Ongoing advertising campaign results

An important message from Jim...

I now spend a few hours per week researching ad buys on the Internet. Each time I identify a potentially cost-effective advertising resource, I purchase the ad and report the exact results here.

Ad types include email newsletter ads (mostly top sponsorships and solo emailings), banner advertising, keyword bidding, email list networks and more. The ad buys cost anywhere from $25 up to a few thousand dollars. So before you spend a penny on advertising, come here and check the updated list.

And if you are considering a particular advertising venue not listed here, I'd be happy to consider being your guinea pig. Just drop me a line and let me know what ad resource you want me to test. If it looks promising I'll buy an ad and report the exact results right here.

Results on all ads will be reported as such...

Specific ad resource, description of ad run, cost of ad, number of website visitors resulting from ad, approximate cost per visitor and overall result.

I usually won't go into too much detail on visitor-to-sales ratios of each ad run, but will report this statistic as average, below average or above average. Here's why...

Your visitor to sale ratio on your own site(s) is dependent on your product or service, your sales copy and your price point. This resource is here to identify solid advertising resources. I'll point out what works for me and what could work for you.

Also, this ad reporting is not here to tell Make A Living Online affiliates where to advertise. Sure, you can try some of them, but remember, top affiliates test new advertising resources continually.

If you have a product or service of your own, or you're rolling out a new affiliate product or service, this resource can be very profitable. Just be sure you get a handle on your average visitor to sales ratio before advertising. It will determine how much you can pay per visitor. And cost per visitor is the key statistic that determines whether an online advertising opportunity is worth the investment or not. So pay close attention to that statistic in the following ad results.

Ad Buys, listed by most recent...

Yahoo! - Paid directory listing, sponsored site listing, and a YahooGroups campaign. I tried three different advertising options at Yahoo and each one came in with quite different result. Details
Overall Result: Excellent, Fair, and Poor

FindWhat, Overture Update   - PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising results. I've been testing Pay Per Click search engine advertising pretty heavily during 2002. So far the results have been less than impressive. If you plan to do any PPC advertising, you'd better read this first....
Details
Overall Result: Fair, Poor

Topica.com   - Email network top sponsorship buy. Not being one to spend big bucks on advertising, I took a gamble and threw most of a three month ad budget into one campaign, buying 2.5 million impressions for $2250.00. I tend to slow advertising during the summer so this simplified things. One buy, one ad to track. And while it was a much bigger ad buy than I've ever done, they promised a .5% clickthrough rate which would bring 12,500 targeted visitors. That's less than twenty cents per visitor which would yield excellent profits... Details
Overall Result: Excellent

WebAdvantage - Email newsletter top sponsorship. Three ads to 7,000 subscribers for $100. While the list is targeted it is a bit small and did not yield significant results... Details
Overall Result: Fair

SitePoint.com - Banner ad campaign with 100,000 impressions on their Internet marketing site. Although banner advertising is still not my favorite advertising venue, this one was the best I've tried yet. But was it good enough to warrant more banner advertising?... Details
Overall Result: Good

This is True - Email newsletter top sponsorship to 155,000 subscribers. Cost was $500.00, plus $1 for a second ad in the middle of a future issue. Proved to be too costly and not targeted enough... Details
Overall Result: Poor

WorkAtHomeNews  - Solo emailing to an opt-in list of more than 40,000 subscribers. For just $99 I placed a solo advertisement which was profitable a few seconds after its release... Details
Overall Result: Very Good

Small Business Advisor - Email newsletter top sponsorship in a popular and long-standing ezine to 10,000 subscribers. While the regular price is $1000, as a first-time advertiser I was able to buy the ad for $500.00. Perhaps I should have passed on that price as well... Details
Overall Result: Poor

DEMC - Email newsletter top sponsorship. Abbie Drew's Direct Email Marketing Co. is one of my biggest advertising secrets. I've been running weekly classifieds with DEMC for more than four years now. Their list consists of 100,000+ business-minded cybercitizens. While the classified ads get decent results, the top sponsorships work best, as my recent results prove... Details
Overall Result: Good

SuperPromo - Email newsletter exclusive solo ad. I found this one searching for solo ads. For $149 they send your mailing to their list of 60,000 named subscribers consisting of Website Developers, Webmasters, Entrepreneurs, Software Designers and Developers and Small and Home Business Owners. Sounds ideal for Make A Living Online prospects right...? Details
Overall Result: Fair

Joke-a-day - Email newsletter top sponsorships (two). I know what you're thinking. "This isn't targeted!" That's what I was thinking too when a fellow Internet marketer suggested I try it. Looks like joke fans are into all sorts of different things, including Internet marketing... Details
Overall Result: Excellent

WebMarketingToday.com   - Banner ad campaign. First off I must admit I really like this site and Dr. Wilson himself. And I hate to say anything bad about his website, but the banner advertising offered there failed miserable for me... Details
Overall Result: Poor

Other ezine ads I'll be reporting on soon... Leading Edge newsletter, TotallyFreeStuff by linkclicks.com, WebTools2010 Exclusive Ad, and more...

Additional advertising venues I have used successfully in the past, and may be re-testing soon...

A.I.M Ezine
Used their press release option which was delivered to 30,000+ subscribers. I was one of the first to try this new feature when it was introduced. The results were excellent. They write the release and mail it. Mine resulted in 253 new subscribers to my BizWeb eGazette and over 1016 visitors to my site. I also use a web version of the press release at my main site.
Overall: Very Good (Although this is obviously a dated critique.)

SellI! E-Commerce Weekly - This is Paul Lang's email newsletter with a strong following and recent mentions in on ZDTV and more.
Overall: Very Good (Another dated critique.)

TourBus.com - Spent $185 for a top sponsorship ad to 75,000 promoting the IMC package. Only a few hundred visitors were logged and two sales, which was a disappointing result. I suspect the list is better suited to general product and services.
Overall: Poor (Dated critique.)

Note: I recommend these ezine databases if you are looking for targeted ezines to advertise in or editors to submit articles to.