Does any museum currently accept paid advertising on their web pages?

If so - how has that worked for you?

A related question - how about in your newsletter?

Thanks.

Maybe?

If the ads are from the motel or diner in your community, it might be a good way to cover production costs, while building cooperative community business ventures. If not from a related local business visitors might want to know about for purposes of their visit, it will dilute the impact of the information you want to get across. Question: does the ad in question have the potential to directly contribute to the knowledge your visitors might want to have regarding planning their visit, or not? If not or a several step mental justification must be performed, better not have it.

dave

Yes, I agree that local ads could both bring needed revenue to the museum and make it easier to plan a trip for visitors, helping all three parties involved. I've had trips influenced for the better by ads on websites of places I had planned to visit.

However, on the flip side, web-wide ads like you see on free websites make the site look unprofessional and small.

So it does kind of depend on the method of execution.

When does the income become unrelated?

Are advertisements on your website consistent with your charitable, nonprofit mission? If not, maybe it'd be better to gain that revenue through a different kind of fundraising.

I couldn't agree more that the kind of ads you see on free-webhosting sites are tacky and revolting - big web banners, skyscrapers, flash animations, pop-unders... ugh. Never never never, I don't care how mercenary you are.

On the other hand, one alternative to a bookstore is an Amazon-style affiliate program; recommend certain books and provide a link to Amazon to buy the book, and you get a pittance of a referral fee. Far less than you'd get selling the book directly, but then, none of the baloney involved in running a bookstore.

And then there's Adsense and competitors (notably Yahoo) - as unobtrusive as you want them to be, and they seem to work out very well for webmasters.