Hot answers tagged advertising
26
You're misunderstanding your problem. It's not that you can't get traffic, it's that you're doing it backwards. This is extremely typical, I've done it myself.
You don't build what you think is a good product, then try to get people to come to it. You first find an audience to validate your assumptions about there being a market for your product, then you ...
20
For a tech blog/website, then $1 CPM (that is, $1 for every thousand hits) is the kind of level I've personally seen, and I get the impression that's not atypical. So, for $1,000/month in revenue I would need 1,000,000 hits. But obviously if your market is such that people are willing to pay more for clicks then you'll get more, and if they're willing to ...
18
Breaking even after 4 months of concerted effort (i.e. post-dev marketing) is actually pretty good. Many business take 1-2 years to break even.
Is the market big enough that it's possible to have 100x this number of users in 5 years? If yes, and if the marginal cost of each additional user is far less than the revenue you get per user, then you're right ...
13
AdSense is one of the best advertising options. Probably it is the best overall.
The problem is not AdSense. The problem is the ad-revenue model. Publishing is an extremely tough business and if you can not charge for your content, quite often you are left with advertising as your main source of revenue most of the time.
Advertising really only works ...
12
Check out Hubspot.com. Dharmesh, one of the hosts of this site, is a co-founder. The Hubspot website has a lot of useful marketing information, including free whitepapers on how to leverage Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for your business, and lots of webinars.
Update: They posted a new eBook, How to Use Online Video for Marketing.
11
Seems like a problem with your "Target" customers. Use the free accounts as leads, and try to up sell them through email, discount coupons, promos, refer 3 friends get a free account, etc.
Then take a hard look at your Paying customers. Find out why they chose to subscribe. Find out where they came from. Once you have that forum ala you can better apply ...
11
It's hard to scale because you have to use salespeople; either for inside sales or door-to-door.
In that space, a very good sales person can average 1 sale per day and so the cost of acquisition turns out to be higher than the local businesses can often afford to spend. For instance, if a sale costs you about $500 (salesperson's commission + related sales ...
10
@Ross's comment is key here.
You need to decide who your customers are going to be. Is it Google, or the people listing courses, or the people who visit the site.
Currently your customer is Google, and what you make will be limited by how popular the Google Adwords categories are that you attract. Obviously this isn't enough at the moment and presents a ...
10
No one can honestly give you an answer to this question based on zero details, but I can say that this was essentially where I was in the first 4-5 months after releasing my SaaS application.
Now is the moment that decides whether you are going to make a go of it or if it is just a hobby -- I believe Seth Godin calls it 'the dip'. You need to honestly look ...
9
I've been doing the MicroISV thing since 2003 and full time since the start of 2007. In this time I've had two moderately successful desktop products, one flop and one winner which is still doing well to this day. And to be honest I can say that it wasn't until 2008 that I really had a handle on what was working in my biz and what wasn't. By that time I ...
9
In my view, you're going about this back to front.
In 2001 I developed the best web based product ever - It even used ajax (even before people called it ajax). We thought everyone needed it . Nothing out there was like it. We spent big bucks on marketing it only to realise that people didn't want to use it. (But those that did ...still use it today).
...
8
There are a whole lot of variables that go into estimating the revenue potential of a website, but there is one variable to rule them all. It's the audience.
Asking "if my site gets X pageviews, how much can I sell it for" is like asking "I have X pounds of metal, how much can I sell it for?" Since gold sells for $1000/ounce and iron goes for $200/ton, it's ...
8
One thing for sure..
When I go to the website, I do not see any content, It asks for me to register, and Why would I, unless I see what am I getting.
User adoption is going to be difficult, unless you have some free content for users to check, get a feel, and get motivated to add content. And only then Would I take the pains in registering..
8
I agree with Tilen. Using SEM (search engine marketing) may not be what you want to do. You'd be MUCH better off spending the money you might spend a month on AdWords farming out some blog posts on your subject: i.e. SEO (search engine optimization).
Take a look at Search Engine Optimization (SEO): An Hour a Day. It will help you hone your target market and ...
8
The days of simply coming up with something interesting and throwing it at the web are long gone. When you do that, as you and countless small businesses have found, no one knows you're there or visits.
It's akin to asking your phone company to install a business phone line and, three months later, wondering why you have no customers.
You need to give ...
8
Consider an inbound marketing strategy that focuses on providing valuable content that will attract your target audience. This approach has five steps:
Create remarkable content: This means creating content (using a WordPress blog) that your target audience will find compelling enough that they will want to share it with their peers. This could be because ...
7
I'm a long time AdWords user and just started doing a test with Facebook a few days ago. Initial thoughts:
I'm promoting a web-based application targeted at eBay sellers.
My biggest issue is the reach. I started off with similar keywords as I use on Google and it tells me how many Facebook users will get served the ad. Out of 400 million, my first stab at ...
7
This probably won't be what you want to hear, but i'll say it anyway.
All you will do if you start advertising your site on adwords the way it is now is burn through money and not get much response.
First you have to figure your conversion process, that takes first time visitors to become customers. Either offer them something for free, like an ...
6
One of the best sites around right is Smashing Magazine. Here's a resource on Conversion Rates and Landing Pages turned up by 5 seconds on their site. There are definitely more.
Other great places to look are A List Apart, The Google Adwords Blog (linked to a useful example), and of course make use of Google Webmaster Central.
6
Unless you have graphic design and advertising creative experience, it'd be worthwhile having someone else do it. You can use a local company, but we've found a lot of success with 99designs: http://99designs.com/users/317302. Most of thoes banners ended up costing around $200, which is much less than a local designer.
Whatever route you go, consider the ...
6
Concerning your worries about Google Adwords:
Your argument is basically a No-True-Scotsmen fallacy. Every campaign executed poorly will burn a hole in your pocket -- almost by definition! It also applies to the other options you mentioned. However, with Google Adwords you can set a maximum amount you're willing to spend for a certain period of time. It may ...
6
SEO is just one form of marketing. Saying you will only maket your software in one way will limit your sales. Imagine a grocery store that says it will only sell items to people who drive up to the store in SUVs. Does that make any sense? Will that grocery store make less money than a similar store that sells to everyone?
If you study how people use search ...
6
Want to know a secret ??? You are pissing away your time if you are chasing CPM profits! These are great for sites like wowebook or other sites which nobody would really advertise on.
Here is how you make money as a publisher.
1. - sell your inventory for a fixed cost, BuySellAds.com is a good way to do this.
2. If you are smart, then you write the ...
6
There are so many possibilities that it is hard to answer your question.
One problem could be your web site. Is your site designed to sell your product? Can you explain what your product does and why I would want it in 10 word?
The problem could be your sales process. What is your rate of shopping cart abandonment? What types of payment do you accept?
The ...
6
First, it takes time to get traffic. You'll need to wait a bit before you get visitors.
Second, you are going to need content before you get any visitors. You don't have any users to generate content, so you are going to have to make your own content at first. You will have to post a lot and generally make things active before any user is going to join. ...
6
Stay away from those services.
In most cases these are not legitimate businesses. These services usually acquire lots of Facebook fans by scamming people. I blogged about this once and can provide a link if it'll be helpful for you. (Edit: added link below.)
In addition to shady tactics, another downside is that you'll end up with a bunch of unengaged, ...
6
One way to get your name out locally is you could volunteer to do free design work for local charities or charity events which have a high profile in your area in exchange for advertising on their pages or publications.
You could also do search engine optimization on your site and include a lot of the local community names so that you come up in searches ...
6
Search for App Store Optimization in google, it's a new branch of SEO which is catching on and is very relevant to you.
Also look at AppAnnie.com to receive insights about apps and your ranking in different locations, that way you can know where to focus your marketing efforts in localized versions or what not.
I would also recommend doing some A/B testing ...
6
Spot them before they start to give you the same pitch again. Approach them and tell them your time is valuable and you will be happy to listen to their pitch provided they pay you for your time. Offer to listen once they have paid you for a 10 minute period, at a fee of $XX. Tell them you take credit cards or cash.
If they start their pitch, put your hand ...
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