Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Running a Web Hosting Business : Dot5hosting: Marketing Report

[puggy106]

Hey guys,

Well I haven’t been on here posting recently, so I thought I would just say a few words.

As I am sure you all know, if not from my signature, I am the CEO of Dot5Hosting Ltd.

Over the last few months, myself and the Dot5 team have been working hard with the site and the company itself.

It’s not been an easy few months, as you can see from certain posts on this forum.

Anyhow, I often see many posts on here from new hosting companies asking about advertising and where to advertise.

Here our some statistics from a weeks advertising on some directories that we have tried (Many still with) – Along with their cost!

Sales generated for one week:

WebHostdir - 5
TopHosts - 8
FindMyhosting - 12
WebHostersOnline - 2
HostSearch - 7
TheWhir - 9

Cost to generate sales:

WebHostdir - $125.00
TopHosts - $500.00
FindMyhosting - $100.00
WebHostersOnline - $50.00
HostSearch - $150.00
TheWhir - $250.00

Cost to acquire each customer:

WebHostdir - $125.00 / 5 = $25.00
TopHosts - $500.00 / 8 = $62.5
FindMyhosting - $100.00 / 12 = $8.33
WebHostersOnline - $50.00 / 2 = $25.00
HostSearch - $150.00 /7 = $21.42
TheWhir - $250.00 /9 = $27.7

* FindMyHosting is based of commissions – The $100 is based on the total cost it would have cost me if they stay with me for a year.

Remember that these figures are simply based on my personally SALES; this does not take into consideration that certain directories may be better for branding.

Top Hosts are very good for branding.

As you can see for yourselves, for our site, FindMyHosting and Host Search have proven to be the best for us.

Host Search probably has given us the better branding, although FindMyHosting has offered us the best sales and there is no upfront cost.

Host Search, as with the others may bring us in sales at a later date.

Anyhow, its great to be back.


Take care,

[baygirl]

That was nice of you to share such information. I'm sure it will help people getting started. Thanks.

[HostDirs.com]

That was foolish to share such info if you ask me.

[vito]

Great post, Chris. While everyone's results will vary, it looks like a good benchmark to reference. I've always wanted to try FindMyHosting. But my hosting site is in Canadian dollars, so I always shyed away from it. But Andrew tells me he has a number of Canadian hosts in his system, so I might drop in to take another look.

Vito

[phantasywork]

FindMyHosting has been very sucessful for us also , Nice report to show how diffrent things went. I like the fact that FindMyHosting doesn't have paid host advertisments and you have to sell yourself and not the fact that you can sink several hundred dollars into having a ad in a high traffic area of a hosting dir.

[hotice007]

very nice of you to share the figures

[hilda]

Thanks for sharing the info.

[JWise]

This will be very resourceful for me in the near future

[SoftWareRevue]

Chris,

How selective is your list? If you are sharing those; why aren't you sharing the others? (I'm just a curious person) Are the stats you listed for the same week?

[BeDifferentSolutions]

I would be willing to bet this is only 50% accurate. Unless you confirmed these results with each customer, they really can not be accurate. Most people randomally select a choice in the "Referred by:" because they don't care to read through a list. Or they don't remeber where they found you. We did a test one month. Added some choices we were never in, etc... People selected these.

We also called people to confirm order. We asked where did you get referred to us from. Most would just say "Some Search Engine", "We do not know" etc...

Now, one way to really track it is with affiliate links that log the sale. You can compare visitors to actual sales. Webhostingratings is an example. We always know how many sales we get from them. Funy thing is that most people never select them as the referral.


While this info is good for general use, I certainly wouldn't take it as 100% accurate and start planning my advertising based off this.

[HostDirs.com]

UmBillyCord - you are SOOOOOOOO right. I've been working with a host recently on some dir campaigns - we've got 2 methods of tracking - one the system tracking and 2. the customer telling how they heard about the service....

We've only been working on this for a few days and take about 10 - 15 signups per day and so far less than 1% give correct reference. Where some of the signups were clearly from a host directory visitors would say they found them by "web search", "search engine", "google" when it was not google, "yahoos" when it was not - and my personal favorite... "the internet".

I mean almost 0 signups actually listed the dir that show as their referal.

[puggy106]

Hey guys,
Hope you found that useful, i am sure many of you did.

With regards to the results and how accurate they are.

We use a company called clcklab (Clicklab.com) You place a small peice of code at the end of your order form.

This ensures that all sales our accurate.

With regards to FindMyHosting ... these are tracked using their own program. (Which we check by time stamps)

Hope this clears some things us.

Take care,

[HostDirs.com]

OK - 1% I think was a bit low - I just looked at the numbers - and of the last 40 signups that came from dirs - 3 listed the actual dir that matched our tracking. So - while more than 1% - still a very low number.

[Aussie Bob]

Ouch. Your customer acquisition costs are high there indeed. I hope your customer retention is high with those numbers.

We spend $0.00/mth in promotion.

[HostDirs.com]

Aussie bob - if you are in deed a growing business then you my friend are defying the laws of hosting. More power to you!

I've yet to see a host grow to speak of without spending some dough.