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Does Anyone have good advice on advertising?
EquinoxHost
Member
in Help
Hello,
Was wondering if i could pick some peoples ideas on good ways to advertise my company. I understand i could use google adwords but that could be expensive way to get nothing back for it?! Also banned from webhosting talk, done nothing wrong just my friend reviewed my host when i was younger and they blocked me for it and never been allowed back.... But anyway, cant think of many other ways to find a good way to advertise. Thanks for anyones help 
Comments
Don't join a community, then with-in the first 5 days of being a member make a thread on "Can people here tell me how to advertise and do my job" which includes a short explanation that sounds like, "I am too lazy to do actual research and I need posts to get my count up to get my provider tag, so lets talk about how I can advertise better", yeah, yeah.. 2 birds with one stone and all that... however, lets just call this for what it is, an attempt to get your post count up quickly to get a provider tag.
To note, there are people who have been here for months trying to get their provider tag, so while you may be convinced getting a bunch of cheap comments out of the way so you can apply is a good idea, I can tell you it really won't get you that tag any faster.. (I think some waiting 3-4 months now who even actually attempt to participate).
My suggestion, slow down, participate in some discussions, ease your way in, so when you get that provider tag, it's really worth it and people already respect you.
my 2 cents.
Cheers!
that is some "tough but fair" advice from @TheLinuxBug I think
If you really want to just buy an ad on this forum then check with BuySellAds
Not sure if that would be a waste of money, but you can give it a try and let us know how it goes.
Just noting your domain name seems to be a (deliberate?) play on summerhost ...
(That's an interesting irony angle, possibly a submarine marketing opportunity here.)
But ... do you actually know what you're doing? I'm guessing no. Maybe better to just relax and observe a bit.
Actually you can take you two cents back and realise not everyone wants to have a provider tag. I don't current want to register with companys house in my country as that costs money and im a start up so dont want to be paying tax and other things i don't need when i haven't even started up yet. I was actually just asking for basic advice from people that are in the same situation as me. When i do hit the post count for the provider tag i wont be asking for it as i don't think it should be a requirement to advertise products that you want to sell. Thanks for your "2 cents"
you're actually rather rude. Don't judge a book by a cover and give sensible adivce on what you believe is the best way to advertise. maybe some examples to what you have found out is the best way to advertise example adwords etc. If i wanted to get my post count up id just comment on peoples posts not create a new discussion on something i want peoples opinions on....
Lulz, nigh ...
You're putting the cart before the horse. In order to advertise you need to have something actually worth advertising. You don't. Your site is borked, the links all point to either nothing or some billing panel. The site is cookie-cutter template and you didn't even bother to finish that.
Let's give you the benefit of the doubt that you didn't open this thread for SEO and advertising purposes in a public category 'help' on the forum that gets scraped into Google every 10 minutes instead of 'offtopic' or asking questions in the Cest Pit.
Now, can you explain to me, if you have been running a business and are truly opening this up to be a conversation and not just a blatant advertisement, why did you not include anything specific about your own experiences and what has worked for you to get the topic started? What research have you done on your own on this topic? What things have you have you tried that failed or that you think could work, but maybe some people could offer their suggestions on?
That would be starting a topic of discussion. Go reread what you wrote and step back for a moment, pretend your a member here for 8 years and you are reading this, what do you think it seems your intention was/is?
(taking my 2 cents back)
Cheers!
Ok so here goes for you.
Maybe i didn't include the things at the start was because i actually just wanted other peoples experiences on how they've done advertising and what has worked best for them. I've tried a few things. I have used adwords before for a previous company and it didn't really work. people visited the website but never really bought anything from it. I used to use web hosting talk a lot until i got banned as a friend of mine left a review of my company at the time but then they banned me and didn't give me any reason and unfortunately never explained the reasoning behind the banning properly and didn't give warnings to make sure i was aware of the rule (i was a lot younger in 2013 and I'm now 27 and wanting to make a life for myself and a business).
So overall it failed using adwords. worked using webhostingtalk but only for a while I've used social media Facebook/twitter not sure if its worked or just wasting my time.
Hope this helps in someway explain what i've tried and maybe give advice on what other people may have tried or done that worked better for them.
IMHO, if you're not a big player investing in Google, Facebook & Co. is a waste of time and money. There are thousands of small businesses selling hosting and you just won't be able to achieve ROI this way.
That said, I suggest:
Go local: attend events, meetups, conferences and expand your networking. Visit potential customers in your geographic area;
If you are skilled, create a niche blog with relevant and unique content (technology, business etc.) and link it to your offers;
Join online communities like this one. Not only for advertising purposes, but to contribute in a relevant and positive way. It will take some time but eventually you will be able to establish credibility;
And remember that this type of business is not built overnight.
God bless your heart, good luck, best wishes and a warm kiss.
Thank you for your advice ITLabs. I will take this in mind. I guess like you said I could add that to my website a blog about technology and business? I understand this type of business is not built overnight and I'm willing to wait and hopefully build a business.
Thanks again.
A blog with relevant and unique content would eventually generate organic traffic. You should be smart to figure out how to link that content to your hosting offer in a natural way. Try to explore the needs of a particular niche and how technology can help that niche generate business. Then talk about how your offer can help. You can do this on your current domain or create different domains for each niche.
Edit: you're welcome ;-)
You can purchase an ad for LET on http://buysellads.com
I advertise my servers door to door.
OP said banned from WHT.. and did nothing wrong. :l
Just a reminder. Depending on industry, seo these days can cost even more than ppc (google ads, bing ad, etc).
Not everyone can write good articles so you might need to hire writers. You will need some quality content before search engines give you possible attention and that is just the beginning. Wait until natural traffic come into play can be disappointing and at some point you could just lose your patience and decide to accelerate the process with backlinks or even pbns, which will cost you even more.
In my case, I manage a small google ppc account in a very niche field for my company that spend $300 - 500 /mo. and generate about 10-20 leads. If I spend all the budget on hiring writers / buying BLs I probably can get some good articles and backlinks with high domain authority but there's no guarantee when they will work (or if they ever will).
Another very efficient way of advertising is what you just did - created a thread asking an advice on advertising putting your summerhost into your signature. Bad advertisement is still advertisement.
Anyway, that html template on your site is extremely overused on summerhosts, that's a bad sign already.
People keep mentioning summerhosts. What is it. Do you mean summer hoax? Its the only thing i could find on google when searching for summer host?
If you continue to read the thread and not just the small bits you'll see I've explained why i was banned from WHT and the supposed reasons behind there banning. Seems like a recurring problem with yourself not reading entire threads before posting as its happened in many other threads like the cPanel being blocked thread...
Have a good day
Popcorn.gif
Provide good service, maintain that for months/years to show your values. The rest of marketing things aren't as important in service industry.
Most of the people who wanna buy services nowadays aren't stupid at least know how to google or read reviews before paying any. Most fake reviews wouldn't work every time too, so don't try that route either.
Good luck with your journey, this is very competitive space.
summerhost.biz
That website is rather ugly. I wouldn't order of there its just rather plain and boring. And when you press some of the links it just goes to another website colocrossing....
Sell some $2.99/yr VPS.
Don't want provider tag but spam on signature?
Yeah, we need $2.99 KVM with 4GB RAM and 4 cores (Ryzen)
Oh, the delicious irony of that statement. You sound like you're talking about your own site.
Support? Nope, billing.
Knowledge Base? Nope, black hole
Contact Us? Sure, open a ticket that we wont answer.
FAQs? Back to billing please.
Blog? Uhm, still working on that.
I’m allowed a signature aren’t I. Doesn’t mean I don’t want a provider tag. And as I said in the above I’m not going to register a company with my government to pay taxes etc for nothing and just so I can post in the offers page. Feel free to ask a moderator if I’ve asked for a provider tag
So you’ve basically just said that because I would rather deal with questions by our billing suite that we pay for that it’s a bad thing. And knowledge base haven’t completed that yet only just started out. I basically came here for advice on how to advertise not to be told that my site is poor. There is a better way to give people advice on what they may have missed or what they can do to improve on their site. At least compared to summer host my site links completely to itself and no where else other then it’s own domain. Yes we are still working on the blog as I wasn’t sure if I needed one but that’s to someone else’s nice advice I’ll start working on one now.
Don't need to, you sell unlimited shared hosting based on cPanel. You wont get one.
this thread might could use a good soundtrack