 |
|
NONE: a few questions...
a few questions...
William Henry (bobhenry_at_cymedia.com)
Thu, 18 Jul 1996 00:45:53 -0400
Hello Everyone,
I recently joined this mailing list. I wasn't the 1000th member, however :(
I have a few questions. They all deal in one way or another with online
advertising. I am a website administrator/Webmaster for a web site that
provides schedules, and other information and entertainment for the local
music scene in Washington and Baltimore. I believe that my site offers a
valuable advertising location for many different products and services. The
demographics of my "users" is very desirable. LDA (legal drinking age),
College Students or College educated professionals, Music lovers, night club
and bar patrons, among many other subsets. Most importantly, these "users"
seem to be repeat customers. They use this site on a weekly basis. "My"
unique visitors aren't just a random sampling of web surfers.
My questions have to do with the mixed signals I recieve "out there" about
advertising, and about other sources of revenue.
First, I have never been able to pin down EXACTLY what each site means when
they claim "100,000 hits a month" or 50,000 visitors a week. I've been
maintaining the Local Music Scene website for almost a year now, and I see
about 300 - 400 UNIQUE visitors a day, which comes out to around 10,000
unique visitors a month. I also show in my logs about 150,000 - 225,000 hits
a month. I don't think the hits really equate to anything other than how
much crap I've loaded onto my pages. I can make a web page that has alot of
entertainment or information quality, and produce 1 hit per person, or I can
produce a crappy, slow loading, graphics intense page that takes over an
hour to load, and it will produce 50 hits per person. That proves nothing.
What is the accepted standard? Should I lie to potential clients? Should I
deceive them even though I'd like to build working relationships with them?
Am I too honest?
Second, I'm curious about the experiences of other "small" web sites that
have tried to eak a small living off the services they provide. I don't
expect to get rich doing this, but I put alot of work into it, and it
provides a great service to people interested in the music scene in
Washington and Baltimore. There are alot of avenues I am pursuing to bring
in cash, but I find that I pour it right back into the site, to make it even
better. I have been contracted by a few companies to produce web pages that
can take advantage of Local Music Online's users' interests. I'm designing
a series of pages for an events and promotions company, as well as
negotiating with a recording studio and a music equipment retailer. These
all bring money in, and can be considered advertising, but they don't take
advantage of what is currently being WASTED. The site has numerous pages
that should be promoting things like budweiser, or zima, or tower records,
or SONY. These pages are being displayed to so many of these companies'
customers, and potential customers. The value isn't even in direct
purchases, but more importantly in the whole "consumer mind-set" concept,
where these viewers can be flooded with a product's image until they
automatically choose that product over another.
Would anyone have any thoughts on hiring commission based advertising
salespeople? I recognize that I do not have the experience or contacts
needed to go after these national corporations. I think I'd do better
offering someone with the expertise a sweet commission on all advertising
accounts he/she can bring in. Say, a deal like 50% of gross for 3 months,
and 5% less each month thereafter until the account earns them 10%. The 10%
would compensate them for maintaining the account. Would something like
this be too sweet of a deal? would it be feasible for a professional
salesperson to work under those terms? Would terms like that encourage a
higher turnover of clients, since the salesperson can make more on a NEW
campaign compared to a longterm campaign?
I hope these questions are pertinent to others as well. Thanks in advance
for all suggestions, feedback, etc.
Bob Henry
bobhenry_at_cymedia.com
http://www.cymedia.com/dcmusic/index.htm
An "expert" is anyone from out of town.
HOW TO JOIN THE ONLINE ADVERTISING DISCUSSION LIST
|
With an archive of more than 14,000 postings, since 1996 the
Online Advertising Discussion List has been the Internet's leading forum focused on professional discussion
of online advertising and online media buying and selling strategies, results, studies, tools, and media
coverage. If you wish to join the discussion list, please use this link to sign up on the home page of the Online Advertising Discussion List. |
|
|
Online Advertising Industry Leaders:
Clicksor
List and Found
AdJungle
The Laredo Group
Add your company...
|
