I run an international forum that gets around 100 to 150 unique visitors a day with around 300 to 700 daily page views. I have been running a very limited adsense campaign for around a year and have around a 2% CTR. I am looking to expand the advertising across the site and would like to scale up my marketing which are both limited to just me (which I learn as I go). Is this the right time for me to look into investing money into someone who can help my marketing and advertising work? Or should I wait till I am larger? Also would offering equity in exchange for marketing/advertising work be a viable option? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
I'm not sure what you specifically mean by marketing/advertising. Are you trying to promote your forum? If so, here are some tips that won't cost you any amount of investment. 1. Install a points-based addon on your forum. This gives your users more reasons to hang around and participate in your forum. Plus, who doesn't want to get that shiny new badge once they hit 50,000 points. =) 2. Create interesting contests, competition on your forum. This once again, gets your members to participate. Most people lead lonely lives. They want to be entertained also. You don't even have to come up with the prizes yourself. You could easily go to someone in your niche that needs some free advertising and get him to sponsor the prize. Find a few more and you have the contest's prizes ready already. 3. Create quality threads with good information, evergreen information would be better. Something that people would always come back to refer to. Something that will make people bookmark the site so they can come back to it whenever they need to refer to it. A mega guide on XYZ would be good. A FAQ would be good also. I have a few more ideas but I'm going to stop now since I'm not sure if I'm answering your question. Based on what I think you're asking, then the answer is "NO". You don't need someone to help out in your marketing unless you don't have time for it.