I hope this topic is okay... Rick I hope this is not off topic or inappropriate. I figure I am among webmasters and friends here.

I have been running my sites for years now and for the most part I have always considered them to be a hobby. Obviously there are expenses that come from running web sites and most sites run advertising or have sponsors. I have been fortunate to have had a supporter that has paid me well. I also run Google Adsense which brings in more than enough to cover my expenses.

I am not stupid. I realize that if you can make money while hobbying then all the better. Now I have requests for advertising. I have no idea how to rank my site and its value to advertisers and sponsors to know what I can, or should charge or what is appropriate.

Is there anywhere to go to help me with this and educate myself? Does anyone have advice? I run OpenX software and currently I charge a small flat fee to run ads for a given period of time.

hmm.. you can compare your adsense rate as a starting price. Other than that, it's kind of what the market will bear and your goals - ad pricing is all over the place.

Personally, I've made <$30 in advertising since the mid 90's

You could try having them give you a figure. You never know, it might be something way over what you had in mind.

Thanks for bringing this up, because I am having the same problem. Right now, I'm using Google Adsense, ShoppingAds, Commission Junction, and a couple of key sponsors. I also take donations.

I have no idea what to charge my sponsors, and I have more people who want to sponsor. Right now, the sponsors are in a rotating banner, and on the links page. I charge them by the month, and they generally pay me for a year in advance. Unfortunately, I have no idea if I am charging "enough."

Commission Junction has been of no value to me, and I may give up and drop it. Google is up and down, with no rhyme nor reason to it. ShoppingAds is OK, but isn't going to make any of us rich. My Google Page rank is only 3/10, and I haven't done much to shift it up.

I've been using Google Adsense quite well; didn't have much luck with Commission Junction and Kontera ad's are a joke (in a month i've earned like $0.70 lol)...

I do agree that google can be kinda flaky sometimes... I heard some good things about yahoo's ad's, but not sure if I want to monkey with that now...

I know bloggers who make an entire living from Adsense, but they really have to work at it, blogging on topics that have good ad linking. Much harder to do that well with forums, I think. I've chosen not to run ads on forums, but have received very good donation rates.

I experimented with Adsense on the thousands of pages I have that are not forums or themselves selling retail product, and eventually reduced the ads to just three pages that performed well. Originally two, but expanded to three to increase ad exposure. A grand total of $1388.44 since late 2004

Most of my ad clicks are from my forums, made about 4k since 4/2004 lol... Not much at all (Like $800/yr) but enough to cover domain renewals and some licensing costs...

Every little bit helps! My business hosts my servers and such, so I don't personally bear much in the way of costs, but my deal with my wife is that I get to use these sorts of revenues to spend on toys without prior approval

One thing that was mentioned here is that advertising rates are all over the place. Visit some sites and start looking for links about advertising and you start to discover some details. I have quickly noticed that the more traffic a site has the more it costs to place ads/banners. I also noticed that web sites with good content attract advertisers.

Adsense is okay but it seems sort of hit or miss. I like having specific sponsors especially if they offer my visitors and members a really good product or service benefiting everyone involved. If you run just a forum I don't see much potential unless the forum is very popular with a marketable theme.

Snooping around has also returned my thinking about flat fees (price/month, quarter, year) and ECPM (effective revenue per thousand impressions) There is a lot to think about but I think with a little effort most decent sites could earn you some money. I have been using OpenX for by banner serving and the more I use it the more I discover how powerful it is and it is FREE! So, Once again I sort of answered my own question - the Open X software has a lot of good help files and OpenX.org has quite a bit of information that explains all this.

I am very low compared to some rates I have just seen. I average 5000 page hits a week compared to sites with 50,000+ so I still don't know what is a "fair" rate for my site so your idea is not a bad one actually.

The same principle applies when being questioned by the police... just keep your mouth shut and don't offer any information they don't ask for.

spoken from real life experience?

Nah, I've been a criminal justice major for quite some time now.

Out of need or necessity? LOL!!!!!