I’ve been looking around at the forums over the last few days and looking at who’s selling advertising on their sites / blogs, mostly webmaster and business ones because that’s the traffic I’m after.

Being a forum, I can go back over the last couple of weeks of postings and check out who’s offering what, and at what price. For the traffic etc I think some are overpriced and some are alright.

But what’s surprised me is that people have turned down my offer for their ad spots.

Not all of them, just a couple.

What was my offer? Well the sites that weren’t overpriced I was willing to pay their full rate, but for the sites that I thought were overpriced, I decided to make an offer, one that I thought was fair and not far off what they were wanting, it was never more than 50% of what they were asking.

The other thing is, I didn’t make an offer to anyone that had not filled the space, I only made offers to people that clearly didn’t end up selling the space, so they either had a advertise here button, or an affiliate link.

Here’s why I’m surprised.

The month has started, so if they are selling month to month, like they were advertising for, then their billing cycle has started and the days that have passed start discounting the rate of the ad.

So if the ad is $300, and it’s the 5th today, then the ad’s remaining worth is $250 ($10 per day, 25 more days left).

On top of that, I’ve made them an offer, its money in their pocket if they want it, its revenue they would otherwise not have.

Not to mention they would have a new relationship with an advertiser, someone they can talk to in the future to draw more advertising from, so it’s a chance to establish an ongoing relationship.

These guys didn’t even come back and counter offer, or offer me a reduced rate if I was to buy additional months…

And some of these are blogs that are ‘experts in making money’.

Pathetic if you ask me.

Ad space anywhere is worthless until someone is willing to pay for that space. And the rate they are willing to pay is proportional to their returns. The higher the return they can make from your ad space, the more they will be willing to pay.

If these guys took my money, and the ad spot did work out for me (which is their job – to drive traffic to their site, and to their advertisers), then I would be more than happy to pay more next month.

I’d be stupid not to?

Sure you want to make $X per month from your site, but unless you can produce value for your advertisers, you won’t have any.