When do you stop advertising?

[Hooper]

We started advertising with one board during it's peak several years ago.... things started slowing down.. and i pulled the ad. Saw absolutely no decline in biz at all as a result. What made me pull the ads was simply that i found the place to be boring and I stopped visiting as obsessively.

Now I'm seeing the exact same thing happen on another board... used to be semi-interesting conversations.. now it largely seems like complete idiots talking about the dumbest things I can imagine... so i stop visiting hourly.. start visiting 1 or 2 times daily... and over the past week or so i find myself visiting 1 time daily if i'm lucky.

Am i just super capable of predicting the demise of a board and using my personal interest in that board as an indicator of it's effectiveness as an ad tool? Or am i just missing some "branding" and "eyeballs" point?

Obviously the webmaster "hangout" is always evolving... what do you think? Who's up? who's down? who's totally dead?

[XXXManager]

I can try to answer that but I might be biased
As to the eyeball issue, I think its not a new concept that brand has its value and branding is an important tool.
You may not see an effect dropping one board, but the fact that no one will know you if you advertise nowhere makes it apparent that somewhere down the line its advertising that makes you known.
As advertising is not my field of expertise I may leave the explanations to advertising/marketing people

[Chris E]

I'm also biased so I can't really comment but advertising is also more than jsut clicks...

[Timon]

In my experience:

If I advertise somewhere I don't see an immediate result because most people already know my proggy...

If I pull my banners somewhere I don't see an immediate decline, because most people knew my proggy already anyway...

BUT If I don't advertise at all then people will forget about my proggy....

IMHO the best strategy is when you launch a new proggy advertise everywhere to get a good impact, then after 2 months start rotating your ads around various webmaster sources to make sure people don't forget.

[Mike AI]

IMHO the best strategy is when you launch a new proggy advertise everywhere to get a good impact, then after 2 months start rotating your ads around various webmaster sources to make sure people don't forget.

This is very good advice, it seems a lot of people handle their webmaster advertising like this....

[cj]

Originally posted by Hooper@Jun 22 2003, 10:56 PM
Now I'm seeing the exact same thing happen on another board... used to be semi-interesting conversations.. now it largely seems like complete idiots talking about the dumbest things I can imagine... so i stop visiting hourly.. start visiting 1 or 2 times daily... and over the past week or so i find myself visiting 1 time daily if i'm lucky.

Hooper, do you think its the fact that the boards are getting boring, or that you've read it all before?

there's an article posted in one of these other threads somewhere by calculus, about something to do with online advertising/traffic or whatever ... i scrolled straight past it. it looked like all the same things, just being learned by different generations of webmasters. i'm so sick of reading the same thing ... but its not that the industry has changed, its that it has, for the most part, stayed the same.

your becoming a veteran now hooper, starting to get jaded in your old age

[Hooper]

haha. jaded in my older years.. i guess you hit 27 (dont worry, you'll get there someday cj ;-) and you're a vet? hehehe

no. i'm more referring to the quality of the conversation on gfy obviously... i just find it difficult to believe that it's worth advertising to the lowest common denominator.

as a surfer yes.. you HAVE to appeal to the lcd.. but.. with webmasters there is (or i would assume there is) a direct correlation between intelligence and income for the most part... which to me would mean that the more intelligent/heavy hitters cant possibly be spending much time over there anymore.

I mean.. when your top discussions are "Thank You Hun", "Post and ugly chick pic", "Weed Prices", "Owned", etc..etc.

the comments about branding are the only ones that make any sense i guess, although i can go through conversioncash & quickbuck and count on my hands and toes the number of valuable webmasters in the program.... take away all the webmasters below the top 20 and we wouldnt notice much of a decline in sales.... and every one of those top 20 are personal relationships that we actively built... so really then, from a program owners standpoint.. do you think that branding only has value for recrutiting smaller webmasters? or do "heavy hitters" get wooed by the ads?

yea. i guess i *am* getting jaded. anybody wannay buy a few web sites?

[cj]

Originally posted by Hooper@Jun 23 2003, 10:37 AM
haha. jaded in my older years.. i guess you hit 27 (dont worry, you'll get there someday cj ;-)

yes, at my next birthday in fact ;-)

no. i'm more referring to the quality of the conversation on gfy obviously... i just find it difficult to believe that it's worth advertising to the lowest common denominator.

oops, i thought you were referring to this board

as a surfer yes.. you HAVE to appeal to the lcd.. but.. with webmasters there is (or i would assume there is) a direct correlation between intelligence and income for the most part... which to me would mean that the more intelligent/heavy hitters cant possibly be spending much time over there anymore.

the comments about branding are the only ones that make any sense i guess, although i can go through conversioncash & quickbuck and count on my hands and toes the number of valuable webmasters in the program.... take away all the webmasters below the top 20 and we wouldnt notice much of a decline in sales.... and every one of those top 20 are personal relationships that we actively built... so really then, from a program owners standpoint.. do you think that branding only has value for recrutiting smaller webmasters? or do "heavy hitters" get wooed by the ads?

Hooper, imagine if you set up an affiliate program, whose target was not to get many actual sales, but to generate a huge base of free traffic to use in other projects ... you aim your program to the lowest common denominator and you offer things like dvd players and points and fancy gimmicks & features that the lcd webmaster is attracted to.

imagine your sites are designed to convert at 1/1000 or worse, but you have really good webmaster support & service so your webmasters are convinced that's "normal" because of your extensive newbie education lounge which tells them so.

Say you pay $30 per member, you spend $30 to buy 1000 (or more!)unique, targetted visitors to whatever you choose to exit them to.

Even though many programs pay on exit, they usually milk a bit off to somewhere else that you don't get paid for ... that 1000 clicks is resold over and over and it only cost $30.

The obvious business model isn't the only one!

[princess]

I think there's a lot to consider when it comes to advertising. Sites that you might think would do poorly could give you excellent results.

I know that a lot of people advertise on huge boards and pay extremely high prices for advertising. I think you should consider the sliglty smaller ones that don't cost as much and that'll help with branding for one.

If you always go for the most expensive ad spots on boards you're limiting the amount of branding you can do because you and I know that everyone has a advertising budget and you've used most of it up on just a couple of places.

I'd also check the Alexa traffic rankings to see what they're like on some of the sites you're advertising. That might give you some idea of just how busy the place is.





Last edited by princess at Jun 23 2003, 08:32 AM

[Hooper]

want a job princess?

[Mike AI]

Hooper, imagine if you set up an affiliate program, whose target was not to get many actual sales, but to generate a huge base of free traffic to use in other projects ... you aim your program to the lowest common denominator and you offer things like dvd players and points and fancy gimmicks & features that the lcd webmaster is attracted to.

imagine your sites are designed to convert at 1/1000 or worse, but you have really good webmaster support & service so your webmasters are convinced that's "normal" because of your extensive newbie education lounge which tells them so.

Say you pay $30 per member, you spend $30 to buy 1000 (or more!)unique, targetted visitors to whatever you choose to exit them to.

Even though many programs pay on exit, they usually milk a bit off to somewhere else that you don't get paid for ... that 1000 clicks is resold over and over and it only cost $30.

The obvious business model isn't the only one!

Giving away business secrets again CJ???

[princess]

Originally posted by Hooper@Jun 23 2003, 08:26 AM
want a job princess?

I always keep lines for opp. open *wink*

[cj]

Originally posted by Mike AI@Jun 23 2003, 11:30 AM

Giving away business secrets again CJ???

not mine ... just someone else's

[undermyspell]

I think my good friend Princess is absolutely right. She definately knows her stuff. For instance, we have advertised on many different WM boards and resource sites. Our best results have actually been on the smaller boards and I think this may be because webmasters on the larger boards like gfy don't necessarily click on banners anymore. I think that if you want to make your program grow successfully and your target is to get the webmasters that make signups you need to personally court those webmasters. The big guys don't watch the banners like newbies do. I think that to rotate your advertising like Timon said. I think he is 100% accurate in his advertising methods.

I also like to see if the resource site/board owners believe in the quality of their members. One recent example would be that I was looking into buying a top ad spot at a very large board *no names mentioned* I was offered a certain price if I commit to a 6 month run. When I called the guy up to discuss it further he told me that his boss didn't think we were big enough players to commit to a 6 month term. I told him "OK I will prepay 6 months of advertising at the rate you quoted me but at the end of 6 months if I haven't averaged 50 clicks a day through this board then you will refund 10% to me or give me a free month's advertising" Needless to say I think they knew the quality of their members and said that this was not possible. But, they had just sent me the graphs on their traffic and with the numbers running through there they should have been able to do so. Moral of the story. If they don't believe in their traffic Why should I and pay a huge amount to them when I can go somewhere like RatedHot and get good quality members that do pay attention to the advertising.

[PornoDoggy]

Damn, CJ and Hooper are 4 years older than me ...

Well, okay, so you have to add their ages together for that, but ...

[Timon]

undermyspell, another reason why YOU might get better results on smaller boards is because the larger boards have better bullshit radars ;-))

[cj]

Originally posted by PornoDoggy@Jun 23 2003, 10:12 PM
Damn, CJ and Hooper are 4 years older than me ...

Well, okay, so you have to add their ages together for that, but ...

LOL

Whats scary is that we've both been in the adult internet biz for 5 years already.

[Sabby]

I'm stuck at 25 for the rest of my online life I just turn back the clock back each year...

Don't you track your referrals from each board Hooper?

Sabby

[LeeNoga]

Originally posted by Sabby@Jun 24 2003, 03:14 AM
I'm stuck at 25 for the rest of my online life I just turn back the clock back each year...

Sabby have not seen you in awhile are you sporting new accessories on that there chest of yours? WOO HOO, nice nice nice!

[Hooper]

Don't you track your referrals from each board Hooper?

yes. but it's a bad indicator of the performance of an ad when you are just working on branding.. but it is a good indicator if you are launching a new program... problem is that you reach a point where everybody is already basically signed up with you somewhere (i dont have that problem yet.. just theoretically)..

like maxcash or ce or tcg for example.. i doubt any of them get any "new" webmasters other than the occasionaly straggler who's probably already too late for the party anyways... after all, is there anybody here who doesnt already have 5 or 10 accounts with them?

the one thing i'm really enjoying about this discussion is the talk about small boards. i think that is definitely a good way to go and i may start persuing that.

i'd even advertise on Oprano if john "wheres my fuckin money" cotac would give me a deal! ;-)



Last edited by Hooper at Jun 24 2003, 10:23 AM

[Timon]

Originally posted by Hooper@Jun 24 2003, 10:22 AM

i'd even advertise on Oprano if john "wheres my fuckin money" cotac would give me a deal! ;-)

Hehe, the only special deal he'd give you is an offer you can't refuse ;-))

[Sabby]

Originally posted by LeeNoga+Jun 24 2003, 10:05 AM-->