print advertising

[Chilihost]

I was just reading Lee's thread on this here, coincidentally I have been debating about this for the last few weeks, wondering if it is at all worth it to put an ad in the local papers.

Has ANYONE taken this approach? I would love to get more info to help me decide if it is a good idea. I was thinking of setting up a new site and advertising that one, that way I would be able to track my success to some degree.

cheers,
Luke

[Pixxxel]

Hmm...I don't think it would be worth the expense in the long run. Print advertising is much more expensive than internet advertising, and I'd assume the base is a lot smaller.

Here are some points to consider:

1. When you advertise an adult site online, you have these things working for you: 1. They obviously have the internet since they're looking at the site. 2. They're interested in adult sites (because that's where they see your ad. 3. There's more chance of an impulse purchase (because they are looking at porn, getting excited). These things are not all going to be in common with print advertising. You do not know if the people reading your ad have a computer, let alone the internet, you do not know if they are interested in adult sites, and even if they do like adult sites, they might not be in a position to look at your site right away, and they will most likely forget about it by the time they do get online.

2. Online advertising is WAY cheaper than print. For example, I recently bought 100,000 banner ad impressions for 5.00 (granted, impressions aren't as good as visitors, and a banner is a small space to show off your wares), but for the same amount of views as your ad is likely to get in a magazine/newspaper, you are going to pay a lot less for it. Meaning, if you were going to spend 200.00 on a print advertisement, you could purchase 4 million banner impressions, or if you do galleries, you could go to SpotBrokers.com, and get about 150k gallery views for your galleries for 150.00 (and you have the benefits listed above for online ads).

I don't know, you could try it out, nothing ventured nothing gained, but IMO (which is by no means professional), it would be wiser to stick with online advertising, as it's going to most easily reach your target audience.

Michael

[Chilihost]

Thanks for the comments, I was thinking the same but the "nothing ventured nothing gained" really came to mind...I am wondering if conversion on print advertising would be way higher, after all it does take an effort to go from your paper to your computer and type in the URL, so maybe they would be more likely to pull out that cc too.

I think I will have to check out what the rates are and make a decision based on that.

cheers,
Luke

[Lee]

Luke,

One thing i ommited from that article is that print advertising in the 'adult' industry is generally done more by companies looking to build their brand presence rather than looking to get direct traffic.

If you are in a position to do some large scale branding then by all means go for it but be aware that it (branding) may take a lot longer than just one edition

Regards,

Lee

[Chilihost]

I am NOT in a position to do branding nor to dump money into this for a long term, I just thought it might be a go as a one-off thing in the local gay mags. Like I said, I think I will get their pricing info and decide from there, if it is only $50 then I will give it a go but if its $500 then I am out!

cheers,
Luke

[Lee]

Gotcha

Well we have run ads in some local and national gay mags but only for models and even those ads got very little response to what we were hoping for.

As you were told above though nothing ventured

Regards,

Lee