Thursday, November 22, 2007

 

Many businesses are moving to the Internet to expand their advertising reach and to gain new customers. It can be a rewarding and profitable way of increasing your sales. However, there are several pitfalls that you should be aware of.

 

With the dropping advertising sales in print newspapers and magazines more and more publishers (i.e. small local publishers) are trying to monetize their websites. However, they also may be selling you a load of dressed-up manure.

 

There are several things you as a potential advertiser can do to ensure you actually get your money’s worth.

 

First of all I can’t stress enough to be wary of cold call and postal mail sales pitches, you and everyone in your area most likely got the same pitch. If you didn’t inquire about it, then you don’t need it. Don’t respond to such sales pitches, you are guaranteed to get burned.

 

With that said let’s discuss some methods of determining whether or not you should advertise on a website.

 

1) Ask the site/publisher for the last couple of months of traffic reports. I am not talking about in-house prepared report, but the actual reports as they come from their website reporting. Better yet ask for third party verification of the website statistics. Google and SiteMeter both offer free website analytics (reporting) to website owners. These reports will show you if the traffic is what the publication claims.

 

2) Look up the website on Alexa.com, while not a certifiable source, it does provide a barometer for traffic on an particular site, simply go to Alexa and and search for www.sitename.ext (site name = domain – ext = extensions (.com, , net, etc.) - Get Traffic Details. The lower the number ranking on Alexa the more traffic (i.e. more popular) the higher the number the lower the traffic and popularity. An Alexa Ranking in the 150,000 – 200,000 ranking equals about 50 to 70 thousand visitors a month, a ranking of 1,000 would equal about 6,484,374 visitors a month. Any site ranking in the millions (like rank: 1,564,234) I wouldn't bother with unless they were giving you the ads for 20 bucks a month. A ranking around 1.2 to 1.5 million means they get maybe 20-60 visitors a day.

 

3) If and when you do decide to advertise make sure that you request access to the ad reports so you can see the number of times you ad is shown and the number of times the ad is clicked. If they refuse to give you direct access to such reports then take your business elsewhere.

 

You should demand direct access to the site traffic reports and advertising reports for accountability reasons, after it’s your money.

 

Just because a publishing company is the only game in town for print news and information, doesn’t necessarily mean that their website is the same. Honest advertisers will give you the information I mentioned above without any qualms. If they don’t want to, then alarm bells should be going off in your head.

About the Author
Allen Harkleroad is an Internet veteran. Allen has been involved in online publishing for over ten years and involved with print publishing for over twenty years. Allen owns a network of over 750 websites and has been buying and selling online advertising since 1998.