I should stress that I'm talking about selling ads privately.
$2 CPM per ad at 6 ad spots = $12 CPM for the website. You will very rarely earn $12 CPM from Google.
FreelanceSwitch.com sells 125*125 ad spots at $900 (raised from $800 recently). And gets 500,000 page views. (Pretty close to $2 CPM).
SearchEngineJournal.com sells ad spots for $1000. And gets 300,000 page views ($3.3 CPM).
If you're selling ads privately - and show your analytics to your advertisers - they won't say that reduce my CPM rate as your traffic has increased. And if they do - you can just put up an ad-rotator so that their ads are only shown to as many people as they can afford.
And if you show your analytics that has a trend of increasing traffic - you will start finding better quality of advertisers too - people who will not mind paying a higher CPM.
So yes - as your traffic grows and you attract enough advertisers to sell all your ad inventory - you can increase your prices slowly and steadily. The trick is to reach a stage where you can sell all your ads privately.
Its supply and demand after that. (Supply of ad spots remains the same. Demand keeps on growing as your website grows in popularity.)
$2 CPM per ad at 6 ad spots = $12 CPM for the website. You will very rarely earn $12 CPM from Google.
FreelanceSwitch.com sells 125*125 ad spots at $900 (raised from $800 recently). And gets 500,000 page views. (Pretty close to $2 CPM).
SearchEngineJournal.com sells ad spots for $1000. And gets 300,000 page views ($3.3 CPM).
If you're selling ads privately - and show your analytics to your advertisers - they won't say that reduce my CPM rate as your traffic has increased. And if they do - you can just put up an ad-rotator so that their ads are only shown to as many people as they can afford.
And if you show your analytics that has a trend of increasing traffic - you will start finding better quality of advertisers too - people who will not mind paying a higher CPM.
So yes - as your traffic grows and you attract enough advertisers to sell all your ad inventory - you can increase your prices slowly and steadily. The trick is to reach a stage where you can sell all your ads privately.
Its supply and demand after that. (Supply of ad spots remains the same. Demand keeps on growing as your website grows in popularity.)