Why Are You Doing This With Your Advertising?

[WannabeWebmaster]

At the risk of irritating you and losing some much-needed business I need to do with you, I just HAVE to say this... you need serious work on how you sell your advertising space. It is a terrible scheme and you can do a lot more both to increase your ad revenue AND please your ad-buying customers at the same time.

Your first problem is that all of your high-priced ads are on your home page or site entrance. You need high priced, high value ads on EVERY section of your site. With your home page, people just glance at it for half a second before going to the forums, stories, pictures/video, chat and the other pages. The total numbers may be lower on those other sections but THAT is where visitors spend their time and THAT'S where the advertising is the most visible and valuable.

The second problem you have is that you don't allow advertising customers to use targeted marketing. This is huge and even basic marketing principles will tell you how important this is. You have many diverse sections on your site including a forum, stories, ABDL products, cams/chat, Dear Daily Diapers, pics and video so why don't you let customers pay to selectively target their ads there??? This is absolutely infuriating. You have a golden opportunity to let customers pick the niche that they specialize in and advertise only on that section and yet you don't allow this. I'm not saying that your rotating ads or any sitewide ads won't be useful to some people... but you'll provide a much better service if you can allow customers to buy targeted marketing as well.

Again, I'm not trying to be mean here or ram something down your throats but I'm just incredibly frustrated at this ad scheme right now and trying to figure out how to buy advertising that will work for me.

[DailyDi]

I have your email about ads and am eager to work with you, just haven't gotten around to writing back yet.

That being said, it is not my goal to overly saturate the site with ads, which is why we target our spots... but I always work with those looking for custom plans. Our ad page isjust the basic stuff.

[WannabeWebmaster]

Alright thanks... and sorry for getting so emotional. About two weeks ago I sent a detailed and carefully written email to another site asking about their advertising policy as well. Probably spent half a day writing it and they didn't even bother to respond. Made me so mad. I guess that was a little too fresh in my memory and I was hasty deciding you wouldn't respond either which elicited that emotional response.

Anyway, yeah if you can do custom advertising down the road sometime when I get my site all ready, I'll make it worth your while in price and am plenty open to negotiation. Thanks so much for responding... I feel so much better and hope I didn't generate any hard feelings.

btw, I totally agree that a site littered with ads is a terrible idea and that isn't exactly what I had in mind.

[DailyDi]

Cool beans. I will contact you soon. Am normally faster, but have been under the weather and your note said your site wasn't ready yet so It wasn't a rush thing... should have sent a "I got ya" email at least tho, sorry.

[Repaid1]

You know I am a nobody, but I gotta say Anybody that comes to this site knows where the ads are. Even if they hit the homepage and progress to another spot of this site, they still have glanced at the ads at some point, maybe even went to the sites..I know I have. If something applied to them or something they were interested in they are going to look, now like me I have a wife and a mommy so I don't frequent those types of sites. I don't need big flashing banners to attract my attention...to me a simple link works for others possibly not. I don't believe this is the venue for a target market..simply because this site is basically only here for a select group and those that come here are usually quite aware of how to navigate the site within a small time frame.

Personally I never enter the site through the main page...as DD has provided those fun little shortcuts to forums and stuff! But hey you guys are developing stuff so you all can hash it out. I'm just saying that a sign on the bench seat or the billboard on the highway all work the same way you see it and then you either pay attention or not, not much is involved in Targeting a market there. If you have something new as far as AB/DL marketing on your website I can assure you. You can put a thousand Banners on a hundred websites. I can tell you through the years of my experience as a AB of 30+ years, word of mouth beats any fancy ad...just say'n. If you just get a link here on the boards of your banner or even a shout out in the boards, you only need a few people to visit and comment on your site and or products, the market isn't going anywhere and is constantly growing.

I'm not biased when I say this site is absolutely the hub and best of the AB/DL scene if we haven't heard of it, then it ain't out there. So DD I'm not trying to run out our much needed advertisers, but maybe its just a mature AB thing I don't think where or how you place a ad gives two shakes at how it delivers the message as long as the ad is there the people who need it WILL find it. I find it highly amusing that companies like Budwiser spend millions of dollars a year on fancy ads, yet I bet not even one percent of that is returned in sales. I mean seriously whens the last time you heard someone say "pick up some beer on the way over"..to have the other question "what kind???".. "oh the one with the Clydesdale's!" You either drink Bud or not, I personally drink Miller.....and they run way fewer ads than bud in fact I can't remember the last time I saw a Miller high life ad.

[WannabeWebmaster]

DailyDi... that's sounds perfectly fine. In all honesty, unless there's a specific time frame that I'd need to let you know by, you can take your time with a detailed response. The uncertainty of what "custom" advertising meant had me a little on edge over whether there would be any negotiation at all. But this is definitely going to be a long ways into the future before I can make an arrangement so there's no need to rush if you're feeling sick.

I just thought I'd get a little more specific and let you know a few general ideas/observations I've had. Hopefully this will help you out with a response. Anyway, one place I had my eye on was that Amazon.com spot. I was a little surprised to see it advertised on a site like this and if you're looking for someone to take it I'll be interested. My other idea was the definite empty space between your rotating ads and your "Daily Diapers" logo, which may accommodate a small rectangular ad. This would be nice in your "stories" section and maybe your "advice" section if you put the content from your old page back in there (that Dear Daily Diapers thing was really cool and I enjoyed reading it). Just for curiousity's sake, if you'd be wanting to sell a full-sized banner ad in those sections below the title heading, I'd be curious as to the price of that too. I'd definitely like to hear your thoughts and suggestions though and am pretty open to other ideas.

[WannabeWebmaster]

Repaid1, I must be a little too caught up in marketing theory right now from the books I'm reading and went a little off the handle. The material does sound sensible but then again it's a bit academic also so maybe I was reading too much into it. I think you have some really good points (social marketing is a great idea and my number one focus to make my material better than anybody else... if people talk I guess that does most of the job for me). However, I still have a strong curiosity about these techniques and how they'll work if we tried them. If I can try selective targeting on your site and I can do it cheap enough than it's plenty worth a shot... and it'll probably be a better indicator to you of whether it's worth it to alter your ad scheme than any argument I can put forth. Wouldn't you say???

Anyway, I hope to hear from you all again soon and hope we can work something out.

[Repaid1]

Repaid1, I must be a little too caught up in marketing theory right now from the books I'm reading and went a little off the handle. The material does sound sensible but then again it's a bit academic also so maybe I was reading too much into it. I think you have some really good points (social marketing is a great idea and my number one focus to make my material better than anybody else... if people talk I guess that does most of the job for me). However, I still have a strong curiosity about these techniques and how they'll work if we tried them. If I can try selective targeting on your site and I can do it cheap enough than it's plenty worth a shot... and it'll probably be a better indicator to you of whether it's worth it to alter your ad scheme than any argument I can put forth. Wouldn't you say???

Anyway, I hope to hear from you all again soon and hope we can work something out.

Works for me I'm all for improving the site, and if you can gain some education towards your career even better. Like I said it's DD's site and he makes the decisions so you guys can work together on that project as you see fit.

[spoonchicken]

I think "WannaBe..." is absolutely correct with the targeted mktg approach. Trust me; it does work well. As an example, have a banner/link for a crossdressing clothing site located somewhere within the Sissy Forum. Perhaps a bondage link inside Other Fetishes, etc etc etc. Repaid 1 IS right, when he says people who come here know where the ads are located, but , ...the more convienant the seller makes it for the customer to decide to buy, the FAR more likelier it is that they will! Why do you think the the cash register areas are crammed full of "last minute" items? That's NOT a coincidence!!!! Point being, I think WannaBes suggestion is spot on target. As a younger man, I spent 5 years working for a major retail chain. Not only did they have this sort of stuff down to a science, they went out of their way to teach & train all of us in professional margeting tecniques. I say go for it, IF DD can keep the ad costs reasonable enough for the seller to see the advantage in their increased capital outlay. Better advice than that, I probably don't have. My "expertise" (lol) is both 20 years old, and directly pertinent to a brick & mortar environment. I honestly have little if any clue about how exactly the money flow works in the world in Internet advertising & sponsored links and all that. Nevertheless, I just thought I'd throw my two cents in, wtf...