

What is the minimum budget to promote a site? - Fuca

I have a site, and I would like to know what do you consider it is the least amount I should spend promoting it and where should I spend it? thx
======
STHayden
I know of a couple places you can get listed for free and get decent traffic
for early startups.

The Museum of Modern Betas always good for a couple hundred visitors.
<http://momb.socio-kybernetics.net/>

Killer Startups is an ass ugly site but can send some traffic.
<http://www.killerstartups.com/>

Simple Spark has not sent me a ton of traffic but they have a nice looking
site and will hopefully gain more of an audience. <http://simplespark.com>

I'm also looking for more ways to get the word out so the more advice the
better.

~~~
abhishekdesai
add <http://spicypage.com> to this list

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stealthstartup
If you're selling things, you might consider an affiliate program. In one of
my startups, I had a couple of hundred affiliates signed on before I launched
by giving away free copies. It resulted in hundreds of thousands in income the
week we launched. Most of the sales came from the top 20 affiliates.

Potential affiliates are not hard to come by and you only pay if they perform.
Just pretend you are a customer, search for your product/service in Google and
contact everyone who is on the first page as ads or natural search and give
them a copy of your product and ask them to promote it if they like it in
exchange for a healthy commission. They've got the traffic, and many of them
probably don't know how to monetize it.

It also helps to suggest ways for them to promote your product. For instance
supplying custom emails for them to send out to their list, promoting it in
their blog, adding your product as an up-sell when their customers buy their
stuff from them etc.

You can also setup things like cross-promotional auto-responder messages,
where you have a message in your auto-responder promoting them, and they do
the same for you. No commissions required.

It all depends on what you're doing. If I knew what you were doing, I'd have
much better advice.

Despite what at least one person said, article writing is a great way of
getting natural traffic and being slowly gaining traction in Google. It just
takes time and has to be done right. Don't over post and make sure you post it
to your own site and get it indexed by the search engines before syndicating
it.

There are other things you can do as well, like buying domain names that have
pagerank and putting content on them that references your site. Risky if you
ask me. Google will eventually black-list everyone who does that sort of
thing.

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kyro
$0.00

Techcrunch, Twitter, YouTube, Digg, Facebook, news.yc, etc. are all extremely
effective places to create buzz for no cost.

~~~
andrewparker
Unless you're building the next social news site or a bittorrent client, this
is the wrong initial audience for your product. You want to find people that
are actually in your target demographic, not the fickle digerati that try 10
new web services a day but never stick around at any of them.

You want your initial customer base to be your target demographic because
their initial feedback will help shape future iterations of your product. If
you just launch with the web 2.0 social news scene, their feedback will be
less relevant and will take your product down a distracting path.

~~~
derefr
I never really thought of the "digerati" as actual _users_ for the product;
they're more like "carriers" for a (memetic) disease--they'll talk about it to
their non-technical friends, set up their own stuff using it as a platform,
and so on.

(Not that I have any idea how the religious book market works, but) if you
want to sell Bibles, do you go door-to-door, or do you just go to churches and
try to get the preachers to use you as their source? The tech crowd are the
preachers to the regular joe user--they're the ones interviewed for tech color
pieces in the news, they're the ones deciding what software to install in your
schools, libraries, workplaces, and government buildings; they're the ones who
set your router filtering policies. If the students in a school can goof off
on Facebook but not Myspace, guess which one the school's network will live
on?

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tx
Ignore standard (and popular) BS of "promotion through blogging and social
networks", that's a myth. A successful blog is a business on its own. PR
companies have full-time bloggers, Facebook "friends" and even wikipedia
editors to spread the word about their clients, and it will cost you serious
money: on par with several full-time yearly salaries. And don't expect to
become a Facebook after spending that much. Building a brand in consumer-space
entertainment business costs millions of dollars (and some luck, still)

That is a bitter truth, assuming you're after building a sustainable business.
That doesn't apply to you, however, if all you need is to get a couple
thousand "early adopters", living mostly in Bay Area, create some awareness of
what you're doing in SV-circles, hopefully reaching an ear of a potential
acquirer so you could flip it for a few million, then hire a good SV-connected
PR firm: that will cost you $10-20K/month or get admitted to YC and their PR
machine will do the trick.

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webwright
Spend nothing, at first.

The first thing you need to do is create an "engine". Something where you can
reliably introduce a user to it, and have that user ultimately invite at least
1 other user (on average). In modern hype-infused parlance, this is a "viral
loop" (with a viral co-efficient of more than 1). But really, it's as old as
the Internet.

You can achieve this in one of 3 ways:

1) Be surprising, controversial, funny, or useful. People always tell their
peers about fabulous products.

2) Get scientific about viral marketing. Widgets, facebook apps, etc. This is
hard for most businesses (but for others-- it's laughably easy... I know a guy
who is serving up hundreds of millions of widget views on a product that
essentially didn't evolve past the first 20-30 man hours of work).

3) Get smart about SEO (if your biz is a content play). This is really just a
different flavor of viral marketing. Yelp, Digg, and other UGC sites have a
great viral loop. Visitors come. Some create content. Content gets indexed.
Indexing generates google traffic for new page, which brings in users. Rinse,
repeat. Wait 2 years and you have a vast pile of indexed content.

If you can't do these, then you're stuck buying attention with time or money--
which scales VERY poorly unless you have a great opportunity for
revenue/profit. If you can pull these off, then marketing dollars/time is just
adding gasoline to a healthy little fire.

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gscott
I find low traffic sites on adbrite.com and use there CPM option to advertise
on them. A website might have 500 visitors a day and cost .05 cents per CPM.
So I can spend a few dollars (a month) and get full time advertising on a
number of websites. For higher traffic sites use the fixed rate pricing if it
is available.

~~~
gscott
Another idea

Step 1: Write an article between 300 and 500 words on your products target
market, then suggest your product as the solution

Step 2: Submit your article to article submission sites such as
articlebiz.com, crixi.com, electrictext.com, contentdesk.com

Step 3: Rework your article into a press release and then submit. PrLeap.com
or PrWeb.com (about $120)

Step 4: Rework your article into a video. You can read your article over a
slide presentation. Submit this to Youtube and other video sharing sites

Step 5. Turn your article into a podcast (audio only) and submit it to iTunes
<http://www.apple.com/itunes/tutorials>

Step 6: Create a blog intro with your video code in it.

Step 7: Create a Squidoo Lens

Step 8: Social bookmark everything you have just done at propelier.com,
digg.com, del.icio.us, stumbleupon.com, twitter.com, reddit.com, tagza.com,
fark.com, newsvine.com, furl.net, swik.net, connotea.org, sphinn.com,
blinklist.com, faves.com, mister-wong.com, spurl.net, netvouz.com, diigo.com,
backflip.com, rawsugar.com, bibsonomy.org, folkd.com, linkagogo.com,
indianpad.com, plugim.com, myjeeves.ask.com, jumptags.com, mixx.com,
wirefan.com, danogo.com, ka-boom-it.com.

Repeat process!

~~~
quellhorst
Have you done this? What were the results?

~~~
bluelu
I once paid a guy to write articles and submit them to these article sites.
There were a few visitors coming from those sites at the beginning, but it
didn't help much. (This has also been 2 years ago, things might have changed)

~~~
quellhorst
It sounds a bit like a plans sold by get rich quick sites. Instead, spend time
improving your site.

------
njetx
You really need to work backwards from the value of the customer. If you have
something that directly monetises then you can calculate value of a register
user and of a visitor. Back out your marketing budget from there.

However I am assuming you have a consumer app where it is very hard to
calculate the value of a visitor/user. In that case you are looking at viral,
social media, SEO and paid ads. Viral works if your product is intrinsically
viral product (send to friend doesn't count). Social media works if have rich
content (how to's, great photos, recent news). SEO is what you do if you can't
do the first two (I know of one of the world's biggest travel social networks
who never paid a penny on SEO). The problem with SEO is it takes a lot of time
to build up traffic.

That brings you to paid advertising. I think paid advertising is great for
getting everything kick started but the business model for paid ads doesn't
stack up for free consumer apps. Hope that helps.

------
quellhorst
With social media its hard to get above the noise level. To start out, you
should have a company blog.

Also look for advertising coupons for Yahoo, MSN and Google. You need good
analytics so you can tell what keywords/ads do the best. Only target search
ads, avoid the spammy content networks when starting out.

Once you have some traffic coming in, look at what users are doing, tune your
website to try to increase conversions.

Spend more money as you bring it in. What type of site? How does it generate
money?

~~~
Fuca
used cars ads, it is by google ads, and an option to add photos that cost $4 -
freeusedcarsads.com

~~~
kyro
I hope you guys realize that the above comment is the OP answering questions
about the site trying to get marketed, so there's no need to vote him/her
down.

------
redorb
the minimum budget is whatever you can afford...

The standard (2) options are search engines and their paid advertising
platform.

The "2.0" option is social media.

Option (1) __Search Engines __

have SEO done on your site; any traffic you don't have to pay for is the best,
second register with only Google, Yahoo and MSN paid ads; spread your budget
according to engine traffic and technology to catch click fraud, 65% google,
25% yahoo and 10% MSN (live).

\- adjust your budget according to cost per action on your site (setup
analytics) to the correct engine for your audience (google = mainstream, every
genre) (yahoo = less technical audience) (MSN = industrial and older)

option (2) __social media __

this is the hardest option and unless your site is naturally viral or
something people would care about (in which case it would have probably
already got "buzz" or users) trying a social media campaign on a site that
your mom,dad,sister,brother or friend wouldn't visit more than once a week
probably isn't worth your time (unless you have that in abundance)

if you need any free advice email me.

------
shafqat
We've spent 0 so far, and have had pretty good results. The blog is huge, and
I started the company blog almost six months BEFORE launch. I'm also active in
the general tech community and try and leave meaningful comments on the blogs
that matter to what we're trying to do. And it has paid dividends. We're still
in private alpha, but will be opening up our doors in 2 weeks.

Then its SEO, SEO and more SEO.

------
bootload
_".. What is the minimun budget to promote a site? ..."_

How much does it take to make a demo, blog about it? Show don't tell. Tell
some friends & let them loose on a demo. Getting users is the objective, then
some feedback. Create your (scalable) feedback loop: email, blog comments.

------
tokyotribe28
Agree with Kyro. Try to go as far as you can without any marketing budget. It
takes a lot more effort, working on getting discovered by users, but I don't
think it's any less effective than paid marketing, and possibly even more
effective in the initial stages.

------
pkrumins
0 bucks.

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agentbleu
Your all living in dreamland. No one is going to really give a toss about an
article here or there, in whatever blog or whatever advert they see. The point
is: The internet works a specific way. People who are 'in need' can find that
on the net by 'search'. These are the only people that are worth targeting
because they are the only ones who give a shit about what your
selling/offering. The point is very simple. If you want to launch a Website
you have to spend a small fortune, and heres what on:

0) Have an old domain, New domains are penalized thus take 6 months or more to
get top for 2 word search terms. 1 word search terms can take 2 years.

1) Correct SEO, your site will be indexed properly and optimized for your
targets. Miss this and miss your target.

2) Link building, this is getting harder all the time. Google see link
building as the enemy and are doing all they can to discount unnatural links.

3) Remove all barriers to entry, no sign ups etc, immediate gratification.

4) Innovation and content. Killer apps that people find useful and content
that is compelling.

For the record, I have about 10 popular domains, have been recently featured
on Techcrunch twice and all of the suggested blogs, which are all good, but at
the end of the day, search traffic is what counts in the long run.

This is precisely why Facebook and other social platforms perform so badly for
advertisers, people using them are simply not in search mode. That and the
adverts online are totally crap!

~~~
webwright
Here are a few examples of companies that didn't follow this path (at first):
Google, Apple, Craigslist, Ebay, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Youtube... I
could probably think of more, but you get the jist.

SEO is important to a lot of businesses (especially ecommerce and UGC plays),
but not worth early focus for a lot of others.

~~~
agentbleu
so when i search google for a red widget i never see ebay listings? are you f
kidding? MS was before the net, as was apple, so count them out as they are
manufactures not websites, google came up with the best search (given my
argument is that the net is all about search) algo and thus gained success, so
they dont count. Myspace made its way through the fog with SPAM, youtube got
big because they tapped into myspace offering the best music video service,
and lost 1 million a month in the process (im still not even sure if they have
actually made any profit and I seriously doubt it), social networks have poor
quality traffic, albeit alot of it, which costs them a fortune in data centers
and makes no cash, Can I safely say the only social network to be in profit is
linkedin.

"but not worth early focus for a lot of others" Total crap.

~~~
webwright
"Total Crap"? Normally I don't respond to people who can't manage to be
polite, but I'm going to make an exception. Here's the quote you should re-
read:

"Here are a few examples of companies that didn't follow this path (at
first)". Note the "at first". Ebay is certainly focused on SEO right now.

The point is that you can get great without SEO-- and companies often do. And
the (unspoken) point was that for some companies, search isn't how their
products are found.

Low cost distribution is key for startups, but SEO isn't the only way to get
that, and often it's a really inefficient way.

If you were starting salesforce.com today, would you hire an SEO specialist
among your first 5 hires? Your first 20? How about 37 signals? What percentage
of their traffic do you think comes from generalized search (beyond search for
their brand name(s)). How about Slide and RockYou? iLike? Do you think SEO
should be an early priority for a widget company?

FWIW, I ran a web consultancy for 7 years with a lot of focus on SEO. I'm a
big believer in the value of SEO for many types of businesses... Just not all.

Also FWIW, I'm currently running a business that is growing 7-9% per week for
the last 16 weeks (that's 3000%+ annual) with no marketing and negligible SEO
(virtually all organic search is for a brand name search). We've got some
interesting SEO plans, but I maintain that it's a bad thing to focus on for us
right now.

~~~
agentbleu
This response is at least an argument! Sorry to sound impolite, but bad
advice/decisions costs money. Your main point is that there is another way. OK
of course I accept that, but your examples are pretty lousy mind, these are
not mum and pup stores, (like the free car ads site the author of this
question is promoting).

I insist, even if you have a viral web app/widget, to not focus on SEO from
day 1 is missing the whole point of the net and will cost you bucket loads in
the long run at best.

FWIW I would be very interested to hear of the app / widget that you are
enjoying the 8% weekly growth. Mine is myplaylist which is also enjoying high
viral growth.

~~~
webwright
RescueTime.com is my current startup (YCO8). Previous startup (which sold in
2006) was an SEO play, so I've done it both ways.

Again, the point I was making (with 10 years of professional SEO experience
under my belt) was that for some companies, search isn't how their products
are found... If that's the case, an early focus on SEO (the time consuming
part-- not the "low hanging fruit") is distracting from more effective
distribution channels.

The degree to which you focus on SEO should be proportional to how much your
customers are searching for what you offer (you should also roll into the
equation the KEI/competitiveness of the target keywords).

There are plenty of businesses whose target customers do NOT USE GOOGLE as a
tool find the product. 37Signals is a great mom-and-pop example. Building the
next great search engine is another example (people wouldn't search for
"search engine"). There are countless others. In addition, any business that's
diving into mature verticals where Google is claiming the "2nd click"
(weather, images, etc) ought to seriously consider eschewing SEO as an early
strategy in favor of other distribution efforts.

