How much should I charge people for advertising on my website?

It really depends upon the traffic of your website, click-through-rate on ads, the subject of the website etc. Maybe contextual advertising using Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network would be more beneficial as this way you will get paid per click and people can also advertise on your site via Google AdWords on paying by CPM (cost per thousand impressions).

Advertising rates generally depend on four things: the demographics of your visitors, number of unique visitors per day, the location of the ad (above the fold or below the fold) and/or Google PageRank. Selling your own advertising is a pain to do and a pain to manage. I would recommend instead using the space to host other ads through networks such as Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network or AdBrite. You earn money each time someone clicks on an ad on your site.

I charge them 29 dollors for a month

Based on all the questions here, everyone wants it for free.

Definately charge more for the size of the banner and position of the banner. ie- top page banners should be top price. If you are searching for companies wishing to advertise, let each company bid for each position. This way you will not lose. As your website becomes more popular with more viewers increase to the price you want. Companies will notice other companies success and be more willing to bid higher or pay the higher price. Just do some research posing as a potential company wanting to advertise to get some ballpark prices.

There are no websites that can appraise how much you can sell advertising spaces for. The only thing you can consider is how much the market is willing to pay, and your rate will depend on several factors: - Who is your audience and how desirable is your audience to the advertisers? If your audience are techies or those who have the propensity to purchase higher-ticket items, then you can charge a higher price as compared to an audience of bird lovers. What is the rate of comparative websites in your niche? You don't want to overprice yourself out of the market yet you don't want to undercharge as well. - What is the rate advertisers are willing to pay in your site? You may charge $5 per CPM but if nobody's taking you up on the rate even though you may get inquiries, then it could imply that advertisers may consider your rate too expensive. But if you charge $0.50 per CPM and advertisers are flooding in, then you may be too cheap and can afford to increase your rate. - What is the CPM you get from other advertising vehicles? Do you run Google Adsense, and if so, what is your effective CPM rate with them? Or if you run banner ads through ad networks like Burst Media, Valueclick or Tribal Fusion, what is the CPM you're getting? You can use those values to help you gauge your rate. It may not always work (e.g. if we use the CPM we get from Adsense, nobody's ever going to advertise on our site because our Adsense CPM is too high) but it can give you an idea of what rate to use. - What is the level of exposure the advertiser wants? You can lower your rate for an advertiser willing to sign a longer term contract, say for one year vis-a-vis an advertiser that signs up for only a month. You can also arrange for special rates if the advertiser is purchasing several advertising products from your site (e.g. advertiser wants to buy banner ads, text ads and newsletter sponsorship). We are selling different ad spaces on my sites and we are a little on the high side of some similar types of websites, but our audience is attractive to advertisers and the traffic we are getting allows you to demand a higher rate than most. My advise is to prepare your media kit -- e.g. description of your audience, statistics on demographics, as well as rate card -- then set a rate and see how it goes.