We just placed two ads on Google.com using their Adwords service. Thus far the response has been pathetic. Something like a 1.1% clickthrough rate. Sure, the CPM price is pretty cheap, but if it doesn't generate any responses then it is not worth the price.

Does anyone here have recommendations for advertising hosting services more effectively? Your advice is greatly appreciated. If you would like to reply privately, please feel free to do so: brian.teeter@assortedinternet.com.

Thanks - Brian

We are using google adwords and goto.com - the traffic received from goto (according to our logs) is about 5 visitors/day, from google about 1 :( ... uh ... not enough... Recently I started with the webhost search engines (like webhostdir.com) and the results are passable. Also, when compared with the google and goto visitors, these who are coming from the webhost search engines are more targeted (again according the logs) - they are visiting more pages and spending more time at the site. There is a good and almost complete list somwhere in the forum. If you don't have one I can post my full list of hosting directories. I'm using alexa (http://alexa.com) to determine which directory has a lot of traffic before ordering advertising. At the top in my list are :

http://www.Webhostdir.com
http://www.Webhostlist.com
http://www.Webhosters.com
http://www.Ispcheck.com
http://www.Tophosts.com
http://www.Hostindex.com
http://www.Thedirectory.org
http://www.Findwebspace.com
http://www.HostInvestigator.com
http://www.Hostspot.com
http://www.Hostreview.com
http://www.Recellar.com
http://www.Hostglobal.com

Regards

[Edited by CRAVIS on 04-03-2001 at 11:13 AM]

I am seeing similar results from Google. About 1-2 hits per day at a 1-2% conversion ratio. Not exactly what I was hoping for.

Thanks for taking the time to post. I'll be looking into these other avenues to see what would be the best 2nd step to take.

Take care,

Brian

I haven't started paid advertising, but if you want to read some suggestions people gave me and get a list of hosting directories I submitted to go here (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=7361).

Regards,
Michael

Thanks for posting that Michael. The list you came up with is helpful.

How have your results been since you started? Do the same 7 directories still seem to be producing the best results for you?

Take care,

Brian

Funny you should mention that! Go back to the thread and read the last post I put up!

Regards,
Michael

Nice. Yes, the signatures do produce decent responses. I've had a handful of folks from here stop by my site. I've also had good success with signatures on http://www.slashdot.org.

Again, thanks for the info. I'll have to ensure that I'm in the directories you mentioned.

Also, as an update myself, I'm up to about a 3.3% click through rate on Google. Still pretty pathetic, but definitely better than 1%. :-)

Take care,

Brian