These Marketing Tactics SUCK!!!

OK. So we get threads pretty regularly asking "what are the best ways to market a site on this, that, or the other thing?" Getting a bit old.... And it always generally leads to the same answers: "It depends on your niche," "it depends on your budget," etc.

So let's tackle this from another perspective. Let's start to establish what DOESN'T work for certain kinds of sites, in order to save a fellow webmaster / marketer a bit of time and aggravation.

If you've tried certain marketing tactics (and honestly did try to use it appropriately and effectively), and it totally flopped, share that with us. Let us know what the marketing tactic was, what niche it was used to promote, and where you think it went wrong. If nothing else, maybe others will be able to offer suggestions for using the tactic more effectively.

Jenn

 

I ran a bunch of facebook flyers and they sucked bad, and were pretty expensive in the long run. The same GoogleAds outperformed by leaps and bounds.

Had I allocated my facebook budget for GoogleAds, I would have made much better use of that money. But, as they say, live and learn... Sometimes you gotta learn the hard way...

One thing I realized is that it's much better, when dealing with a limited budget, to pay for ads that you KNOW are getting to the right people (Pay Per Click) as opposed to ads that MIGHT get to the right people (Pay Per Impression).

 

um...well when I first got started I wasn't exactly sure of traffic exchanges...everyone knows this by now but traffic exchanges are for the most part only good for building your list with a squeeze page, and it really depends on your niche. Boy I wish I had known that when I first started so I wouldn't have wasted so much time on them.

 

Ads in print publications have generally failed to earn back their costs for me. It may just be that I don't know how to run a decent print ad. This was for a t-shirt printing company.

 

Hi!

Buy traffic like buy 100000 visits $9.90, first big one error in my life! LOL

Best,
Jakomo

 

What hasn't worked for me:
- Bulk traffic purchasing (1000 visits for $4.95)
- PayPerPost
- Facebook flyers

I can elaborate if you like.

 

AdWords never worked, for me atleast. Im still gonna give it a few more shots. But we'll see.

 

PayPerPost didn't work
Myspace didn't convert
Cheers,
Ana

 

What was you selling at payperpost? Ive made a great return selling the taggingsecrets ebook there. You need to make your opportunities fun rather than just "post this link to this".

Here is an old screenshot of what i was making daily from myspace last september, that rose to around $800 a day average with no less than that %98 profit. I stopped with myspace at the start of the year but i know people still marketing there and making bank.
You should go in details of what you tried on myspace that failed, because so much there still works.

 

Most of the times its been to free sites / blogs / etc. However, they were (sortof) newsworthy, because I was donating revenue to charity. My press release angle didnt work, so I tried a general buzz post, but that didnt work either. I required pr3, specific categories, and no hosted blogs. Spent $100 for about 8 posts and I received about 20 unique visitors TOTAL. Will be posting a full review on my internet marketing blog shortly.

 

Drig, be sure to post a comment w/ your thoughts on PPP (and feel free to link it to your own blog post when up) on the FadMarketing Blog's PPP: Fad or Fab? feature.

Jenn

 

I haven't used it for that, but its no wonder it didn't work because for high traffic blogs you have to pay $50+ at least, $10 and under posts the blogs get hardly any traffic like you said. But you can use cheap posts to boost SERPS pretty easy, with researched keywords that have little competition its just another way to get your page ranked.
But if you sell products that relate to both the blogger taking the opportunity and there readers, such as tag and ping style ebooks its pretty easy to make profit. Especially if you add some competitions into your opportunities which will also lead to free buzz.
The $7 reports you see flying around DP would also go down very well there if related to making money from blogging.

 

Hm, well I was paying $12.50 per post and had pretty strict requirements. Ill start writing the post now... expect the review to be done in a day or two.

 

This is a great thread Jen ...well done

I have to agree with some of the above:

1) Buying traffic doesn't work
2) Print ads don't work that well either

 

We have currently started to use adwords to sell bakery items like birthday cakes locally and it has worked well.

 

Thanks. I was just in a contrary mood earlier. j/k

Good feedback so far everyone. Keep 'em comin'!

 

Adwords didn't work for me, but I was one of those people that jumped right into adwords without knowing what I was doing and I was also trying to sell work at home products at the time, so it being very competitive niche plus not really understanding adwords, I lost money. At least I stopped before the loss was very much.

I've learned a lot since then and may give it another try soon.

So what doesn't work it doing something without taking the time to learn about it first.

 

[sarcasm]

Lovely!

[/sarcasm]

Hard to believe that these kinds of offers still exist. All newbies should be warned!

 

Here is my PayPerPost review. If I missed something, let me know and Ill go back and add on to the post. Feel free to make some comments as well.

 

My first PR release about my site launch was a failure.
I must admit I was way too hopefull. I purchase a big pack cost close to $1000, Promised to get my site on Bloomberg, USAToday, Yahoo news etc.. It was posted there but hardly generated and traffic.. especially targeted traffic.
If you use it make sure your copy is targeted at general audience.