Why am I so poor?

[Nick]

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Hi Bosun, welcome to the forum

That is my thought exactly - they don't believe they could possibly get anything valuable for £50.

In actual fact I have no doubt that one or two new yachts have been sold via a route that started with a visit to the New yachts page. Conventional wisdom is that if you have a web page that ranks highly for a specific high-value keyword or phrase then that is valuable real estate and people will pay to advertise on it. Perhaps we should ask substantially more. We sell £50 ads to a few small traders and they are generally very happy with the return on their ad There are no small traders in the New yachts business, so what you are saying is that I can't monetise those slots even though they represent a bargain.

Here's some traffic figures from January :

Unique visitors 20636
Number of visits 25467
Pages 49601
Hits 305109

(These figures exclude the forum, which had 12,378 visits in January)

The most popular entry page was http://www.bluemoment.com/buying.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; which is the page that comes up no.1 in Google for the search cruising yacht

Entry Page: 2916
Exit Page: 2481
Views: 4156

This page isn't linked to directly from anywhere, so the 2,916 direct entries to the site via this page came from search engine queries. Frankly I would expect to be able to sell some advertising on that page . . . perhaps what I need is an agent.

[MrMcP]

If you have the traffic, and the stats to back it up, it would seem odd that potential advertisers did not see value. What reasons did they give for not buying from you?

[JackJ]

[quote="Nick"].
When it comes to selling boats I would rather create an affordable online brochure which the owner can then link to from his free/cheap online ads.[/quote
I liked this idea so I, independently, contacted both yachtmarket and boatshop24. Their answers were that they offer this service inhouse but occassionaly farm it out to local website designers. Rather puts the kybosh on that then. Undetered this morning I contacted both Northshore (Southerly) and Rustler, independently of course. Both use agencies for advertising and both confirmed that they rarely advertise on websites other than those of affiliates and appropriate webpagespages of print based companies; eg yachting magazines. I agree with Bosun Higgs now, after my wee bit of research. Take a stand at a few boatshows.

[Alcyone]

Has anyone mentioned that those 29000 visits might be Scottish folk and therfore quite, er thrifty with their, better not go there.....

I don't do web advertising, but I do think Bosun has a point. When dealing with larger companies, ten years or so back, I trebled my daily rate and the workload went up dramatically. There may be something in the 'too cheap' idea?

Good luck, anyhow.

[Silkie]

Been trying to tell him this for years alky. Ask him when the 50 quid rate was last reviewed i.e. increased.

[Nick]

Has anyone mentioned that those 29000 visits might be Scottish folk and therfore quite, er thrifty with their, better not go there.....

I don't do web advertising, but I do think Bosun has a point. When dealing with larger companies, ten years or so back, I trebled my daily rate and the workload went up dramatically. There may be something in the 'too cheap' idea?

Good luck, anyhow.

The main site doesn't have a Scottish slant the way the forum does, it is very much UK based.

Will revise prices for the prime slots substantially upwards in the near future and hit the companies again. Too busy doing ridiculously cheap websites at the moment . . .

[Silkie]

...and hit the companies again.

You could suggest to them that while it might be outwith the remit of their usual marketing strategies it might nevertheless be interesting to look at the results of typing popular search terms into google.

You could then explain that while you already provide a free listing for their company, with a link to their home page, they might consider it to be advantageous to place a more impactful advert on a site which ranks so highly for these search terms.

For £230+vat pa 5x5, £640+vat etc. There will be an initial set-up charge of £x assuming web-friendly materials can be provided etc.

That'll be 10% please Nick.

[Alcyone]

Has anyone mentioned that those 29000 visits might be Scottish folk and therfore quite, er thrifty with their, better not go there.....

I don't do web advertising, but I do think Bosun has a point. When dealing with larger companies, ten years or so back, I trebled my daily rate and the workload went up dramatically. There may be something in the 'too cheap' idea?

Good luck, anyhow.

The main site doesn't have a Scottish slant the way the forum does, it is very much UK based.

Will revise prices for the prime slots substantially upwards in the near future and hit the companies again. Too busy doing ridiculously cheap websites at the moment . . .

I'm sorry, Nick. The Scottish thing was a cheap shot.

I should have gone for an expensive shot........

[FullCircle]

250 quid was about my mental picture.....

[Nick]

Undetered this morning I contacted both Northshore (Southerly) and Rustler, independently of course. Both use agencies for advertising and both confirmed that they rarely advertise on websites other than those of affiliates and appropriate webpagespages of print based companies; eg yachting magazines

I trust you did not mention Bluemoment. I don't want to have to contact our solicitor.

[Nick]

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On a slightly related matter, if you look at the traffic figures I posted above you will see that there are 20,600 unique visits and over 300,000 hits registered for the month.

A hit represents the download of a single file. Most web pages are composed of many files - every picture is a separate file for example, while some of them may be no more than invisible spacer graphics. Websites that boast about the number of hits they receive are not putting out any meaningful data. For example, our local tourist board advertises that its site receives 20 million hits a year, but based on the ratio shown above this would equate to a rather more believeable 1.3 million visitors a year.

The only relevant statistics are visitors and page views. The 'hits' figure is meaningless.

[Rowana]

And some days we never learn a thing

[JackJ]

For £230+vat pa 5x5, £640+vat etc. There will be an initial set-up charge of £x assuming web-friendly materials can be provided etc.

Been a bit busy in Dubai recently and only got a flight home this pm but sometning I've been meaning to post for some time to help you out of your money problems Nick. http://www.passageweather.com/index.htm ... 2AodXBAQcQ" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; That's the pricing you should be looking for. Why? Obviously it makes you some mopre cash but, importantly it gives some credibility to your website. People out here (there) I spoke to (people with big spending/advertising budgets) said that £50 a pop made them think that they would be advertising on an amateur one man site. Sometimes bluff over size works, especially on a netbiz. Go for a higher price and pot custs will think you're more than you actually are. Helpful? Also I am told that stats over visits cannot be trusted due to Bots and Admin refreshes. If I have time I'll put your case to some agencies I deal with in Jermyn Street next week. Now, where's that bloody ferry?