Hello, yes ive searched :) but im looking for some new ideas on how to advertise my web hosting business. Im just sitting down and thinking is it smart to invest more money in the first few months towards advertising? My current setup is $300 (Canadian) for the first 5 months then i drop the budget to about $200/month till the end of the year.

Is that a smart idea? this advertising budget also includes business cards, and other promotional materials.

My last question would be, is it smart to visit some (decent sized) web sites and buy advertising from them? Ive saw some companies that offer say 50,000 impressions for X dollars. Do these work as well? and if so can you post your personal favorites?

- Eddy

Advertise in Smaller PPC and make your campaign as good as possible. Smaller PPCs provide a more personal service.

Yes i was looking into some PPC services. I was also going to do an adwords program. But ive decided to wait till i have more money to invest in it.

Do you personally know any other (smaller) PPC services?

- Eddy

try searchfeed. They are ok.

Unfortunately, with banner advertising, it's very unlikely that you'll get your money's worth when you buy on a CPM basis. They are better used for branding - however, branding will also be pretty useless with a budget of $200 per month.

Check out http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=293359 for some other low-cost ideas.

Boris

The guide boris has some good ideas. I think a good idea is to start local. Print some adds and go out and talk with some business owners. Many people are afraid of the entire online thing but if you talk with them you can show them all they can gain from having a website.

Best bet for advertising is PPC search engines and CPC advertising campaigns. Don't waste your money on CPM advertising or fixed rate $x per month type advertising, because it is possible that you will not get a single visitor.

Use the top PPC search engines, and make sure you use some of the smaller (not too small, I guess medium) ones too. The top ones will get you excellent traffic, but are expensive. The medium ones will get you ok traffic more cheaply. Stay away from the really small ones though, they give you garbage traffic.

Google adwords is great too ... it can be pricey but remember it is an investment in your business. No business can succeed without investment :-)

Best of luck!

Yes boris ive read that artical :) very good, and i have gotten great ideas from it.

Im already going to visit all the businesses i can. Advertising in the local paper is about 250-350 (canadian) per week. It gets out to about 250,000 people i think. Thats very expensive i think :-/

So PPC seems to be the thing to do, even if i have a small amount of advertising.

- Eddy

Originally posted by sirgamesalot
Yes i was looking into some PPC services. I was also going to do an adwords program. But ive decided to wait till i have more money to invest in it.

Do you personally know any other (smaller) PPC services?

- Eddy

Well, I'd suggest my own PPC Search Engine first, apart from it there are lots and lots but you dont get good/same results with every other...Try a few and you'll know which is the best for you. :)

Local is definitely the way to go especially with a budget of that size. My budget is generally about the same as yours and I have experimented with many different types of advertising, both online and offline and found the best in terms of ROI is simple posters. Posters are cheap (about 5-10c each) and all it takes is time to distribute them.