Roudi said:
Now... to touch on BSF's earlier comments:
Well, the banner in my sig is slightly different than the ad banner - one meets the 30kb requirements for ad banners, the other doesn't. It's completely unnecessary to buy banner ad space for what is, essentially, a non-profit product that I promote heavily through other means, but I wanted to expose MODERNIZED to people who might not frequent the message board.
The sig has been as such for over a month now. It's only been linked to the website since release day, August 23rd.
This is intersting. Perhaps it is because of your relatively low post count, but I don't remember seeing your .sig until after I saw your banner ad. So, if I saw your .sig before then, I passed it off as white noise.
While nothing for MODERNIZED appeared in the main page Daily News section, press releases for MODERNIZED were posted in the PDF Publishing sidebars on the right side of the page, as well as in forums on RPGHost and 12tomidnight.com.
I rarely have time to make it to other sites. As I have stated previously, I don't even get to the news page all the time. Call me a messageboard fool.
Your feedback is very valuable, but I think you're missing one major factor here... MODERNIZED is free. We're not selling it... at least, we're trying to promote it like we're selling it, but not charging money for it. I suppose customer - vendor interation still applies here, but to say the least, we're an unconventional case.
Actually, the fact that you are offering a free product is part of the reason why I chose to respond to you. First of all, I made the assertion that not even the words "Free" are an automatic lure for me as a customer. Second of all, you are less likely to feel like you have anything to lose by sharing some of your marketing information. You become a relatively "safe" test case and I tend to wonder how many people are reading this and wondering if they can learn something that will give them a little better understanding on how to advertise and stand out from the competition. Besides, you spoke up and I had seen your banner, without clicking on it. It just very relevant to the conversation.
Though I've found your feedback on the banner's content to be very valuable. In truth, I was really going more for the attempt to inspire curiosity, but that appears to be less effective than stating directly what we are. I'll talk to my graphic designer and see what we can come up with as we prepare our next issue.
Curiosity is good. If I were in a store and something drew my eye, I would stop and check it out. But that is partially because I am there to look for something new. Currently, I come to EN World to participate in the community. Finding something new to buy is a secondary concern. When I get to the purchase time of my month, I look a little bit more for new product I might be interested in. I think most of the publishers want to penetrate my awareness before I begin making decisions. The more successful ones do that by establishing a presence in my mind, and by knocking on my mental doors with easy to identify product ads.
Even if your product is free, you did take the time to use a lot of the advertising options here on EN World, including banner space. (BTW - Thanks for that too!) I am hoping that our little conversation has been of some interest to the other potential advertisers, and to Russ. Advertising can only work for EN World as a revenue stream if people use it effectively. I am a little concerned that people get more results from just using the news page to submit press releases. It makes sense, once I stop to think about it. But there must be ways to make paid advertising a better value to the publishers.
