Advertising in Sunday Newspaper

[mobillica]

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Hi I run a cheap flight website which ranks quite highly in the google search engines for some good keywords. I received an email today from the Sunday Telegraph - they run a 'web windows' feature which highlights 15 websites on the net that would appeal to their target audience - mine is one of them -

The price is £485 -

What do you people think? - To be honest my website is just a few flight search engine links to BA, Expedia and Ebookers and Opodo - I dont really make alot of money off it because the commission levels are so low - But this looks like a good opportunity - has anyone else had a good response with advertising such as this? - Do you reckon I'd make more than £485 by taking them up on their offer?

I've only been at this affiliate marketing thing for under a year - I could probably just about afford it - Is it a goer?


Cheers!

[Mogga]

Is this the sunday newspaper which is sending me rubbish and not replying to my emails?

[PitBoss]

It's tricky because it's very hard to figure out how successful offline promotion has been unless you promote a unique URL only advertised offline.

In my experience with paying for advertising is that you can waste a lot of money finding good/ responsive places to advetise.

Can you contact any online companies who promote themselves offline and get an idea from them?

[mobillica]

Well its the Sunday Telegraph - i just think that getting my site advertised would just benefit my ego and not my bank balance! The commission levels are so small for flights I'm not sure its going to be worth it. However there are only 15 websites to be advertised in the section so its not as if I'd be in a long list of websites.

[Ecco]

While I've never paid to advertise in the press, I've had many experiences of my sites being featured in some article or another. You might be surprised to find how little traffic you actually get through when compared to their reader numbers.

[Mogga]

Email and ask for references off people currently using the service (or email them directly and ask)

[chrisk999]

I think it's a hard game to play just because of the risk involved.

At least with ppc you can divide your £500 into lots of small bits - with offline ads you put £500 down, and it's possible that you may get no sales whatsoever - all your money completely lost. Then again, you may do rather well out of it...

I did a number of offline ads earlier this year, and a couple worked really well but the rest only just broke even (one got hardly any sales at all).

Good luck

Chris

[angelabx]

I've also had some very nice features done on my site in the Sunday Times, The Sun etc and never once have I noticed an increase in daily traffic.

Not worth it if you ask me.

[Aquanuke]

Spam init, get tons of those emails.

[mobillica]

As I said before I still class myself as a beginner so not sure if advertising in the press is the norm or not -

£500 seems a bit steep when the market is not really targeted. Probably best with sticking the cash in Espotting or Overture.

Anyway, appreciate those replies people!

[chrisk999]

I think that's a wise move

[Guswold]

We were interested in the prospect of advertising in Web Windows, but canvassed the opinion of a few previous advertisers and no-one had found it worthwhile (http://www.a4uforum.co.uk/showthread...threadid=13397) - we may still have a punt on it if we're felling bullish!

[SillyJokes]

Advertising in the real world is costly and hard to track.

You need three adverts before you will see the full results of your efforts are working, therefore a one off is virtually useless.

Never, ever pay the rate card. You should be able to haggle them down to at least half and make sure they promise to put you near the top right of the page.

Frankly I think you will be hard pushed to see even £200 off an ad in the Sunday Telegraph via an affiliate site.

You are much better to sort out online advertising where people are already sitting at their computer.

Like GUswold says, if you ask other advertisers who don't compete with you what their results have been like you'll get an idea of whether it's worth it.

I looked at those web windows and to be honest, I would not be bothered to get out of my easy chair to look at any of the sites.

[mobillica]

Cheers - I think I've made my mind up already not to bother. I think the idea sounds good - getting ur site in a National newspaper but in practice/reality its probably not very profitable. If I had money to throw around I probably would, but at the moment I wont dive in. Besides, you can buy alot of curry and booze for £500!

[Ballswinger]

For the same money through a good agency you could get a decent sized ad of your own in some of the nationals and have control over how it looks hopefully generating a lot more income than a column feature.