New concept for advertising

[eveliendb]

Hello,


I own a website that could generate some serious profits for me. But the problem is that nobody knows about the site, therefore no profits for me ...

Does anyone have an idea how I could promote my website without paying a lot of money for it?

I really believe in the concept and think it would work, but I need publicity ...

Check it out: The Golden Egg


Thanks,
Evelien

[Caveman Joe]

That depends on the concept.

Seriously though, the best way to get good traffic to your site is very simple, and made up of just four principles:

(1) Provide quality, original content, good enough to (2) encourage people to link to it, that is (3) updated regularly and (4) laid out in a way that Google and RSS readers can understand.

[Caveman Joe]

Oh, and put the link in your signature. Or at least tell us what it is, jeez. :P

[Adam]

The cheapest way has always been word of mouth. It is *very* slow, but can be effective.

The key to word of mouth, though, is in the value of the product. If it is something that a lot of people can use, and a lot of people can afford, then word of mouth works wonders.

I'm curious, what is your product?

[TheBull]

Another thing you can do is start a blog about your business, especially if it is a solo business, and have that blog ping all of the services (google, technorati, ping-o-matic, etc.). Then you can use your blog to help get the word out but going aggregators, carnivals, etc.

[Leonard]

you could start by providing a link to it here. you speak of the concept, but forget to place the link to it. how then, will people hear of what you have to say?

[eveliendb]

hmmm you're right. it's pretty stupid of me, not to inlcude the link (I edited the first post and put it in there )

Thanks for all the replies!

The concept is actually very simple:
The site is called 'the golden egg' and in the middle of the page there's .. an egg.
If people click on it, they're sent to a sponsor page. If they stay there for at least one minute then they can click a button to see if they've won anything (the amount of money they can win depends on the amount of sponsors I have for that day).

I don't know if I've explained it right, but just go see for yourselfes.
Oh and let me know what you think.

I already thought about a blog, but I'm not a good writer and I wouldn't have a clue about what to put in it besides: 'no new visitors yet ...'.


Thanks,
Evelien

[Brutha]

I already thought about a blog, but I'm not a good writer and I wouldn't have a clue about what to put in it besides: 'no new visitors yet ...'.

What great, interesting Sponsors you got.
People who buy your "add" will be happy for the linksing (SEO) and the promotion of their service.

Perhaps some kind of Multi Level Marketing.
Let people register for it and when someone they direct to your site wins they get a share. Registed Users could also get a normal bonus if they win.
In the process you should try to get the email address and ask for the permission to send them email.
Write them a mail if a registed user doesn't come to your site for XX days asking whether they are unhappy with the service and like to give you feedback.

In addition you should calculate the worth of a new user. If that worth is higher than the amount you have to pay to adsence for a new user, go for it.

[eveliendb]

Thanks for the tip.

But the problem is that I don't have any sponsors yet.
The pages I link to now are just examples of how it will be, they didn't pay for it (I chose charity organisations for this).
(am I obligated to ask the permission of Oxfam, ... to put them on my site?)

So I need to attract sponsors (so I can give away a nice amount of money). But the sponsors won't come if there are no visitors, and visitors won't come if there's no decent amount to give away.

So I need to find a way to either attract sponsors or visitors ...

How do I contact businessess and convince them that my site is a good investment?

[TheBull]

Not a bad. You could start with charities and non-profits and still be well off. One thing these types of groups are really good at is getting donations, so if you can sell them on the idea, they could provide the funding essentially to get you going. Then once your visitor count went up, you could target other organizations.

The one thing you might have trouble with is getting the word out. With little content the search engines might not help you out too much. I mentioned a blog earlier and even if you aren't a great writer it could still help. I'm surely no great writer myself, but by having a blog and participating in forums and such I have seen traffic slowly grow. In your blog you could also talk about the various features of your service, new things you are planning on trying, etc. etc. If you do add a blog, I would add it as a subdomain, like blog.the-goldenegg.com to help drive traffic to the domain itself.

[Brutha]

You have the following line about the prices of your "adds":

1) You choose how many 'clicks'* you wish to buy (100$/click/month)

Isn't 100$ for a click a bit much? Or specifially you should clarify what you mean with "1 click".
Why do you set your price the way you set it? What cost other comparable services?

To start you could start with being rewarded for results. Link to site where you get something when they sign up/buy something.

But the sponsors won't come if there are no visitors, and visitors won't come if there's no decent amount to give away.

If you would have a fixed price that the sponsor has to pay to get a visitor the amount of your visitors isn't important for the sponsor as long as there are visitors.

[escapee]

Have you tried to market the site with google adwords and yahoo sponsored link ?

[eveliendb]

@Brutha
You're right 100$ is probably a bit much too start with..
And I never thought about the fact that the word 'click' is confusing.
I don't even know if I can explain it right, but I'll try.

For example: there are 8 sites that want 1 click and 1 site wants 2 clicks.
Then if a visior 'clicks' the egg, they have a 1/10 chance to end up with one of those 8 sites and 2/10 to end up with that person that bought 2 clicks.

I hope this is explained better and I'll adjust it on the site too.

And I like your idea to let the sponsors pay for the number of people that visit their site!

@escapee
I haven't tried any publicity service that requires me to pay for. Because if this thing fails, then I won't have lost anything (accept for the hosting fee).
But maybe if things go really slow, I'll have to invest some money in publicity ...

[Adam]

I have a couple of questions about the process...

First of all, what type of sites do you expect to attract as sponsors? If the sites are useful and insightful, as many of these forum member's blogs are, then I'll be much more likely to click the egg, since even if I don't win, at least I'll have visited a good site. If the sites are spammers, though, or it is a heavily commercial site, such as found through the group-lotto scam a few years back, then I'll stop using it rather quickly.

This first question would also affect how likely I would be to be a sponsor as well, since I wouldn't want to see my site associated with heavily commercial or spam sites.

Second, how would you pick a random winner? Is it one winner daily, hourly, quarter-hourly?

I did a little bit of math... If each sponsor increased the total daily pot by $1, but bought their share of clicks monthly, in order to break even (because most months are longer than 30 days), you would have to charge the sponsor at least $30.44 per month... (Yes, I figured in leap years, for those who did the math as well and got a different answer) Of course, since you want to make a profit at it as well, I'd recommend boosting that up to $40, to cover the cost of hosting as well as your living expenses.

Of course, that's only if each share of clicks contributes only $1 to the total daily pot... It would be adjusted according to how much you actually want the pot to change with each new sponsor.

Also, I'd recommend that, instead of saying 'clicks', you might want to say 'share of clicks' and explain it using the example that you just used.

[eveliendb]

Well, I hope to attract interesting sponsors. But I do know this might be dificult in the beginning, so for now everyone can sign up to be a sponsor, but once I get this thing rolling, I'll probably 'approve' the sites, before they're put on the egg.

The winners are picked by a computer program per day. The computer picks out a random moment during the day and the first person to click the egg after that moment is the winner.

Also, I've added a blog for the golden egg (check the link in my signature). Now how do I get people to visit the blog?

[Heatherfit]

Originally Posted by eveliendb

Hello,


I own a website that could generate some serious profits for me. But the problem is that nobody knows about the site, therefore no profits for me ...

Does anyone have an idea how I could promote my website without paying a lot of money for it?

I really believe in the concept and think it would work, but I need publicity ...

Check it out: The Golden Egg


Thanks,
Evelien

Write articles and submit them to article directories..that always gets me traffic..just know it's a process.

articlecity.com and ezine.com are some of the best.

Also writing go to prweb.com and write a press release

[Brutha]

Well, I hope to attract interesting sponsors. But I do know this might be dificult in the beginning, so for now everyone can sign up to be a sponsor, but once I get this thing rolling, I'll probably 'approve' the sites, before they're put on the egg.

You should know exactly what you want and communicate it on your website.
Strategy is important.

[Alex]

Random Idea...

Create a company and register it as a non-profit. This will allow sponsers to donate to you as a tax write-off. Very attractive for sponsers, since they get advertising for cheap. Pick a worthy charity to donate to and also have the charity website in your click-cycle. Divide the percentages however you think is fair between the daily winner - the charity - and whatever your time is worth.
People have two reasons to play, to win and to have money go to charity (it seems like you've thought of this already though).

Just throwing it out there as an idea...

[eveliendb]

Thanks for the tips and the ideas everybody.
I think the site has improved a lot since I posted this thread!

I should've done this a lot earlier !!!

Have any of you won anything yet?

[eveliendb]

But still, the problem remains:
how do I contact businesses and convince them that the golden egg is a good investment?

[Brutha]

Make a fixed price per visitor.
Their is a market for it. You should research the actual market price. As long as your price is lower as the market price it should be easy to get sponsors.

At the present your offer gives the sponsor all the risk (Paying for the advertisment and having no returns because your site has no visitors).
You may think that this is good for you, but its the reason you get no sponsors.

[eveliendb]

sorry for the late response, I've been on holiday and stayed away from all computers

@ Brutha
Yeah that's a good idea, but the problem is that my father doesn't want to make more adjustments to the site. (and I'm not capable of that programming).

The idea for the moment is that I'm going to call a few international companies near where I live and ask them to let me come and explain the concept in 5 minutes.
If they like the idea, they can sponsor. If not, then ...

Do you think this might work? I have my doubts about it, but I've spoken to some people in marketing and they say I should just go for it.