Hi,

My site just went live this past Monday and still no one has purchased (not surprised I know sometimes it could take a while). I posted my name to the likes of the following sites Hostindex.com, Hostsearch.com and even bought advertising in a local magazine but is it too soon to start worrying?

Is there any other avenues of advertising that I'm missing?

try advertising with hosting directories instead of magazines since they are mostly used for branding.

Cool, Thanks for the info.

We get good response from pay per click search engines, and it's not so expensive - (unless you bids for a high position on a keyword as web hosting off course!). The visitors we get are people searching for web hosting services, so it's very targeted.

John

Originally posted by nogi
We get good response from pay per click search engines, and it's not so expensive - (unless you bids for a high position on a keyword as web hosting off course!). The visitors we get are people searching for web hosting services, so it's very targeted.

John


John,

Do you have any PPC sites to recommend (aside from Overture)?

Heres a list I posted in another thread a while ago:

I would try some of the following sites. Google is always a great option, I love Adwords!

Ad Networks
Burst
ValueClick
FastClick
DoubleClick
AdTegrity

Hosting Directories
FindSP
TopHosts
WebHostDir
HostRecord
HostReview

My Sites (moderators, remove if you feel its crossing a line.)
dkAds
HostingCatalog


Simple add a .Com or .Net to the end of those to visit their respective sites.

Hey thanks guys. It looks like I'll give those pay-per-clicks and other hosting directories a try.

Here are a few to choose from. I do not necessarily recommend them all. Some has had good experience with some of them, others not. It also depends on how good you are to find and choose good keywords. I suggest that you do a search for those web sites first at the forum.

FindWhat -- findwhat.com
7Search - 7search.com
Kanoodle - kanoodle.com
Bay 9 - bay9.com
GoClick - goclick.com
ePilot - epilot.com
SearchGalore - searchgalore.com
Google - google.com

John

I did a search on google and the following site rates most of the pay per clicks.

payperclickanalyst.com

Nogi,

Forgot one of my favorites: Sprinks.com :)

Forgot one of my favorites: Sprinks.com
Is that really your favorite? That is one of the worst I have used so far. Once I exahaust the funds, I will not deposit again.

Originally posted by Gurudev

Is that really your favorite? That is one of the worst I have used so far. Once I exahaust the funds, I will not deposit again.

The reporting sucks. The updating is slow. But the quality of traffic is very good, and that's what counts in the end...

These are, of course, reflecting my results with them....

Nogi - Forgot one of my favorites: Sprinks.com

Thanks! :)

John

Originally posted by DaHOST
Hey thanks guys. It looks like I'll give those pay-per-clicks and other hosting directories a try.

Unless you provide a certian kind of hosting or supply a certian niche sector in the hosting market, advertising in PPC SEs will be a waste of time. You're up against the other thousands of other "Me Too" hosts. You need to find a certian "type" or "kind" of hosting and pick keywords that reflect that. Advertising under "Web Hosting" will be too crowded and too dear.

Unless you provide a certian kind of hosting or supply a certian niche sector in the hosting market, advertising in PPC SEs

We get customers through them - Sorry, but what you say is not our experience. You, off course, have to differentiate yourself in some way from competitors.

John

I saw HostReview was being listed and just wanted to add my experience with them. Not as a advertising buyer, rather the opposite.

I used their PPC program ( I advertised their site for promised $.25 a click ) a few years ago and never got paid and they never answered any email. I would never do business with them.

PPC advertising is extremely expensive. You could use the smaller PPC's but the traffic is generally poor. The large PPC have good traffic, but it is not ecomonical at all

DaHost...

If your URL is http://www.kaging-systems.com/ it's not coming up?

For PPC, I like Overture .. though for hosting keywords it is really really expensive :rolleyes:

this may sound kinda silly, but did you start the host without a few initial buyers? often the best way to get new clients is word - of - email

that's our b&b here in calgary... we've never advertised and we are doing fairly well.

For some people like Lirath and scottking above, marketing to the local market is their niche and they make good $$$ off it ... then again, others succeed at the mass market hosting on the internet too. I believe in every marketing, you must be able to differentiate yourself from the fellow next door .. or should I say next server ... LOL :stickout:

That is a good point HostAZ. We serve the chinese market as our 'niche'. We have chinese CPANEL / WHM, which we wrote ourselves. We market only the chinese businesses and chinese yellow pages locally. It is our little 'niche' to support this huge population segment in our city.

It is starting to grow into something very targeted.

(wife is chinese BTW)

intraweb: ever thought about the chinese market in china?
if you can capture just 1% of the china market share for mass hosting, you're rich :cool:

intraweb: ever thought about the chinese market in china?
if you can capture just 1% of the china market share for mass hosting, you're rich

That is difficult. The vast majority of websites are blocked completely.

Not sure if anyone realized this or not but looks like an old post got dug up? :confused:
Anyway....I would suggest for different forms of advertising:
Target your local market as much as possible to start with.
Check out the hosting directories:
www.webhostdir.com
www.ratemyhost.com
www.hostsearch.com
www.findsp.com

do you guys have any luck on searchfeed?

Originally posted by mfreund
do you guys have any luck on searchfeed?

I convert more sales from Searchfeed than Google or Overture.

The problem with most ppc search engines is that unlike google and overture they are not really search engines in the traditional sense. Intead they connect advertisers and publishers by publishing text ads on various websites. Basically with google and overture people are actually looking for your products whereas with other search engines they see your ads on the publisher websites, maybe click on them but the traffic you get is much lower in quality.

I might be wrong but I see no other explanation.