Has anyone paid for advertising?

[ses5909]

I did pay for advertising for TBE (not the blog but the forum) and it actually was a waste of money. I tried StumbleUpon advertising (in case you didn't know, you can pay for advertising there) and I didn't get any lasting hits.
I'm not ruling out advertising in the future, but I won't go there again I don't think. Have you ever paid for advertising or considered it?

[tetsujin]

I have thought about advertising with something like Google or Yahoo, but I never know exactly what I would use as the keywords. I also think it would be a bit of a waste of money because how many of those people would stay for more than just that one click?

Cameron

[snookca]

I think you have to consider what your return on investment (ROI) is. For example, for this forum, how many users do you need to increase ad revenues? Then, consider whether advertising is an effective way to bring in new users.

For example, let's say you need 100 users to bring in $100 worth of advertising. If you advertise on a site that gets 100,000 unique visitors a month, you can expect an approximate 1-2% clickthrough rate (CTR), which is 1-2,000 people. Of that, you can expect about 1% to actually take the time to sign up and possible participate, leaving you with about 20 new users. Therefore, you'd only want to pay $20 a month for an ad to break even for a month.

For a forum, it's probably not that practical but for a product where you might make $20 per new user, the ROI becomes a lot more respectable.

[pbradish]

I run medium/large advertising (PPC and otherwise) ad campaigns for ecommerce,but not for blogs or forums. Traditionally, the ROI is much - MUCH better when you're selling a product or service.

[malique]

sara, ive been wanting to try SU's ad campaign. How much did you spend per day?

i've never paid for advertising my local blog, and why would i? anyone care to enlighten?

[kingjacob]

Ive run advertising for a few arbitrage pages but only when I had a coupon other wise I prefer to just rely on seo

[Dan Grossman]

I don't buy advertising for any sites that don't sell something. People that are clicking search ads aren't in the right mode to become long-term members/subscribers/readers... they're going site to site as fast as they can to find something they're looking for.

[Selkirk]

Sara, what other kinds of ads did you try?

I've always thought stumble upon traffic was over-rated. These people are just coming and going.

What page did you send them to? For a forum, I'd probably dump them on a contest announcement. I'm not sure what restrictions SU has on the landing page.

[mamab]

I've decided not to pay for advertising at this point. I'm not trying to make money with my blog, that's not why I'm doing it.

[ses5909]

@selkirk - I took them to the forum home page which wasn't so go. Sure I got targetted hits but no result on it. I advertised at Sitepoint.com and that rendered over 10 registrations. I also advertise at a community admin forum. For this site the targeted audience would be people who already participate in communities and know the benefit and of course they should blog or be interested in blogging.

[adalante]

No, i have not done any advertising for my blog, but i heard buying a review from a prominent blog in your niche would be a good thing.

[crumblepie]

So far Google Adwords isn't working for me - people leave as quickly as they come. I'm thinking of trying out paid per post.

[t(-.-t)]

I do adwords campaigns but not for blogs. Then again I don't have any income-producing blogs.

[berlinlife06]

No, I don't pay for advertising because I am not selling anything. Perhaps in the future I would consider advertising if I start selling something. In the meantime, I'm just having fun.

[pbradish]

I use Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, MSN AdCenter, and paid links but only for the ecommerce websites - not the blog. Blog is purely organic.

[SageMother]

I have paid for advertising in the past but its always related to a pages where I have a product or service offered. Usually a blog is attached to those sites so the blog get to come along for the ride.

I used Adbrite a few years back and found it the best way to go. I bought advertising, while selling advertising space. I enjoyed the arrangement