Archive for Advertising:

Why AdBlocking Software only Hurts the Viewer

I was recently asked what I thought about AdBlocking software and how it may impact a website’s revenue. Here’s what I said:

A large proportion of the content available on the web today has been funded by the revenue site owners receive from displaying advertising. According to WorldWideWebSize.com the number of web pages indexed by Google in the past two years has grown by 30 billion, and as a result the value placed on a web page has diminished.

Webmasters are now generating less revenue online through traditional advertising and software designed to blog advertising doesn’t help. What users don’t realise is they’re only hurting themselves.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction and in the case of this kind of software, webmasters are now actively combatting it by implementing some of the following;

- Reducing the number of times they update their website with fresh content as it simply isn’t as profitable anymore.

- Turning to alternative revenue streams such as subscriptions and “members only” areas.

- Installing recognition software that will ensure no content is displayed at all for web viewers with ad blocking software installed.

Advertising is all around us, and whilst sometimes pop-up pages and flashing banners can be annoying, remember that the website you are surfing costs money to maintain so it is only fair that it is recouped somehow. The World Wide Web isn’t just a playground, it is a business marketplace too.

Marketing a taxi company

It has been a while since my last post, and that’s really been for two reason; 1. I’ve not had much to report and 2. I don’t want to report what I’ve been doing. As some of your may know from the pages of Ethan Hardy Ltd, I own Edinburgh Taxi and Glasgow Taxi (.co.uk and .org.uk).

I have agreements setup with companies in both cities to accept and complete work that come through the telephone numbers on the sites in return for a referall fee, a new kind of affiliate marketing. I am fortunate enough to have Mark Boyd working as an affiliate for me and promoting a companies on his Aberdeen Taxi site.

Things are progessing well with us racking up in excess of 1,000 calls per month. Mark and I are constantly competing between Edinburgh and Aberdeen, however he has a sub-affiliate promoting his number so qudos to him!

I’ve been trialling new marketing methods, including pairing up with local companies to co-promote each other’s services. I’ve also paid for adverts on student radio and Spotify, which I hope will spread the word about the number. I’ll let you know how that goes at the end of the month!

Like Rob, who is pushing some promotional items for his Claims site, I’ve got a giveaway in the pipeline that my friend Frank and a few others voted as a great idea.

I’m cautious about publishing every step I am taking as the taxi trade is particularly competative and it is difficult to comment on what worked and what didn’t as promoting a taxi number does not guarantee instant results – people may not use one for months to come and there’s no cookies tracking the booking!

Expansion online is one thing I’m focusing on as I’m fortunate enough to benefit from good positions within the SERPs and I’ve built up a small yet growing fan base on Facebook and Twitter.

Things are going well so my head is down and I’m working this idea until those 1,000 calls turn into 10,000!

Good luck with your pursuits,

Khalid.

Introducing FreelanceContent.co.uk

My girlfriend and I are moving to Glasgow next month, where she’ll be studying from September onwards. Between now and then – and whilst she’s studying – she’s working as an article writer. The job offers flexibility which is a major asset to any student!

So,  to make our lives easier and ensure there is an efficient process in place, I’ve setup FreelanceContent.co.uk. Word of mouth has already got the ball rolling and orders are trickling in with 100% positive feedback.

At only £1.30 per 100 words, we’re cheaper than the industry leaders, and there’s no minimum or maximum order so anything can be catered for, providing it is not too technical! Having struggled to find efficient yet affordable writers myself, I’ve even got her doing work for me now!

Payments are taken in advance via Paypal using the online ordering system. So please help my bum of a girlfriend stay in work by ordering through Freelance Content today!

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

Starting 2010

Happy New Year to you all! Starting 2010 with a fresh head after two weeks holiday has allowed me to re-evaluate my position and where I go from here. To be honest, I’m in quite a difficult position and so have decided to try a few different moves in a bid to build my future.

Firstly, I’ve started an geo network of Edinburgh sites including Edinburgh Hairdresser and Edinburgh Taxis. In total I have 15 domains, 10 of which have active websites on them. A few are already on page one and the long term plan is to sell private advertising to local business owners.

Secondly, I’ve sold a few small affiliate sites and started re-doing things properly, with the launch of Bass Amp. I picked this name up recently in a clear out portfolio sale and had a private offer for it within 24 hours of owning it. I think it is a good name with plenty of potential and possible a sale to an end user in the near future. I spent a day manually adding products to ensure there is little copied content from the merchants so I am hoping my sore fingers will be rewarded with some cash on affiliate sales!

Thirdly, I am still running Trout as my main investment with a view of it either providing a decent revenue stream or selling to an end user such as a magazine publication. The site is on target to receive 3,000 unique visitors this month.

Finally, I am negotiating for a few domain names with potential to sell individual digital products (don’t worry not eBooks!). My idea is to then setup an affiliate program  and have people promote it for me. Targetting a niche and offering, say 50% commission, should be quite appealing to affiliates as ppc campaigns should not cost a lot and each sale offers a high return.

Being an Internet Entrepreneur is not an easy task and I’m constantly followed on Twitter daily by “Guru’s” pretending to offer get-rich-quick schemes that anyone can do from home. The fact of the matter is, if it was that easy everyone would be doing it and driving around in Ferrari’s. Hard work, determination, and the ability to learn from your mistakes is what it takes.

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

Most Companies Just Don’t Get It

Having worked for multiple companies over the past few years and advised private clients occassionally, I am still shocked to see how many just don’t get the internet.

A bit of a bold and brash statement I know, but let me explain…

One of the companies I used to work for tied themselves into a £2,000 a month contract (for 6 months) with a local radio station (before I started) without doing any research, taking advice or shopping around. The result – nothing. Not one sale came from £12,000 expenditure. Long story short I marketed them online, had them on page 1 for multiple geo terms then left because they wouldn’t give me a single penny for a budget despite their site getting 1 new lead per day and over 500 unique visitors a month.

The same company had multiple private listings in national directories and paying a small fortune for it too. I actually had an arguement on the phone with one of them when I cancelled it because the advisor thought the ad was amazing. My question “where is your my ad when I type in keyword in City because that’s what I’m listed under in your directory”? He couldn’t answer it because his ad was no where to be seen, and in fact didn’t rank for much. Yet, because the directory was a national company the owner thought it was worth paying for.

Sure, you can’t measure success by a search engine ranking but I dived a little deeper into previous sales feedback forms and not one person had written that they had found us from said directory.

The internet is so powerful yet so underrated by companies and I begin to wonder when they will listen. Five years ago I said to myself; “give it five years and everyone will realise the potential”. Five years has passed and I’m still twiddling my thumbs. Different generations mean old habits die hard and quite frankly I think it’ll take a lot longer than another five stretch before everyone gets online.

It amazes me how many business owners don’t even have an active website or e-mail address. In this day and age they are addicted to their fax machines and passing trade it makes entrepreneurs like me scratch my head and wonder  if they’ll last much longer.

Take my hairdresser for example. Recently I setup their website and it is already getting 150 uniques a month. That’s 150 potential customers and 150 people they are saying “hello” too every 31 days that they didn’t have before. How crazy is that?

So let’s say we forget the little fish in the pond and focus on retailers or manufacturers. Well, I’ve found there isn’t much difference. After setting up Trout.co.uk I contacted many retailers, suppliers, distributors, manufacutrers, holiday providers, tutors and more to see if they’d come on board and push angling in a new light to the influential youth of today.

Guess how many were willing to help? Zero. None. Nada

Why? Well you could say it was because the site was a startup but to not even discuss it was a sad sight in my eyes, especially as I hadn’t even mentioned costs. I didn’t want their money for myself, I wanted to put equal amounts in to push the sport through competitions and guerilla marketing.

And I’m not alone. I have a friend who owns two wine websites and he’s had the same response. I’ve also got another friend who owns a music website and I would have thought companies would be jumping down his throat to get on there.

Fact of the matter is web advertising/branding is 24/7/365 to anyone, anywhere in the world, so why go for traditional media that is outdated and will be thrown away the next day? We’re cheaper, more flexible, effective and appeal nationwide rather than locally.

The high volume of visitors and the influence players in the web/domain industry has is quite frankly scary. I’m just stunned companies don’t stop for a second and try to work more with them rather than against.

Google is tweeking search results constantly and making things harder for us, affiliate merchants are tightening their commission belts and companies are dragging their heels in getting online/advertising on sites rather than Adsense.

Never mind the little fish, where will that leave us in five years?

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

Students Uncovered Marketing Equipment

As September comes to an end and the student term begins here in the UK, freshers week is just around the corner. In a previous post I mentioned how I was intend on sending photographers out to take plenty of snaps of students having fun and stamp their arms with our web address.

Hopefully, this inexpensive marketing plan will work and send visitors to the site. Each photo will be watermarked with our web address on it too so if the students copy the photos to e.g. their myspace profile, people will be inclined to visit our site.

The marketing is costing around about £10 per hour per photographer and that doesn’t include the t-shirts and stamps which are quite expensive too. I’m limiting each city I have on StudentsUncovered.com to 5 hours photograhy work, totalling 6 cities which equates to £300.

I am testing the water with 1-2 cities next week and if they are successful I’ll send photographers out to the others. What do you think of the t-shirt (kindly sported by my girlfriend) and stamp (proof) designs?

students uncovered t-shirt

students uncovered stamp

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

Introducing StudentsUncovered.com

One of the few projects I’ve been working on is Students Uncovered – a cross between an information site for all and a student portal with student related news, questions and more. The site has plenty of useful information for both students and non-students, including nightclub reviews and accommodation advice, as well as photo galleries and funny media.

I managed to find a fantastic wordpress theme to use that is very adaptable and integrated both pay-per-click (PPC) and pay-per-lead (PPL) adverts with two good companies, Media Jump and Tradedoubler.

I’ve mentioned Media Jump before – they are a small UK company and an alternative to Adsense. I managed to earn about $10 per day with them through my tattoo network and this was through “double clicks” – a user would have to click on a link then click on a paid link. Imagine the possibilities if it was single clicks only!?!?

They’ve recently introduced a new system called “FastBox” that is single clicks, much similar to Adsense. I have a good relationship with Media Jump and was invited to try this system out. Although their system is not as advanced as Google Adsense, things are going well and hopefully they will continue that way. If you are interested in signing up with them, drop me an e-mail and I’ll introduce you to my account manager.

Tradedoubler is an affiliate company who provide a marketplace for large organisations such as the Natwest bank. I decided to opt for PPL programs, specifically credit cards as many students are looking for 0% interest offers. PPL basically means a user will click on one of my ads and submit a true application that will be processed. Regardless of the decision to offer or not offer a credit card, I will be paid. This model is good however with the credit crunch, people may be less inclined to attempt to borrow as they are being easily refused and each credit check reduces your credit score.

I intend to build some good backlinks to the internal pages of Students Uncovered and get them ranked, such as “Nightclubs in Edinburgh” and have a cool marketing plan to get the site known amongst the party hard undergraduates – offline marketing.

I have purchased t-shirts and rubber stamps with my logo (and web address!) on it and intend to send attrative photographers to nightclubs across the country, wearing my t-shirts and stamping people they photograph. If the students don’t remember the hot chick wearing the t-shirt the night before, they’ll certainly be reminded with a web address stamped on their arm in red ink!

What do you think of the idea and marketing plan?

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

It’s Not Easy

Since the launch of Bar Vacancy, a trickle of jobs have been posted on the site however this has since stopped as my target audience is either away from their desks for the weekend or just not interested…yet.

Many people don’t believe in the one-man-band startup, especially if he/she is offering something for free. Something that seems too good to be true is generally ignored. People are wary of a catch or hidden cost and trying to prove there’s not whilst promoting the benefits of the site is difficult.

As a result, I’ve been focusing on recruiting representatives in Europe, mainly areas where UK bar staff travel in the summer to work, such as Tenerife and Ibiza. The idea is to have these people go into restuarants, bars and nightclubs and have them promote the site face to face with the owner/manager. By doing this, they are effectively pushing word-of-mouth advertising and will even offer to post jobs on behalf of the business.

A difficulty that spawns from the above problem is having a balance between jobs and workers. At present, I have more workers than posts, especially people looking for work in Tenerife and Ibiza etc areas. This is annoying as I don’t want people thinking there is nothing available or the site is useless so I need to act fast.

I’ve posted on pretty much every applicable forum and replied to threads for people looking for work.

Watch this space I guess!

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

Paperwork

In preparation for my week’s holiday in Spain I’ve been pushing to get my “to do” list finished, including the completion of two projects posted on Rent a Coder, finishing the setup of a piercing network included in the sale of my tattoo network and sorting out some back dated paperwork!

Thankfully the Rent a Coder projects are done – one extremely well and the other terribly. Nevermind, the latter only cost $30 and it works so that’s the main thing. I’ll be introducing these projects soon, both require groundwork prior to launching.

In preparation for the well written script to be launched I’ve been building a network of sites to support a marketing campaign. These sites will provide keyword specific information and link to the main site for organic traffic.

Upon my return from sunny Spain I’ll be contacting e-mail lists of people who will benefit from the site (it’s free to use) and then finally I’ll be exposing it to the masses through word of mouth, business cards, posters, Google Ads and the information sites previously mentioned.

Having an over-active brain, it’ll be difficult for me to switch off on my holiday so I’ve purchased an iPod shuffle and three books. I had a 1st Gen Nano before that was 1Gb also so I’m happy the 125 – 250 songs you can hold on a shuffle. The design is cool too meaning I don’t have to stuff another electrical device in my pocket!

Out of the three books, two were business related and one was “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu, seemingly a “must read”. They’ll keep my brain occupied and I’m sure the warm weather will slow me down a bit.

I’ll be excited to go and relax but excited to return and launch my new site.

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid

Offline Advertising

For one of my new projects – still in the pipeline, – I need to do direct advertising. People ignore e-mails and Google ads are competative (and pricey!), so I’m resorting to offline marketing.

I did this before with Elite Kit, my former security supplies e-commerce store, by writing letters to security companies and nightclubs. To be honest I’m not sure if it worked as there is really no way of tracking it, unless you provide a discount code or re-directed url. But, for my new project, this is not an option. Well it is but it would just complicate things and cost more to implement.

Business Cards work well if you introduce yourself. This would require a lot of legwork, especially since this project will eventually provide a service to the whole of the United Kingdom and then expand further into Europe.

The main benefit of the site is that it’s free whereas rivals charge £25 – £35 per submission. There are only two main rivals but they are well established. Tapping into this market won’t be easy, hence why I need to think outside the box. I don’t want to waste money, especially as the marketing budget for this project is cash hungry.

Do you have any suggestions?

I understand it’s a little difficult if you don’t know the service so I’ll provide you with a brief outline. Sorry I just don’t like to give it all away until it’s launched. The site is a classifieds ads portal relating to one particular niche where turnover is high, i.e the businesses in this market are constantly needing replacements.

Let me know your thoughts, hopefully I will be launching on the 15th of this month!

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.