Where's the best place you've ever advertised? How much money did you spend, and what was the value of the ammount of customers you pulled in?

We've had the most success with overture, didn't bring in many customers, but we didn't spend that much money either.

I think just being here on wht is the best way to get customers. Atleast 50% of my clients came from here.

Regards,
-Dan

The 50% come from where? Posting in the offers forum or...??

I've found that posting offers here is useless. There are too many newbie hosts that are willing to give away everything for next to nothing. We can't (and won't) compete with that.

Originally posted by dbbrock1
I think just being here on wht is the best way to get customers. Atleast 50% of my clients came from here.

Regards,
-Dan I don't believe I have one paying customer from simply being a member of this forum.

We've had pretty good luck with hosting directories. Some are better than others. You just have to experiment and see which ones fit you best.

I don't believe I have one paying customer from simply being a member of this forum.

I can think of 2 out of 13,256 customers who found us through this board, but there may be more.
We do PPC.
I decide what search engines we want to be in and then find out which PPC directories they take results from.
It does work, but its difficult to get the volume of business without bidding high amounts and not making any money from it.
You need to get the ROI right and its difficult.

Gordon

The Overture bids on the top 20 spots are expensive ... so be prepared for the $$$. Top spots go for $10.00 CPC at times!!

As with all online advertising ... the key is test, track and test. ;) I recommend a mix of hosting directories, webmaster sites, etc.

Personally I like Tophosts.com, LOL... when I can afford them. $2000.00 /mo. minimum.

Originally posted by dbbrock1
I think just being here on wht is the best way to get customers. Atleast 50% of my clients came from here.

Regards,
-Dan

are you serious? how many customers do you have?

I have 2 or 3 customers who found me on this forum.

As Tina from AH said, posting offers here is pretty useless.

The best place I have advertised is:

1. Google AdWords - in the last 5 months I spent there about $4k and got some customers. I advertise there only reseller packages though

2. Hosting Directories for regular hosting accounts.

3. Other PPC sites (sprinks and findwhat)

Although our client base is not huge, our best form of advertising right now is offering developers (web designers) free webspace in exchange for clients... I have one guy that refers a client a week.

Jeff

Awesome, I'll be starting up my business soon and these tips are great! I have been wondering what the best methods were.

:rolleyes:

As far as getting customer here at WHT I find it really unusual to get that many customers unless you have been in business a year and only have 4 customers.. :D I would say over the past 11 months here at most we have gotten 5-6 customers from here, While initally it looks like "customers galore" here you will soon realize what goes on and that you will never going to be able to compare with the "cheap guys" here which is typically what people that come here want..

Your best bet take little amounts of $$$ and put it in all different places, Dont put it all out there at once but say this week throw 100.00 into two different things and see how it goes then try the next two etc.. if you put it all into different things at once you will have no clue what is working and what is not.. good luck..

When we started off we did more of targeting local niches. (small advertising in small papers etc.). Newspapers by far are the worst place to advertise.. We have never advertised there but I was an advertising minor @ university of florida and learned one thing or two hehe.. Once you get bigger and can kinda flush money down the tubes you can play with the big boys and advertise all over overture spending a few hundred a day.

local "offline" advertising rules :)

I recently got an awesome ($500+ per month) customer from WHT, but it was for co-location -- not web hosting.

Ironic because that same month, we did a magazine ad for $1200 and haven’t received a single sign up from that - I think the magazine paid 200 people to call and ask questions like “does the $12 per U rack space include one of yalls servers?”

:)

Local, Word of mouth, Search engines, Hosting directories.
To my knowledge we havent gained any clients from WHT.

I think the magazine paid 200 people to call and ask questions like “does the $12 per U rack space include one of yalls servers?”

LOL. :laugh:

The most efficient way of advertising are some of the smaller-PPC engines. They're cheap, and a good way to start off. After that, it would be recommendable to use some of the income produced to try a marketing attempt with some of the hosting directories. Lastly, go with full-page ads in the well-known magazines. Not only do they 'boost' your company image and reputation, but they also bring in the corporate customers.

what are some of the smaller PPC engines you recommend?

I tried one called ibound (i think), and it pretty much sucked, they don't have much traffic.

I literally have accounts with about 100 small PPC... At my current rate of exhuation I should have used all my available advertising money in about 500 - 600 years!

No traffic = no results...

online advertising for the hosting business is horrible unless you get creative... BE CREATIVE.

Ya the small PPC engines don't work cos they themselves don't have the traffic to their search engines! In fact most of them even offer free account startup balances ... which prob will never be finished :rolleyes:

hehe:)

I think just being here on wht is the best way to get customers. Atleast 50% of my clients came from here.

Regards,
-Dan


I'm not interested in hosting a high percentage of the people that come here looking for hosting. Asking for everything, offering nothing is just a headache customer waiting to happen.

Best way for web hosting companies is to get a good exposure in Hosting Search Listings/Directories.

I have some to share with you.

www.hostproindex.com
www.findmyhosting.com
www.hostsearch.com
www.webhostdir.com
www.findmyhost.com

Please provide more of them if you'd like to share.
Thank you.

Originally posted by VIPsNet

As Tina from AH said, posting offers here is pretty useless.

Ditto that. I hardly every post offers here anymore because no one ever goes for them. Besides, its hard to compete with the "Unlimited Everything for $3/year" crowd that tends to post offers here...

As far as what works? Google. Do some SEO - it will be the best investment you ever made. :-)

Take care,

Brian

I used to think I was going to want to have banner ads at a lot of places...


s c r e w t h a t

If you've ever heard of the game Utopia, by swirve.com - They charge 2500 a month for 1 ad... places like Yahoo.com charge 3-25k a month for 1 ad...

It's ridiculous... anywho


What exactly are these PPC sites?

You give them a banner, and if it gets clicked, you pay them?

PPC sites are examples like http://Overture.com or http://findwhat.com

They are paid search engines. eg. You search for "web hosting" and they show the paid advertisers results first.

well im keeping my advertising spots secret... any post on here about them will just destroy my own chances.

Its just business - you are all my enemies/competition :D

Originally posted by vSector
well im keeping my advertising spots secret... any post on here about them will just destroy my own chances.

Its just business - you are all my enemies/competition :D

Right now I'd say these error messages on your website are your enemy.. not us :D

Warning: Can't create a new thread (errno 11). If you are not out of available memory, you can consult the manual for a possible OS-dependent bug in /home/.mcp/_includes/common.php on line 79

Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Can't create a new thread (errno 11). If you are not out of available memory, you can consult the manual for a possible OS-dependent bug in /home/.mcp/_includes/common.php on line 79

Warning: mysql_select_db(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /home/.mcp/_includes/common.php on line 80


====================================
1135: Can't create a new thread (errno 11). If you are not out of available memory, you can consult the manual for a possible OS-dependent bug
====================================


Warning: Can't create a new thread (errno 11). If you are not out of available memory, you can consult the manual for a possible OS-dependent bug in /home/.mcp/public/index.php on line 3

Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Can't create a new thread (errno 11). If you are not out of available memory, you can consult the manual for a possible OS-dependent bug in /home/.mcp/public/index.php on line 3

Warning: MySQL: A link to the server could not be established in /home/.mcp/public/index.php on line 3

OUCH! sorry i have to laugh! :D
I have received 1 customer from WHT but as its been said before.... i believe WHT is a place to build business credibility, not business. :cool:

Yeah i have to laugh on this one too..

snapped out there.

LOL :D

Well it looks like you clearned up the errors :)

As RATM says... Know your enemy! :D

I think that the more of a "niche" market you have, the easier it will be to market to clients, and the better your advertising will end up. People like to think they are individuals...and they want their hosting the same way. A home-builder contractor is far more likely to sign up with a host who TARGETS his industry, rather then one who targets the web hosting industry in general. We target bands as well as independent companies related to the music industry, and thus our advertising works out pretty well as we have a niche market and are pretty well established in it.

one thing that nobody mentioned you REALLY need to pay attention to and develop early is tracking. Give out promo codes like crazy and incorporate them into your signup. That way you can track where you are getting signups from. That really is half of the reason that we do still have setup fees for our v-hosting plans. We give out tons of promo codes to waive the setup fees and we can track where the signups are coming from. Our software guy even developed tracking so that we can see what %'s etc. :)

jic's point is a crucially important point

Track your advertising !

Spending money on marketing is not only a way to gain new customers - it is a business improvement process. If you do not track your ad spend then you are playing around & are not a serious business.

good point! :)

We've picked up around 100 customers from WHT, granted I've had to work my butt off to get 'em. Any suggestions for local advertising? I've yet to see any really effective methods aside from business cards by the truckload and word of mouth :eek:.

Oh yes, and there was some other engine i signed up for awhile back (cant remember the name now, fairly common/popular) where people bid on projects, etc. If i think of the name, i'll post it, but it was *really* useless, everyone was looking for spam hosting :bawling: and they openly supported this.

Local advertising is tough, and most of the only customers you can pick up are the local businesses who can actually be convinced that they need a place on the web.

What I've seen sucessful is partnering with local web design firms as a hosting partner. Although it isn't really ethical, I've seen hosting partners (associated with web design firms) charge by the high 2-digits for simple hosting. :)

Ahh i forgot to add, i tried advertising on ebay about a year ago, man, that wasn't a very good experience, most of the auctions were cancelled by ebay because they "violated" their terms by having recurring billing, or "addons" to the account (such as CPanel, etc.) :rolleyes:, needless to say i wrote an angry letter back to customer support, never saw a reply :eek2:.

Originally posted by jic
one thing that nobody mentioned you REALLY need to pay attention to and develop early is tracking. Give out promo codes like crazy and incorporate them into your signup. That way you can track where you are getting signups from. That really is half of the reason that we do still have setup fees for our v-hosting plans. We give out tons of promo codes to waive the setup fees and we can track where the signups are coming from. Our software guy even developed tracking so that we can see what %'s etc. :)

This is a good point. Another alternative is to use tracking URLs with cookies eg. http://domain.com/?overture

Then when orders are placed, a cgi/php img tag picks up the cookie and registers it as a conversion.

Why not just use the referrers functionality in webalizer?

The impprtant bit is to tie actual sales to different sources - for that you need to use some kind of cookie system, especially as sales may happen weeks after the initial hit sourced from the ad in question

Originally posted by HostAZ


This is a good point. Another alternative is to use tracking URLs with cookies eg. http://domain.com/?overture

Then when orders are placed, a cgi/php img tag picks up the cookie and registers it as a conversion.

There are numours ways of doing this if you're a programmer however if your more on the business side and want to save on some fees invest in a small affiliate program that gets installed on your server. I know for ASP there are free and inexpensive ones so there are probably some for PHP as well.

Hope this helps!

Yes an affiliate program performs the same functions too ... and you can double it up as a real affiliate program too for potential affiliates

Originally posted by porcupine
Why not just use the referrers functionality in webalizer?

Cos it simply doesn't tell which referrers made the sale .. it only shows who sent you the most traffic ... the person sending the most traffic may not send you the most sales!

If A sends 1,000 clicks (over 80% from non-targeted), B sends 1,000 clicks too (over 90% targeted), the conversion from B is going to be many times that of A.

The highest referrer source does NOT necessarily equal the best conversion source. ;)