and how do you decide how much you should spend? If you're running affiliate schemes you know kind of what your click-thru ratios are going to be - do you say, "right I want to earn $x so I have to spend $x in marketing?" If I knew that to make $1000 in profit I need to spend $2000 in marketing I'd do it but I don't know that... how do you work this out? Thanks, p.
My marketing budget is currently $0 because my profits only cover hosting, domains and the occasional purchase of a site in the BST section. Hopefully in time this will increase however at the moment I am using free marketing methods and I am actually quite happy in doing so.
This is exactly the same position that I'm in - hosting costs are eating everything up and I've got bills to pay. I'm currently running on a dedicated server and somepeople on this forum and others have said that I should create more smaller sites on it to try and make more cash - but I'm loathed to even go and buy the new domain names... Like they say tho "You've got to speculate to accumulate"... Feel the fear and do it anyway? hmmm....
I dont really advertise my site but the site I get advertised by some people that like my site. I know that because I saw my site link on a few sites and asked why they linked my site. They usually say its a good site etc so im not doing too bad with 0$ advertising
It comes down to what you see it worth spending. If your doing Adsense type ads, then you could do some math to come out to what you should spend to get your returns. Other stuff like product sales, you can do the same. A budget is only up to what you are willing to spend each month. We have budgets of $0, as well as some that reach $30,000 each month. Rule of thumb, for every dollar spent get no less than 1 dollar back, however we try for every dollar get 10 dollars back. There are no real rules, just make earnings!
If you can write and submit articles to hundreds of article directories yourself.... Your marketing budget is 0 except buying the article submission tool (one time). And make $$$!!!
If you ever want to invest heavily in marketing then you REALLY need to know what you're doing so that you don't waste money. I suggest getting expert advice from a professional marketer before doing so. Stick to free methods or very low cost ones like directory submission/link building.
If you could spend $1k and make $2k everyone would do it, not just you. If your profits are greater than your expenses including time and taxes you should do it.
its all about dipping your toes in and testing the water. You can only decide that and how much you can afford etc, many factors
I do other things on the side to build up my marketing budget. Also, unless you are in a market that requires a dedicated server (such as file hosting websites, or something as such) then you shouldn't just go out and buy one. Don't be afraid to start out modestly.
You have to test, test, and test. I started off spending about $10/day on advertising a few months back, and right now I'm at around $130/day. Still to this day I test new campaigns out and see which ones work and which don't.
$130/day? that's a lot... well it sounds a lot to me ...If you're making a good return then it's worth it I think the general consensus is that there is no tried and tested method. You just have to test out different marketing strategies (free ones as well as paid ones) and see what works for you... Someone said 'dipping your toes in' which is right... It was also said that the best type of marketing is when visitors link to you because they like your site - that's the best free advertising you can get! Of course we all strive to make the best websites out there that we all hope will go viral. Article submission isn't something I've tried for the particular site I'm talking about but I've had good success with other sites.
To set your budget you need to know how well your site converts, how many visitors do you need for every sale. Then just shop around for advertising costs and calculate how much you need to spend to get the number of visitors required, then you will know if its worth investing. eg if you get 1 sale every 50 visitors and you make $50 a sale then you can only afford to pay maximum $.99 per visitor to make a profit. You need to weigh up the risk involved and decide how much you can afford to spend. The more historic data you have the easier this is.
Hi dddougal, Thanks for this - the problem I have is shopping around 'for advertising costs'. Do I just look at getting raw visitors? ...If so I can go to a traffic broker and say pay $4.50 per thousand punters... I've done this before and the success rate isn't that good - I've made affiliate sales but it hasn't covered the cost of the traffic... perhaps my thinking is a little too short-term here? I think I need around 6k visitors per day to make a profit (covering my hosting costs) and that's without spending anything on getting those 6k visitors! So, the problem with paying a traffic broker is that once the traffic is gone, it's gone, if I were to purchase the services of a link building provider then at least I have something that's going to last a little longer. Another figure that's interesting from my statistics is that about 13% of visitors come back. What can I do with this?