyone that comes to my site does so looking for a remedy in this particular aspect of law, and everyone who e-mails me wants some sort of legal advice. I'm not a lawyer so I cannot charge anyone for advice. But it's got the point that I'm seeing so much potential in work here, I wish to god I was one. 4 years to pass the bar exam though, and that doesn't solve the short term problem.

The truth of the matter though is that my site has a somewhat brutal approach. It's blunt, opinionated and often times serious subjects are dealt with humorously. I'm thinking that most lawyers will just take a snotty attitude to my style and regard it as completely incongruent to their corporate professionalism.

I have taken the approach of writing to one lawyer at a time. So far I haven't heard a peep out of the first one, and it's been 2 days. I'm wondering if I shouldn't telephone them rather than e-mail them.

The fact is I'm feeling a really urgent need to provide my readers with some kind of legal service. I'm even considering hiring someone who's just passed the bar exam maybe. There's no law in the UK that prevents a non qualified lawyer from running a legal firm. I'm wondering if it wouldn't be more profitable to hire a freelance lawyer and contract the work out to them from the site.

But it's the no-win no-fee type of lawyers that could benefit the most from this. It just seems difficult trying to overcome the condescending attitude they invariably have to both my site and my readers.

By the way, I like the idea of creating a page that endorses certain lawyers. But should I create that page and stack it with real lawyers, then call them up and show them what I've done? See if they want to pay to remain?

Thanks everyone so far. You really have an amazing enthusiasm and energy for this kind of thing which is invaluable. I will be happy to report back with whatever results I achieve with all this.

If you don't have an account apply for one. If you are not a lawyer, then share the revenue with someone who know about legal laws.

Before posting them on your page, call them and you need to have permission form them. Without asking never put details of somoene on your website.