would people pay to advertise. ..

[zippyswife]

I am currently in the midst of creating a website giving information/listings. I believe there is a demand/need for this and that people would use it. I would generate revenue from this venture (in theory of course! ) from selling advertising on the site. my concern now is whether people would pay for advertising on a site which is quite niche.

I guess what I need to know is how many hits/users a site needs to achieve per month for companies to want to advertise.
I hope this makes sense. ..

Why would people go to your website in the first place?
What will be on it that cannot be found elsewhere?

For big companies, your verifiable impressions need to be in the tens of thousands

I pay to advertise on such websites but on others I won't pay.

I am prepared to pay if the website comes high in the listings for the kind if search criteria my business uses & is aimed at people looking for my service.

I won't pay on generic listings sites such as yell.com , biz wiki, etc

THe only adverts DH pays for are google adwords and two (soon to be one) specific industry pages

It's difficult to explain without giving specifics but I run a children's drama classes.

So I pay on a local children's activity website, a website dedicated to info about drama classes & a website dedicated to info about summer school activities

Would your site visitors click on ads? Perhaps test that using Google Adsense, so Google will provide the ads from their adwords advertisers and you would get paid on a per-click basis.

Or is your site very local aimed, thus may appeal to local companies taking ads on a per-1000 views basis, or on a time basis such as per-month?

Thank you for your replies (wasn't sure my OP made much sense!!).

Pictures can I ask how much you pay to advertise on the website, whether you pay monthly? Without going into specifics my site is a very local site and not too far removed from the kinds of websites you are describing. As far as I can see there's nothing like the site I am creating locally and I think that people would use it.

Cindy Yes I think the idea is that site visitors will click on the ads to be taken to the websites of the advertisers (or if they don't have a website I guess it will just be an advert with their contact details). I haven't heard of Google Adsense (complete novice!!!) but I will look into this. Thank you.

It is very local and so may appeal more to local companies- that's what I was wondering- how busy (with visitors) to a site would it have to be to make local companies want to advertise on it?

There are a couple of similar sites where I live ( not uk). They both do a lot in advertising. However, they have a very distinct angle/ vibe so one is aimed at cool 20-something's, another aimed at mums, another aimed at expats more generally. However, they all have big mailing lists, do weekly round ups ( top 10 Easter brunches etc) special offers, reviews, etc You have to generate a lot of content to keep the hit rates high. Is there enough going on where you live to generate this level of content?

Maybe look at www.sassymamahk.com to see what I mean.