Hi Falks

I have a question, i know most of advertise in directory sites like hostsearch, WHD etc. My question to you is, if you notice, these guys get a chunk of their traffic from webmaster centric site. ( some are well listed in search engines for terms like web hosting ) However they still undertake their own traffic driving campaigns at sites like www.bravenet.com, www.aspin.com, www.hotscripts.com etc.

So my question is why dont more webhosts advertise directly with these sites that are well geared to drive webmaster traffic . why are we happy to get second hand from the directories.

In a conversation with one guy from a top dir, his argument for us advertising through the directory instead of directly is that they "filter" the traffic, but in my opinion they dilute the traffic i.e one guy clicks on ad to dir and now finds hundreds of listed hosts, would it not have been better to get this guy to land direct to your site instead of coming to you from a "buffet" of webhost at a dir.

Also what sites apart from the ones i listed above would you advertise in and why?

www.bravenet.com, www.aspin.com

They don't resolve for me =\ Maybe the hacker attack got them??

for me it open ok...
mayble it's the "," that was on the url

" www.aspin.com, "

I agree with you Tuvok,

Those sites do dilute traffic even though they claim it's targeted. Even the Google Ad-words program. I'll give you an example..

A Google user searches for "hosting" and your site shows up the the side column along with typically 7 or 8 other Ad-words advertisers.

Now in the web hosting segment, each click-through is about $1.50 - $2.00 for the top 8 positions. So the user clicks through to your site and there goes your 2 dollar click-through fee. But that's not the end of the story. The user has seen 7 other peachy results from the Ad-words above and below your little ad. In this case, I can bet you $2 (;)) that your site is not the last one the user is going to check out.

So basically the click through that has been delivered has already costed you, but chances of that user becoming your customer is slim (1 in 8 or less).

So to come back to your point there, it is better to advertise on a site where you're the lone or one of the very few advertisers.

We've dropped the google ad-words thing for a while now. Not particularly useful... Not that it's not a good service, it's actually a great service, but since there's so many hands in the hosting "business" and everyone is scrambling for the top position, those CPC costs are way over everyone's head.

I'd much rather deal with a site like HotScripts

Regards...
T.P

Alot of hosts don't have the time to search the webmaster centric sites because there are literally thousands and it's a very time consuming job since most of these sites deliver crap quality results if any. And doing this usually wastes alot of money in weeding out the bad deals.

I do also agree, with the way new directories are being spammed out its become a close margin.

I guess it works both ways though. But I think you will find more quality results on a directory, given that you choose wisely.

PS. I run a directory so this is rather biased.

Having said this, what site would you consider advertising on ( like hotscripts.com ) and why? I am trying to get a list of places that you guys feel would deliver great results. ( even if you have not had any experience with them ) hunches are welcome :-)

Someone told me that advertising on Bus stop benches was really the way to go.

Especially on really busy streets that gridlock at traffic times :)

is www.devshed.com - a great resource.

We have found that by sponsoring some community or hobby type sites related to your business can be very effective. Your costs will be much lower and you can get some highly targeted traffic.

Make sure the sites have a good number of visitors and set rates accordingly.

Another thing to note is the type of site. WHT and other pure-forum sites have much lower click-throughs than content sites. How many times have you clicked the ads on WHT?