I am thinking of advertising on one or more web hosting directories. Now I have enough to advertise on tophosts.com but it's pretty pricey. I could use that money instead and advertise on 4-6 different ones. I am stumped on this one. Can I get your opinions to what I should do?

:smash:

Hello,
I looked at a few options like this a while back and I agree that tophosts is quite pricey. I think they wanted 2 grand minimum / month. What I would suggest you could try is using tophosts for a month then moving to 4 - 6 different ones the next month and see what results you get. Unfortunatly I havent used tophost though so cant really give you any information on what would be the best.

TopHosts has a $50cpm for banner ads - incredible!

You'll probably find sites like webhostdir are much more reasonably priced & probably have better quality traffic

You should find good results in any way you go, but just make sure everything on YOUR end is ready for traffic. Many people advertise come across good ad deals, or scrape their ad budget together, and everything goes from there.

Be sure that you add any marketing gimmicks you can on your end. This includes a promotional page, if possible, that pushes your most popular product without the clutter of the products that don't sell much. Look at what other advertisers on TopHost are pushing. If its virtual accounts, I would go the same route because they may no more about TopHosts audience.

Marketing things would be incentives, testimonials, copyright/text, anything that you find to be a selling point. In addition, make sure those things are above the fold, because the majority of the people that come to your site probably won't scroll down, thus popular stuff up top, detailed info at the bottom.

Good luck.
Zak

$50 CPM?? I guess there are big boys willing to pay big bucks :D

if you have competiting plans and price then go with tophosts .. good traffic guaranteed i tested them once and they who bulit my customers base.

Ya most under $10 /mth plans with relatively good diskspace and bandwidth performs well.

:wavey:


Thanks for the replies. So if I offer competitive prices and plans I have have a chance at tophosts? I was thinking of maybe spreading out my money and advertising on hostsearch, hostindex, webhostdir, etc. instead of just going with tophosts. Does anyone here have any experiences with those hosting directories?

Originally posted by dinxcb4
:wavey:


Thanks for the replies. So if I offer competitive prices and plans I have have a chance at tophosts? I was thinking of maybe spreading out my money and advertising on hostsearch, hostindex, webhostdir, etc. instead of just going with tophosts. Does anyone here have any experiences with those hosting directories?

I personally think that would be a better move, especially if you are starting out.

How much are those 'less expensive' ones ?

They average around $300/mo for a showcase ad

If you compare say WebHostDir or HostIndex to TopHosts

These are much cheaper than TopHosts. They are both ranked highly in Search Engines - i.e there is absolutely nothing that would suggest that visitors to TopHosts would be more targeted or have any magical quality.

Go for the lowest CPC that you can find for targeted traffic in sufficient volume. Afterall - its you that creates sales, you just need to get quality traffic at the lowest CPC possible. You won't find much higher quality traffic than the traffic coming from sites like WebHostDir or HostIndex et al. I know where I would spend my money & it wouldn't be at TopHosts

I think you're better off purchasing an AdWord on Google for about $70 bucks and making sure you're listed on the first page when people look for unix/windows hosting, whichever you might provide.

As a former owner of a hosting directory, I can honestly
and unbiasedly say that they really do work -- and really do
generate sales.

But don't put all your eggs in one basket. Invest in a lot
of smaller sites before you dump a large amount of money into
it. Spend a few thousand your first month, but spread it out
a bit.

A few sites that my clients used to enjoy aside from the one
I ran were **************.com and WebHostDir.com. HostSearch
is also decent.

Some new ones where I run ads for some of my companies other
businesses are RateMyHost.com and on my former site, Hosting
Catalog.com

Best wishes,

Dan

Just to add...dan was formerly owner of hostingcatalog.com :agree: doesn't hurt to try it out ;)

Hmmm ... it is theoritically sound and I guess more practical to spread your marketing budget out ... cos with 1 big spending, your campaign success depends 100% on that campaign...

Spread over 5 campaigns, and your risk is down to 20% for each ... it may be a better way to test your initial budget ... my $0.02 :stickout:

The 1st stage of a marketing plan is to test out your ability to sell. Small campaigns with enough targeted traffic coming in so that you can test & tweak your sales message. This could be done over a few sources of traffic.

Every campaign should be tracked and put on a spreadsheet - tracking CTR & Conversion ratio - i.e you must be able to tie the sales to the source. Then calculate the breakeven point for the campaign. If it is poor then work on your site.

If it is good - then spend as much on maketing as you can, but always using past data to evaluate the potential breakeven point for different CPC sources of traffic.

Then - the real crucial bit - treat every customer like gold. It's a lot cheaper to keep a customer than gain one, plus loyal customers make your marketing costs lower by word of mouth referrals.

But, to blow large $ on TopHosts out of the gate would be like driving a car blindfolded. Ignore anybody that says this is good or that is bad. Your site may have totally different results. It's easy to find good sources of reasonable priced CPC targeted traffic. Act like a consumer & see which sites you end up on.