I know there is a demand, now how do I reach that market (teens)

Buy advertising with the Princeton Review. Every teenager takes the SATs so an add with them would reach a lot of eyes. Also buy advertising on www.collegeboard.com

 

I have tried adwords and stopped shortly after just because I realized that it really was not worth the money. Adwords is good if you are selling a product but I'm definitely going to have a very negative ROI since my site is free and I make my money on selling ads.


I would like to try facebook... maybe make a 'Course-Notes.Org Saved My Grade' global group and get people to recruit new members for it and hope it spreads virally

 

I think in your case your best off advertising offline like go to a few colleges in your area and place an ad in the notice board or something maybe get some one to do it for you. but generally sites like these get word of mouth advertising which works really well cos believe me being a student myself i know how valuabe such resources can be and id always go up to a friend and tell him about the "cool information packed site" i found online.

Get what i mean, also i think it would be awkward if you advertised it in other ways like flyer and or classifieds i mean first whats a teenager to care about a site which is about school work? theyd probably just toss it off like you said, but during times when we have homework and exams then the net is our best friend. Besides I rarely think any teenagers read newspaper classifieds.

My advice is work on the site make it more user friendly and so on so that teenagers must and have to tell there friends about it. Iam serious your traffic will grow if your site really helps out.

Heres a great place to join if you wanna get many extra hits to your site but you know the rules no blatant advertising

www.thestudentroom.co.uk

A good place to buy advertising would be in the text books if you can get a link in there, perhaps you could write a book and have your website in that.

 

you can buy ads on thefacebook.com. It's like myspace but school oriented. It started out as basically a myspace.com for elite universities. It's since expanded into every university and most high schools.

It has hundreds of thousands, if not millions of users.

edit: sorry i just saw the previous facebook comment

 

This really is turning into a brainstorming thread! So many ideas!!

Here is one more:

Encourage those who are already using your site to refer their friends. You can package some of your content into free downloads which you can offer exclusively to whose who refer their friends. You can use one of the many TAF forms for this.

 

Oooooo - I like that idea! Like if they fill out 10 valid email addresses (not sure exactly how Im going to do this) and send an email letting their friends know about their site, an email with a useful article will sent to their email address?


How about this idea? If you put a link to my site in your AIM profile then you would be elgible to win a prize. i.e. anyone participating would post their screen name in a forum thread and then every week I would randomly select a screen name from the list to win a prize. And this could last all year long and you could maybe even win more then once? (please tell me if thats a horrible idea)

 

search the net for a "Tell A Friend" script

how would u check to see if the link really exist? if you have 1000 members and they all enter are you really gonna check 1000 AIM profiles for the link?

maybe on your registration form u could add a space where the new member can put who they were reffered by (like vbulletin does)

the member at the end of the month with most refferals gets the prize?

 

No, it would be a random thing. Im not sure if youve ever been to any advertising conferences like AdTech but sometimes exhibitors will give attendees t-shirts to wear with the incentive that at a certain time, they will look for users who are wearing their shirts and select one of those people at random and they will win a prize.

So what I'm saying is if a member puts a link to my website is his AIM profile (blog, myspace, xanga, whatever are possibilities as well) and on a certain date I will pull a screen name randomly from the list and then check to see if that person still has the link in his AIM profile, if he does, then he wins the prize, if not- I pull another screen name.

Is that making more sense now?

 

I'm not sure how many high schools and colleges still have newspapers, but maybe you could buy some ad space in one of those.

And if your site also caters to college students, posting flyers around campus could get you some good word of mouth. Colleges are one of the few places where people really read the ads because they're looking for roommates, used books, etc.

Another thought would be to find message boards related to study skills, tutoring, SAT prep, anywhere kids would go to look for help with their homework.

Post some helpful answers with links in your sig and you might be able to make a name for yourself as an expert. There's some people in every forum whose posts you just have to read because they're so knowledgable - become one of them and the kids will probably also refer your site to their offline friends.

Sounds like a great niche - good luck!

 

Buying advertising in high school newspapers is a bit harder because you have two choices; going through a firm like 360Youth or contacting each high school individually. One is a very expensive proposition and the other is a very time consuming process.


I wonder if Kaplan offers any advertising plans... I doubt it though.

 

Your site layout drop down to left side in firefox, perhaps you might to fix it. It's a nice site though

 

I would be willing to talk to you about a collaborative marketing arrangement -- I have a site where you could reach the instructors who would recommend your site. And I have a site I'm interested in promoting to your audience. Contact me and we can discuss the details.

 

I would say all high schools and colleges still have some form of press, both paper and online based!

 

Hrm...

I don't think there is any way of advertising on facebook.. is there?

 

Facebook flyers, like $15 a month or something.

 

Yes, Facebook has some interesting, inexpensive ways to get your message out with flyers as freehunter points out. Here is the link where you can more info: http://www.facebook.com/flyers.php

Quote from their site:
"Facebook Flyers are the best way to reach college students when and where they pay attention. And now they can have images!

Target only the college(s) you want.

How it works:

1. Write what you want your Flyer to say.
2. Select which schools will see it.
3. Choose how many times they will see it.

Your Flyer will be posted to the Facebook Flyer Board and advertised on other Facebook pages.

For only $5, your Flyer will be displayed 2,500 times!*"

 

I think I would rather start a global facebook group and recruit people from all over the country and get them to recruit their friends

 

Building on the idea of asking your members: you could do a poll and see what they would really love to get for free. You could do a poll type thing, where you have 5-10 items in different price ranges, and let your current members vote for top 3 items (of course, offer something you can either get from one of your sponsors, or something that's not out of your reach financially).

If it's from one of your sponsors, you can say: "sponsored by", giving them additional visibility in exchange for the free item.

Once you have a good idea what they want, have a contest and get 3 winners (top 3 wanted items). And to make everyone happy, send a special report to anyone who sends you at least one new member.

Your best fans are your current users, and you should use them: they all have friends about the same age, in the same life stage, etc.

You could also make some extra money by offering free things through affiliate links.

Do you have a list? If not, start one now, and send a weekly update on what's new. Give only a synopsys of waht's new, with links to the site, so they can read on there (the site).

Hope that helps.