Offline Advertising - Initial Results
I have blogged here previously about the possibility of advertising products (my own or an affiliate's) using offline methods.
I decided to put this in to practice, found a good looking Clickbank product and took out an advert in my local newspaper.
The paper was published on Friday, and my Clickbank account is still showing $0.00.
I checked my copy of the paper, and sure enough, they'd made a typo in the URL. The URL which I had entered in to an online form, which I assumed would just be copy & pasted.
Current results: Not great!
Comment by Dave — August 15, 2006 @ 11:54 pm
That stinks. Are you going to get them to run it again correctly for free?
Comment by Stu — August 16, 2006 @ 4:51 am
Oops!
I hope you'll get it again free.
I do like the idea though. How are you doing it - just through a redirect from the URL you publish, or do you actually have a sales page set up?
Comment by Oli Allen — August 16, 2006 @ 9:33 am
Dave: I sent them an email asking for them to print it again in next week's issue, or a refund.
Stu: I registered a domain that describes a feature of the product, and it just redirects to my Clickbank affiliate link
Comment by Peter — August 16, 2006 @ 1:52 pm
Oli,
Keep us posted on this one, I suspect (once they get the URL correct) it could be good business.
Peter
Comment by The Gent — August 16, 2006 @ 6:59 pm
I would ask for more than one repeat as a sign of goodwill on their part and loss of business on yours. Can you get them interested in following up with an editorial feature on your business?
Comment by Pidea — August 17, 2006 @ 9:22 am
That's bad luck - I've managed to land a pretty neat bit of off-line publicity for my eBay mis-spelling site.
Whilst browsing through the shelves in WH Smiths the other day I noticed a new magazine all about using eBay. It's full of tutorials but there was nothing on finding mis-spelled auctions. I emailed the editor and now have been commissioned to write a tutorial in which I can promote my own web site
Comment by Oli Allen — August 17, 2006 @ 4:13 pm
They make magazines about eBay now?
Phoned up the newspaper this morning, and they told me that despite not replying to my email, they are printing it again (corrected) in tomorrow's edition.
Comment by Dave — August 17, 2006 @ 7:19 pm
That's good. I just e-mailed a big company that owes me a litte money. It's not a big deal but I can't wait to see how it goes. Maybe mess with them.
Comment by Pidea — August 17, 2006 @ 10:23 pm
Oli: they make magazines about just about anything now !
Comment by Stu — August 18, 2006 @ 11:40 am
Burt, Are you going to let us all know how this went after the weekend?
I'm desperate to know how succesful this is - I reckon it's a killer idea!
Comment by Stu — August 18, 2006 @ 8:09 pm
Sorry Oli, for some reason I thought Burt wrote this post.
My bad
Comment by Oli Allen — August 21, 2006 @ 11:34 am
Well, the paper came out on Friday and so far I have made… $0
I think people will probably have been put off by the prices for the affiliate product being in dollars rather than pounds. I'll find a better product to use, and repeat the experiment.