[tryfuhl]

I am newly in charge of the advertising and marketing department of the main forum that I help administrate. In exchange for additional revenue I am being offered a percentage of the revenue generated in return. What would be a fair percentage to ask for? Right now, other than site subscriptions the site is making negligible money (we are making decent money from the subscriptions).

I've never worked something like this on commission before so I'm not sure what to ask. I thought that 25 percent might be fair.

Has anybody done this on commission before or paid somebody else to? I'd like to speak with the owner about this before I really get anything going, because I don't want to find out that he's only willing to pay a small percentage when I'm putting hours worth of research and effort into this.

My plan is to have some affiliate offers for targeted subforums as well as some rotated headers at first to see what starts converting the best. Then a couple of other adverts for guests (maybe textlink and a skyscraper). Also, I would be open to people sponsoring a forum if it's a relevant company.

Also, another question, if I can raise average revenue on subscriptions should I ask for a share of that as well? Or just ask for him for a percentage of them anyways, as long as we're making money from the external revenue (or even not since I'd be trying anyways)? I'm kind of split on this one, don't really want to ask for it, but if I can significantly raise the number of subscribers through my efforts, that was work that I did.



Summary of Questions:

• Should I ask for a flat percentage of all revenue outside of subscriptions? And what percentage would be recommended?
• Should I vary percentages based on type of campaign? (such as, if I find someone to advertise directly, should I ask for a higher percentage of that vs just running a relevant ads campaign like adsense).. any ideas of a rate for these types? (examples, click ads vs affiliate offers vs direct ads/sponsorships)
• Should I ask for a small cut of the subscriptions just for putting the effort into this.. or maybe only if I can raise the subscription rate significantly? If so, what might be a fair percentage to ask for?

Please advise and thanks in advance!

[Moelman]

Personally, I would charge an hourly rate or just a flat amount rather than a percentage of their revenue. It's too hard to tell how much they will make, but no matter what those numbers are you're still putting in work and should get paid. If that is not an option and they only want to do a percentage of their revenue, I would say anywhere from 10-25% is fair depending on how much they make. I'm not great at estimating stuff like that though so I could be way off.