NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> If you list me, I'll list you ...
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> If you list me, I'll list you ...
Sharon Tucci (CEO_at_ergodynamix.com)
Thu, 04 Sep 1997 10:24:35 -0400
Hi Folks,
I'm an online publisher - right now exclusively email
publications, but this will soon be changing. Our first
publication, All About Money, has a subscriber base approaching
38,000. We have had close to 50,000 subscribers to date (as with
any publication, no matter how good it is, you do lose some
subscribers along the way) About 2/5ths of these subscribers have
come through reciprocal mentions. Even now, with our current
subscriber base, we continue to do reciprocal exchanges. Further
to this, we have NEVER paid one cent out in advertising or for
any other promotional purposes.
I'd like to address a few things:
1. If you have a business online, be it an e-zine or web site,
you should know what the value of each "hit" or "subscriber"
represents to your business.
In our case this translates to $3 on an annual basis, although
we are striving to boost this number higher by continuing to
add-on to our offerings. My target is $12 per subscriber on an
annual basis, well below the number for print weeklies.
2. As an ongoing part of your marketing program, you need to
know what the *true* cost of each "hit" or "subscriber" gained
through different methods is for you.
Example: If you are buying banner advertising, then there is
not just the cost of the views and click-throughs, there is
also the time factor involved. Whether it is you handling it
or a staff member, the time associated with it has costs.
Even registering with search engines has a cost. Posting to
discussion groups like this has a cost.
3. Based on #1 and #2, you should focus on those methods that
will bring you the most profits. For example, if the cost
of doing banner advertising per hit actually translates to a
number higher than your profits per hit, then you have a
problem.
I'd like to address a few of the comments made thus far:
1. It would be a full-time effort and as one person quoted,
costing $100,000 a year to handle just reciprocal links.
I have a hard time believing this would be true for *most* types
of web based businesses. I receive about 50 emails per day
asking for a link to a site or e-zine or a press release
mentioning a site. I doubt that over a week's time it takes me
more than 2 hours to deal with - including looking at the sites
or ezines to screen out possibilities.
(Besides that, $100,000 per year? What is your overhead per
employee then?)
As with any other part of your marketing efforts, reciprocal
links have their costs as many of you have pointed out.
$100,000 per year translates to (1680 hours per year) almost
$60/hour. If it takes an hour per link and then another
hour over a year for maintanence, that translates to $120.
Based on these numbers, the value per hit and your normal
average costs associated with new hits, you should be able
to decide whether a reciprocal link would be worth it or not.
Will they all be worth it? No, of course not.
2. The traffic would be flowing one way.
Another thing I don't buy - unless a site is expecting your
site to be their own source of traffic!
3. The objective of getting a visitor to your site is to have
them stay there and not go somewhere else.
That depends on what the objective of your site is in the first
place. If you want one-shot visitors, then no, reciprocal links
don't make sense. If you want repeat traffic, reciprocal links
DO make sense.
I'll share something: in All About Money, we feature a somewhat
regular column "Links of the Week". These are usually links
geared to one topic. They are not reciprocal links since we rate
the sites and provide commentary, however, we do tell the webmaster
of the sites we list that we have provided coverage of their
site. All of our articles are on autoresponders, so we know
exactly how many people want to read each article. In EVERY issue
of AAM to date, the Links of the Week feature outpulls every other
article. In fact, we've probably received over 100 emails from
readers saying how much they enjoy this feature.
4. I think that the tennis web site is something different. Perhaps
a solution in these cases is to offer suppliers of tennis products a
discount on advertising when providing a link back?
I don't think that reciprocal links can or should be done with
direct competitors, i.e. if you are a tennis content site relying
on advertising revenue to exist, don't link to another tennis
content site unless their focus is entirely different. You are
competing for the same advertising dollars. But why not reciprocal
links with general sports sites?
I've excluded mention of the Link Exchange or other methods of
banner swaps. Those present more measurable methods of links, but
I think represent a different discussion.
Sharon Tucci
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