Magazine Advertising

Not to say that all magazines are bad, but I have wasted a great deal of money with very little return on my advertising dollars in magazines. Probably in the neighborhood of $10,000 spent for a return of $500. I have a degree in marketing so I am pretty good at seeking out my target audience. Customers are just getting lazy and it takes effort to put down your magazine, go turn on the computer and book or buy the thing they want. You need to get to them online and make your product available in that exact instance to buy now.

Use Google Adwords to test how well people really like your product. If people buy your product once they see it on your website then possibly you may want to take up an ad. But when you pay only for people looking at your ad, with Google, it is tough to take out a magazine ad and just hope you get some people to bite. I don't know about you, but I will always go for a sure thing that is trackable, Google is and magazines are not. Also magazines usually want a multi-month commitment even if it is not working you still have to pay.

If you are looking at selling crafts you may want to look at selling them on Etsy.com. Wish you all the best

Thank you for that advice...I keep seeing the Google Adwords thing cropping up but don't really get what it is.

Adwords, the holy grail of online marketing (or some call the curse )

Basically its a Google owned advertising medium. When you look at any google search results, you normally see adverts running down the right hand side, and sometimes it's the first 3 results.

You sign up with Adwords, and you then decide what keyword you want to pay for, so any user that types it, in theory your advert will appear.

It's instant marketing, very powerful, and as long as you follow a few basic rules, (set a maximum low daily budget such as

Thanks sjr4x4,
You're always giving out really good advice to me, it is much appreciated

Here is a great video about Google Adwords.

Google Adwords for Beginners: How to Use Google Adwords - Part 1 - YouTube

It is a super basic video, but can really help you understand what it is all about and how it works.

I agree Google adwords is great tool but do your research on how to maximise its output first. It is absolutely crucial that you have done some keyword analysis on research prior to getting involved. You need to find terms that will give you both a good quantity of clicks through to your site and quality of click throughs i.e. does the term you are marketing drive through customers that are in the buying cycle for the product you sell.

Google will take money from you the minute that somebody clicks ont your site if non of them do anything but have a leisurely browse round the site Adwords will be an expensive fruitless tool. I have seen people lose a lot of money on Adwords. Make sure you are doing you research on what temrs drive paying traffic and you will be fine. Some people use adwords as a test bed for their organic website optmisation. ie they will pay for a certain keyword for a week and see if it converts - if its does then more effort will be put in to drive more organic clicks through to the site for free.

Adwords is a great tool if used properly and is reserached beforehand. Good luck to you!

Good newbie link, I've added it to the PPC forum

I stay away from all magazine advertising now, got caught with a couple of rags a few years ago, same old sales spill, "we have 1/4 page slot available blah blah blah, our circulation figures are blah blah blah, usual price is