Advertising on big web sites

[Zonirik]

Has anyone had any success with link advertising with big web sites such as news dot coms or any other information slash news related sites?

I see some of my competitors out there are advertising on such sites and I began to wonder if this is a good way to promote advertising that is non yahoo, dmoz, OV, G, etc, related.

One site offers a link advertisement for a flat fee for 750 dollars per month and states my link will be promoted on all of their 350,000 + pages. They have a PR of 8 and from what can I see they are listed in the yahoo directory. If I decided to advertise with them do you think my PR would possibly raise as well? I know that it takes approximately 3 months for G serps to fall in to place - so would that mean if I advertise with them for lets say 6 months, would my PR at 5 perhaps raise to a 6?

My other question is do you really think this is worth looking into? 750 bucks per month is a big drop in my bucket and I'm trying to do as much research as possible to make this seem less frightening. If I could get more traffic that would be great, but if that traffic is just traffic then it wouldn't do jack squat for me.

At that price the yahoo directory is looking a lot better price wise per month if you think about it. But then again 350,000 + pages to be listed on could help an affliate web site such as myself.

What are your thoughts?

[Zonirik]

Anybody??

[Quadrille]

Whether $750 is good value depends on the income it will generate, not your GPR; and there's no guarantee that one deal will achieve anything.

Some claim that you are being offered 350,000 links, but some of us do not believe Google is that naive; I find it difficult to believe that 350,000 links from one site is as effective as one link from each of 350,000 sites. The jury is out.

But in terms of visitor numbers, referrals from one site will certainly not be anything like as good as links from many sites - most of those 350,000 will be wasted, or seen by many of the same people.

But your $750 per month would buy you many directory entries - most for a one-off fee - and there are any number of links you can get for free.

Also, you need to be sure that where the ads are seen, they will be seen by your target audience. Else, again, they're wasted. And search engnes are also concerned about relevance.

So much depends on whether your site will qualify for free listings, whether you have the time and commitment to grow links more naturally - and whether this deal will deliver what you hope.

There are dangers attached to buying links, but without knowing your site or niche (or the site making the offer), I'd not like to be more specific!

Whatever you decide, review it every 1-3 months, until you are quite sure it's working.

[ihelpyou]

They have a PR of 8 and from what can I see they are listed in the yahoo directory. If I decided to advertise with them do you think my PR would possibly raise as well?
That should not have anything to do with your decision or thought process at all.

Buy the advertising if you think you can convert the referrals it gives you. No other reason. That PR8 isn't a PR8 anyway. It could be a 6, 4, or 2 or 10..... you don't know.

You should be thinking about what type of visitors that news site is going to send you and are they your target market. That's your most important question.

Aside from that, all that Quadrille said you can insert [here] again.

I would give it a trial run of a few months to see what happens. I don't see how you would know anything any other way.

[Webmaster T]

Unless you plan to keep advertising there will be no long term PR gains since once the link is gone so will the benefits from it. You are buying advertising access the value of the advertising based on conversion metrics. Poor conversion = bad ad spend unless the amount of traffic is high with a low conversion. I'd base a decision on cost/sale or $750 divided by the number of sales. If it doesn't equal or surpass your normal "customer acquistion" costs then it's best to drop the ad.

[Zonirik]

Thanks for your responses! I'll give these ideas a shot.