New way of online advertising - help!

papergirl

Hi,

I've a launched a new fun site and I'm trying to sell advertising space on it. Haven't had any luck yet, I've been ringing various companies, but can't seem to get through to talk to anyone. Am I going about this the wrong way?

My site is www.giveoutabout.com

I was on Spin 103.8 yesterday and got coverage in the Dublin Metro. Getting lots of hits and a great response from the public. So how do I turn this into selling online ads? I created a new way to advertise called 'brick advertising' Check out the site to see what I mean.

Grateful for any advice....

aidan_walsh

Your "Brick Advertising" is little more than a columnar Million Dollar Homepage. That doesn't strike me as particularily original. Nor attractive. I presume you have prototyped what the site will look like with a couple of dozen ads on it? It strikes me that it could look pretty ugly. I would therefore assume that you'll be using a limited number of ads per page hit, and that they will most likely be rotating?

Nice looking site other than that though.

heggie

the fact that you only have mobile numbers as contacts, and no online way to pay for advertising would put me off

papergirl

I have set up online payments with paypal. I figured if someone was serious they would ring or email and then I would send them the link to the online payments page, hidden on the site. My experience with businesses in the past is that they pay by cheque anyway.

There's alot of bricks on the page and I'd be very surprised if it ever got filled, so I'm not going to worry about it looking ugly just yet. I think google ads at the side of a page looks worse. Instead I'd hope for a few large sponsors that would buy a few bricks and space it out around the page.

heggie

and if you were serious there would be a contact address and a landline, whats to stop you fecking off with the money? I seriously think you would have trouble selling anything with such little info, good luck with it anyways

Hal1

Jaysus, she likes to moan alot .

/me hides from papergirl

papergirl

fair point, took your advice and changed it.

JohnDigital

Firstly I think the site has great potential, nice fresh idea!

But, with regard to advertising, you are going to be hard pushed getting many brands onboard on what will be perceived as a very anti-establishment website. Most brand managers will be too scared to have their precious brands associated with something that could cast them in a negative light. Ok there are bound to be a number of brands that like to live on the edge and appeal to young funky population and may see the site as a way to reach their target market.

Really though I think you need the idea to be a bit bigger to get them interested in it. Just having a brick or 10 for a cost of a few euro is probably too small to bother with for many advertisers. What you should be doing is running cross-site banners or tiles as well so that clients are buying a larger exposure. So they get say the brick presence on the main site but also X,000 banner impressions across the forum and the site.

Sites like ‘million-dollar homepage’ that someone else mentioned only worked because they were new and they were US based with a potential audience of millions. Ireland is a small country struggling to get descent numbers of people online.

The big problem though is justifying your advertising revenue, as you are not going to have any certified statistics in terms unique users, visitors, and page impressions if you are doing it yourself. You really should speak with someone like salesonline.ie and find out ways of getting your site statistics and ad-serving set up in a way that you can prove the traffic the site is getting. You will need solid facts and figures before you are going to see anyone who is serious about online advertising using your services.

First job really though is to drive traffic to the site, so that you have something to sell, you need an audience there already to get advertisers. A website with no traffic is not going to attract any advertising investment.

With regard to the site itself, I really think you are missing a trick by not having a means for people to respond to the comments that others have posted. You have the forum there but no way of linking the two. Really I think the site needs to be a lot more interactive as this will drive greater numbers to it, and retain them. Just having a graffiti style shout board, with no interaction will not generate enough interest to get repeat visitors.

Best of luck!

xha1r

John, I believe MDH was UK based. Don't mean to sound rude saying that.

How did you contact the companies in the first place to tell them about your service? Was the response rate good?

paulocon

JohnDigital,

Excellent post and thanks personally for the link to salesonline.ie - are you aware of any similar agencies?

JohnDigital

www.ican.ie and www.newmedia.ie are the only other companies that I have first hand experience of, but salesonline are more of an adsales house rather than online agency like Ican and newmedia, so salesonline are probably better disposed to tell you how to most successfully market the site. But there is no harm contacting them all and asking advice, maybe even fostering relations. Between salesonline and Ican they handle the largest proportion of online advertising in the country, mush of it on behalf of advertisign agencies, so they have access to the media planners for the majority of large companies in Ireland.

paulocon

John,

Thanks very much for that - you have save me a hell of a lot of time there....

Very much appreciated.

Dave!

Great idea -- for the site, and for the advertisements!

Is €200 not a bit steep for a brick though? I don't know the going rate, but for the size of a brick.....!!! And how much traffic do ye get that you can justify the price?

paulocon

Sorry to bring this back up but has anyone here dealt with salesonline - I am having difficulties getting hold of anyone there....