I heard showcases are more profitable than banners, is that true?

I am interested in taking a showcase or two and was wondering what kind of results i should be getting. Which showcase is better? Budget or Unix hosts?

Also, anyone advertised in one of these host dir? www.hostshowcase.com www.adovis.com ?

Which directory did you advertised where you got the best result?

I know some directories are on the forum, feel free to answer or to PM me.

this should give you a good idea of what to expect.
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18323

I spoke to splashhost myself.
He is advertising on webhostdir.com

He says its not worth it.
Hes in the Showcase, and it works out as if he was paying 186$ CPM!!!

But maybe you should speak to him.
If not Lonny from FindSP.COM lurks these boards.

His pricing for showcase is very affordable.

Goodluck.
Trevor

Hi :)

Don't worry, let me explain you what it is all about.

Showcase is never CPM so you can't compare it to banners, the quality of the users you get from a showcase is much higher. The CTR% in the showcase (at least on findsp.com) is 20% and sometimes higher. So that what you should expect from the host dirs, if not the campaign just isn't working.

BTW I would check about www.hostshowcase.com - didn't see any traffic statistics, and although 39 sounds too good to be truth you need to ask them how many people visit a certain showcase per month :)

Actually I'm not too happy with Adovis.com either, but that's just me.. They have a method of bringing new users to their site, a method that I don't like at all, grrr.... never mind :)

RunOfTheMill is right, our price is very affordable, so if you'll be interested, PM me or email to sales@findsp.com

Hope I helped.

Good luck

I spoke with a rep of Host-Dir, when I say spoke I mean emailed. They gave me these stats:

Avg Hits : around 10,808/Months.
Avg Pageviews: around 6000/Month

Showcase if $175. My question is, is this a good price for the traffic?

Thanks,
Patrick

he's got to be kidding, do they have any clients AT ALL??? we charge $150 per month and we have 20,000 uniques per month!! nd approx 200,000 page views.

Do you want to pay 175 for 600 people who will be viewing the site and approximately 100 will view your ad. That's a very high CPM! ;)

I do not recommend that, and it's not that I am against host directories and saying it because he is a competitor - you'll see that I could say very good things about some dirs like webhostdir.com etc.


anyways, good luck, let me know if you need any help.

Lonny, i think the person from web-host dir means the showcase page and not the main page.

I think all the budget showcases on webhost dir are full just now.

Im not sure if they are worth it or not just now, will need to wait a couple of weeks to see if get any sales.

I asked if he thought his prices were a little high considering the traffic. He dids't directly respond to my inquiry.

They also do not seem to understand the "Band for my buck" concept.

Thanks for your help on this!

Patrick

You want a direct answer?

Yes, in my opinion the price is VERY HIGH for the traffic they are getting.

They told me they get 120,000-150,000 visitors a month

Just to clarify that we are all on the same page in the same book and on the same planet...

We are speaking of host-dir.com not webhostdir.com

Just making sure...

hehe, yea, webhostdir.com have A LOT of visitors, but host-dir? they are just starting, I won't be suprised if half of the visits come from the developers themselves.

I sent you an PM, please check it and get back to me... I would appreciate it.

Thanks,
Patrick

oops, my mistake

I would strongly suggest not purchasing any advertising with host-dir.com. They quoted me that they were receiving 6000 uniques a day. I purchased a text link at the top of their page, and the stats were tracked by their own software. I usually averaged about 10-15 impressions a day from it.

They refused to issue a refund due to having sent me false stats. All they said was that they are new and the traffic wasn't as much as they thought it would be. If I was willing to keep buying the space for a year or so then the traffic would get to that level. I would need to keep paying each month though.

Overall I found them to be a very dishonest company to deal with.

The thing that really annoyed me is that shortly after I had the conversation with them about lying about their stats they sent out an email to everyone that was listed in the directory. They still quoted the fact that they were getting 6000 unique visitors a day.

They quoted me the same thing, but I knew there was something not quite right. Their prices are quite high for what they claim to offer anyway.

Sorry you had a bad experiece. Nothing like opening up operation and getting negative feedback right away!

I am currently working with FindSP.com and they seem to be very reasonable and responsive. Definately more reasonable than Host-dir. That market is over-infiltrated anyways.

Patrick

I'm giving findsp a shot too. Hopefully it works out alright with them.

I have been trying to contact WebHostDir.com for the past 2 weeks in regards to advertising on there site and so far I got an autoresponce from just one of the three people that supposedly handle advertising, stating she is on vacation. I also contacted James ( I think thats his name ) the owner and still havent been given any assistance. Looks like we will be taking our money elsewhere. Anyone else get this problem with WebHostDir? I suppose they have to much money on there hands?

Originally posted by Haze
I suppose they have to much money on there hands?

Can this actually happen? :)

Originally posted by FindSP.Com


Can this actually happen? :) no

Originally posted by Haze
I have been trying to contact WebHostDir.com for the past 2 weeks in regards to advertising on there site and so far I got an autoresponce from just one of the three people that supposedly handle advertising, stating she is on vacation.

Hi Haze,

Lindsey Rodgers, our Sales Director has been on vacation but it's been business as usual here at webhostdir. I'll look into where your enquiry went. :)

Tommy

Originally posted by regier
I would strongly suggest not purchasing any advertising with host-dir.com. They quoted me that they were receiving 6000 uniques a day. I purchased a text link at the top of their page, and the stats were tracked by their own software. I usually averaged about 10-15 impressions a day from it.


If there is ever any doubt over the stats provided, always ask if the directory uses third party audited ad serving. That way you'll be sure that what they quote is genuine and can be proved.

Also sounds like they were quoting numbers for the whole of the site, not the showcase page.

I don't think they get 6000 uniques per month, maybe 6000 hits? very easy to confuse those 2 :)

Actually I had an ad on the top of every page on the site. Therefore the stats that I was receiving was the total page views that they were receiving.

Ouch. They shouldn't even offer advertising with that pathetic amount of traffic. :eek:

That's what I figured. I notice now that they have even taken down that advertising spot. I don't think they were able to keep there advertisers happy for some reason :D

Their traffic probably quadrupled just from this thread alone.

LOL :D