magazine advertd....shall I, shall I not ?

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magazine advert....shall I, shall I not ?

im considering advertising in 'computer active' computer magazine which costs the following:

1/16 Page £512

Do you think it would be worth while as I have doubts ? There are 624,000 readers fortnightly.

Would you do it if you had the money ?
 
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StephanieCordray

New Member
Yes

but

before you do it, make sure you have your ducks in a row. nothing worse than advertising something and having to retract because you weren't ready to deliver.
 

ian

Administrator
Staff member
I would agree, for instance, do you have a dedicated server? Are you equipped to handle a large amount of new customers? Do you have the level of knowledge to offer good service and retain those customers?
 
ian said:
I would agree, for instance, do you have a dedicated server? Are you equipped to handle a large amount of new customers? Do you have the level of knowledge to offer good service and retain those customers?

I do rent my own server.

I believe I have the level of knowledge in this area, I have been working around PHP websites, web hosting, and VB website programming since 23rd October 2004, startign with the domain name ehostingcomplete.com, I started with reseller accounts, and now on to rented servers. I feel confident in many areas of web hosting such as SQL databases, websites (and databases) transfers, permissions, FTP, Skins, Name servers, DNS, all the basic stuff and some advanced stuff.

You both said 'yes', as its such a large investment I am worried about a loss. As I am not sure what people will think of my payment method (paypal) and if I should get a credit/debit card processor like WorldPay and which one to use.

I can only work myself about 2 hours/day and have 2 other people prepared to work for me. But I am unsure how hard to advert would hit me, what I mean by this is, the demand from such a small advert, and how much support and queries to expect as based on my current customers.
Whilst I am on the subject of support, I am considering telephone support using an 0845 number, can you recommend any decent companies offering these as I would want to get it right first time ?

What a mouth full :D

Thanks
 

StephanieCordray

New Member
Given what you've described here and other threads on this board, I'd hate to recommend you get the advertising and not do well. Personally, being a hoster myself, I don't think you're quite ready and the level of commitment to it isn't quite there. What happens on your server when your 2 hours are up? Do your customers have to wait 22 hours before you even know about a situation? Customer support issues as well. Rather than being a web hosting service have you thought about being a web developer. Your knowledge areas indicate that field more than managing and running web servers. Either way it's a tough market because both are glutted but you might have a better chance with web development at the present time while working on the skills for operating a hosting service in the future.

You can expect a maximum of 3% from the number of people seeing your advert to follow up on it. From that you might catch 1% of new business. The numbers seem dismal, I'm sure, but not buying advertising brings far smaller numbers. Since it's an industry type magazine it has a targeted audience of potential hosting customers so your followup might be higher but don't count on it. No type of advertising is full proof or promises a good return on investment. That's something you have to decide for yourself but if you don't take chances and do something, you already know what you'll have.

The larger, well established companies have gotten a lion's share of the business because of time in business and being well known as a result. However, large companies tend to fall down in a number of areas where smaller companies, like us, can fill a niche while still offering competitive pricing.
 

BBC-Jon

New Member
I agree.. Its a lot for a small host.. if you have only one server I cant see that you would not be able to cover the cost of the price of the advertising by your profits.. that’s my advise.. Only spend your profits on advertising. If you start putting your own money in you are heading for trouble, unless you are 100% sure of the outcome!
 

beekeeper

New Member
BBC-Jon said:
Only spend your profits on advertising. If you start putting your own money in you are heading for trouble, unless you are 100% sure of the outcome!

uggg..not the best advice...your advertising dollars should be based on sales, the same way you would pay an employee. if sales go up then you can put more of your advertising % out there. The problem with using profits $ for advertising is if profits are down you end up putting less into ads when really you might need to do more to bring sales back up.
What type of effective advertising and how much % of sales is what you need to research, some companies need to allocate a large amount to stay afloat when others have a great campaign with little costs and it's magic.
 

BBC-Jon

New Member
ugggg...when you are starting off... you dont want to be pumping money that you dont have into advertising.. is the point i was getting across! And if you say that it should be baced on sales.. dose sales not mean profits??? and as you said

"The problem with using profits $ for advertising is if profits are down you end up putting less into ads when really you might need to do more to bring sales back up"

Would that not apply, when it is baced on sales?

Its the same thing!
 

ian

Administrator
Staff member
You both said 'yes', as its such a large investment I am worried about a loss.
I didnt say yes go ahead, I just said I agreed mainly with the making sure you are ready before spending the money. There are tonnes of things to consider before spending money on magazine advertising. Another thing I forgot to mention is, the look of your website, you need to make sure that is spot on first, it needs to be of such a high standard that it would lead to sales, otherwise you are just wasting your money.

I guess it all depends on the percentage as to whether it is based on sales or profit, but the general idea is like the earlier posts is, dont fork out huge money out of your savings, use the profit that you make to further expand your website.
 
StephanieCordray said:
You can expect a maximum of 3% from the number of people seeing your advert to follow up on it. From that you might catch 1% of new business.

There are 624,000 sales of the magazine I am considering.
That would then mean 18720 see my advert (at 3%), and from this, 187 new customers.

I didnt say yes go ahead, I just said I agreed mainly with the making sure you are ready before spending the money

Sorry, I misunderstood what you wrote.

It is a very hard market, with so may around, and so many fly-by-nighters making less confidence consumers.

This is something that may have to wait.
 

ian

Administrator
Staff member
There are 624,000 sales of the magazine I am considering.
That would then mean 18720 see my advert (at 3%), and from this, 187 new customers.
Not necessarily, that is a naive assumption to make, if your prices are not right, if your website is not good enough to lead to sales conversions, then the advertisement could result in 0 new customers.
 

BBC-Jon

New Member
I’m not sure if anyone commented on this. PayPal.. I would not run with the ADD if that’s your payment gateway. You need a real CC processor before you start heading to large advertising. You may lose clients because they do not trust PayPal or simple cant be bothered to sign-up.
 

suz

New Member
Just my 2 cents but Paypal has worked well for me on my site and my sales went up a fair bit when I started offering it. I also search especially for sites that offer Paypal as a means of paying. But yes you probably should offer another means as well, there's always someone who has a problem with the payment method no matter what it is.
 

ian

Administrator
Staff member
I like paypal, but I would also offer a second payment option as well.
 

BBC-Jon

New Member
2checkout, i have a acount with them.. never used it before.. there support is not much to ask for, but i think fair.
 

StephanieCordray

New Member
never had a problem with support myself. almost switched from them a couple years ago when they were having other problems though. Our customers are about split right now with a slightly larger number using paypal.
 

Alfred Jones

New Member
Now a days most of the business are carried out through advertising mainly offline and online. but, probably internet advertising holds higher priority because it is the best way to take our business globally. so you can go for online one. be confident what ever your ideas are.. provided be clear in your path.. you go ahead.. All the best..
 
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