I'm probably a little bit more conservative with my spending than most. Different things fit different types of sites. For example, Adwords TYPICALLY isn't a great choice for blogs. But, I don't see anything wrong with giong out, getting an Adwords voucher and getting quite a few targetted visitors for very little money. So I normally invest $10 - $20 there at the start of a site. I then decide what my monthly budget is going to be. It doesn't have to be a lot of money, but maybe $20-$30.00 is good. I will then go out and try to negotiate pricing (it is always negotiable!) on related websites for paid advertising. So, probably $20.00 - $30.00 and I build up from there. The biggest thing is that you have to realize that not all advertising ventures are successful. In fact, most aren't. So, be careful and get out if the traffic isn't converting.
Excellent point. I imagine that this is the greatest drawback when using the free/bum marketing tactics. Unless I am mistaken, you pay far more for targeted traffic, making it hard to get real targeted visitors. However, I don't believe that this makes the free (or even cheap) marketing useless - especially if you are not trying to sell anything, only to gain readership. Again, glad to hear that I'm not the only one investing small amounts into a hobby. I felt this way exactly when I started reading about adwords. I can see its benefit if you are trying to sell, say, an ebook, but with a blog it just didn't seem like it would be as worthwhile for the cost. Great tips PHPGator, thank you for your input. And thanks to everyone else who offered ideas as well
I spend a grand total of $0 monthly on advertising. I thought about raising that to $1, but decided against it. I use free outlets for advertising my sites, such as video blogging on youtube.
ive never bought advertising and i do just fine for now. Im never running low on traffic or ways to promote, by the day i do i should be ranked in highly in google and have plenty of people linking directly to me, so i wont need any advertising.
Because traffic from search engines is the most targeted I traffic. People searching at SE and finding what they want to find, so why can't it be the best traffic? I don't talking about traffic from your backlinks, I am talking about traffic from SEs.
Most use search engines looking for free stuff, doing research, or, just hopping from site to site out of bordeom. This is usually done at work. So, no, sorry, when it come to selling something, it is not the best traffic. But a webmaster has to be even lucky enough to land on page one to begin with. Just because they do the seo doesn't mean they will land high anyway. So.... This is the biggest misconception inexperienced webmasters have about search engines when it comes to selling.
This is COPIED from Jessemn's second post (the 4th post from this thread). This is COPIED from my second post (the 7th post from this thread). If you don't know what to say, then don't say it!
About 100-200$ a month. It all depends on what I am advertising though: some stuff goes better on PPC, other is better in safelists. It definitely pays to pay for list solos.
It depends on what you are marketing--you said you have a website. Is the website selling a tangible product? Are you running a business out of your home? The type of advertising you will need will depend on which audience you are trying to reach. First figure out who you want to visit your site/use your product and then ask yourself "if I were them how what would I pay the most attention to?" For example, if your target audience is older people who might not be very experienced with the internet or used to web-based advertising, you would probably do a lot better with direct mail and television/radio advertising, which can be very expensive. If your target audience is very web savvy, on the other hand, you could do quite well using social networking and e-mail marketing, most of which can be done by yourself for next to nothing. First figure out the audience. The marketing and advertising will follow. Good luck!
There are many perspectives on this question. One thing you should really ask yourself is what are your goals with the site? Is it a hobby or a business? The next thing you need to evaluate is how long before you want to achieve some of those goals. Then you should evaluate if you want to allocate any funds to promoting the site. I would also recommend if it is a business to draft a business plan so you can really evaluate what you should be doing to build it. If the site has a revenue target or just a visitor objective, set some realistic targets. If you begin putting money into a project that does not generate revenue or its own recurring traffic at some point then you may eventually run into problems.
Hi, Free advertising is always the best. Although I have to write articles, article marketing is the best way to bring targeted traffic.
Some webmasters spend way too much to get out there and sometimes causes debt. You should becareful on what you pay for. You should see if it wil benefit you. see the advertising cost model
If you are simply talking about promoting a website then i would suggest not to invest or spend on advertising as there are many free sources for doing that. I too believe and do free promotions for my site. Unless you have a site that sells some products and you expect a good ROI from it, its not advisable to invest in advertising. Regards
I also prefer free advertising, at least you won't lose any money buying worthless advertising that brings no sales.
When starting out on a shoestring, there are NUMEROUS free traffic sources. They take a little time and effort, but the return can be excellent. Try submitting articles, free classifieds, forums(do NOT spam), groups (such as Google Groups). It's always easier to spend money on advertising when you have some coming in as well. If you DO want to spend, don't forget that there are other great PPC sources besides Adwords. Be sure to check out Yahoo and Microsoft AdCenter. Their cost per click will typically be lower than Google.
Once you start earning any income, start spending a % on advertising. Free only gets you so far unless you have a brilliant site or campaign everyone wants to visit anyhow.
I use free advertising right now. My websites doesn't pay that much right now, so I don't want to invest too much
I know that feeling. My site doesn't generate that much either (which is to be expected as I don't sell anything), and it's just started to pull in a little bit each month so I figured I should just put it back into the site anyway. It still seems to me that the large majority out there spend little to no money on advertising. And it's true that some free methods really do generate a lot of traffic (targeted or not).