This post was guest blogged by Gyutae Park of Winning the Web, an Internet Marketing blog.
Are you getting the most bang for your advertising buck? For those of you that don’t know, I recently bought advertising space on JohnChow.com and JohnCow.com to promote a crazy contest on Winning the Web for free reviews worth $500. I did spend quite a bit of money to launch the campaign, but the contest saw huge success in getting Winning the Web noticed and up to new levels. If you’re wary of spending money to promote your site, this post will detail all of the financial formulas and information used in determining the effectiveness of my advertising campaign. You’ll then have all of the tools necessary to manage your risk and spend your hard-earned money with confidence.
All in all, I spent a total of $1,625 for promotion of the Winning the Web contest. Below is a breakdown of all of the individual components:
- John Chow review to promote contest $400
- John Chow review contest prize $400
- John Chow 125×125 $500
- John Cow review to promote contest $100
- John Cow review contest prize $100
- John Cow 125×125 and 300×250 $125
Now you may think that that’s a lot of money to be throwing at the promotion of a blog. Was it all worth it? Let’s analyze the results of the contest after 2 weeks:
- Gain of about 225 subscribers
- 400+ comments
- 1,646 referrals from JohnChow.com (12/1-12/27)
- 191 referrals from JohnCow.com (12/1-12/27)
If we calculate some of the important financial metrics using the information we have available, we find the following:
Each subscriber cost about $7.22
Judging from previous sales of blogs in the ‘make money online’ and ‘internet marketing’ niches, the value of each subscriber is worth approximately $31 in intangible value. Paying $7 is quite a bargain if you ask me.
The cost per click for referrals from JohnChow.com was $0.79.
$0.79 is probably double what I would have paid had I advertised using Google Adwords. However, the referrals from JohnChow.com are much more targeted since the prize for my contest was a John Chow review. Sure, it was more expensive but it was definitely worth it considering the results. I wouldn’t have reached the same level of success if I didn’t do it the way I did.
*Editor note – Gyutae forgot to take into account that JohnChow.com has nearly three times as many RSS readers as it does readers who visit the blog. If he received 1,646 referrals from JohnChow.com he would have received three times that from the RSS feed. That would reduce his CPC down to 24 cents.
The cost per click for referrals from JohnCow.com was $1.70.
The referrals from John Cow were much more expensive at $1.70. However, this is mainly because the review went up 5 days after the John Chow review so many of the readers had already heard about or seen the contest. The John Cow review still gave more exposure for my contest and started a snowball effect onto other sites blogging about Winning the Web.
If you break down the numbers, the $1,625 I spent doesn’t seem like much at all. Traffic to Winning the Web has increased by 500% and the intangible value of my brand has skyrocketed. The contacts I have acquired and the interest levels that have been sparked as a result of my promotion are absolutely priceless. Are you tactfully spending money to promote your sites? If not, you might want to consider doing so.