How effective has advertising been for you?

[mossface]

Anybody had much experience with using paid advertising to drive traffic to your site? Is it worth the $ to you? Anything that really worked for you? Anything you'd do different?

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http://www.koogatoo.com

[Arthur07]

We use Google Adsense to drive visitors to our website.

It is quite effective, particuarly because you can geotarget traffic. For instance, we only recieve visitors from Scotland. Also, we use quite specific ads and keywords so visitors coming to our website, do specifically want what we offer - the average visitor to our website spends 5 minutes browsing it. Not bad going.

It is definately worth the $ to us. Although, the keyword costs do tend to worry, or certainly the ones we use. Occasionally, we have to stop using selected keywords as their prices go through the roof.

I wouldn't opt for one of these websites, which charges $50.00 and sends you 100,000 completely random visitors using a pop-under or something. The majority will probably just close the window straight away or a pop-up blockered will probably kill it.

Anyway, I hope there is some good advice in there anyway :).

[CyberBoy]

We use Google Adsense to drive visitors to our website.

It is quite effective, particuarly because you can geotarget traffic. For instance, we only recieve visitors from Scotland. Also, we use quite specific ads and keywords so visitors coming to our website, do specifically want what we offer - the average visitor to our website spends 5 minutes browsing it. Not bad going.

It is definately worth the $ to us. Although, the keyword costs do tend to worry, or certainly the ones we use. Occasionally, we have to stop using selected keywords as their prices go through the roof.

I wouldn't opt for one of these websites, which charges $50.00 and sends you 100,000 completely random visitors using a pop-under or something. The majority will probably just close the window straight away or a pop-up blockered will probably kill it.

Anyway, I hope there is some good advice in there anyway :).

I don't really think you use Adsense to gain traffic but rather Adwords. If you do use Adsense, please let me know how! :)

Back to the topic, it all depends on how much your spending for each visitor and what's your ROI. I personally do test trials to find out what my ROI will be around before I make huge promotions. It's quite beneficial and helps you save some money.

[Punkinbutt]

I have seen some quality traffic from Bidvertiser. I used their $20 in free clicks and have been earning off the revenue. It's made a difference for sure.

[MafiaMaster]

Well, it all depends on the type of paid traffic we're talking about really.

When I was using paid links, I never got an over abundance of traffic. I would get traffic, but I was never really sure if it was worth the money. What was worth the money was my ranking in the search engines because of that link. It gave me more long term traffic which is why to this day, I have no problem spending the money on purchasing links. But, I also think that it has to do with where you buy the links.

When it comes to paying for actual CLICKS, I have to say that I have had decent success. I tried the free $100.00 from Yahoo for my science forum and it sent me traffic. I got some sign ups, but overall, I really did not profit from it. So, for me, trying to profit from the actual clicks to my site was not really what was going to happen. But, the traffic was pretty nice none the less and I liked seeing the boosts.

[Arthur07]

I don't really think you use Adsense to gain traffic but rather Adwords.

Sorry. I always get confused between the 2.

[ebittner]

I have used it before and it only wokrs well if you can do targeted advertising such as Google ad sense. You are also going to want to spread out your campaigns to take place over a very long time instead of just a week or something like that.