Redundant Advertisements

[Cosmic]

Hey,

Note: This is a personal pet peeve, so bear with me. I know a lot of people here, and I mean A LOT, do this all the time, so I am posting this to see if any of you will consider my point of view here.

What has been aggravating me is that most promotion forums have about 4, 5, or even 6 different ways of placing a link to your forum beyond the usual "basic advertisement". They all use the same names, they all use the same spots, and they all use the same total uselessness. What am I talking about you say? Well, let's start. These can range from banners, to to spotlights, to link ads, and even footers in the welcome PMs. There are many, many, many varriations, but in the end, they are all the same. They are all totally useless. Why? Well, I will start with a simple, unpartial, survey.

I have looked over 5 different promotion forums, and here are some statistics for you:

Results do not include sections for posting advertisement topics.
Case 1: 5
Case 2: 4
Case 3: 5
Case 4: 1
Case 5: 2

Now that we have that behind us, I will give my reasoning for despising the many promotion forums that have thousands of ads like this. Note that Forum Promotion is excluded from this rant, for reasons you will see momentarily.

These ads are totally useless because a majority of the forums that use them are extremely low traffic and a majority of people pay little to no attention to these advertisements. Out of a forum which gets 50 people online every day, which is actually a decent statistic, how many do you think will stop to click on one of those advertisements, and then bother to register? I would list each and every one of them and their actions, but that list would be as redundant, and in fact, as totally useless, as the entire concept I am discussing. On a forum like FP many of us do not recommend using advertisement methods, like this, and from experience, the advertisements at FP yield minimal results, so why on earth should a 200 member promotion forum's services do any better? Furthermore, why on earth is there need for more than one of the following?

• Banner Advertisements
• Footer Advertisements
• Footer Advertisements #2 (Yes, I do see multiple ones here)
• Below topic advertisement
• Profile advertisement

Adding more and more different advertisement opertunities only serves to alienate some of the more effective methods by drawing attention away from them. While packages are sort of useful, and reviews are very useful, it is safe to say that unless a forum has millions of hits per day, all of the above methods of advertising is, and listen closely, totally useless. If the administrators of small and growing promotion forums had their clients in mind when adding services, I believe they would make things which actually benefit the forum. One link service on a site is enough, unless it is very high traffic (example, FP), so I believe the administrators of promotion forums should focus on other things until they have achieved success. I know this is an easy service to set up, which is probably why it is popular, but it isn't really helpful.

Finally, I will end my post with an appeal. This appeal is to focus on the users and to make services which actually help them out. Usually, many promotion forum owners these days think more about promotion their own forum rather than others'. I think it's a good idea to ask yourself why you are running a promotion forum. If the answer is truly to help others, then you, sir, have earned my respect. Otherwise, I really hope you'll consider your philosophy behind administrating your forum.

 

[Nebulous]

Nice rant.. I made one similar to this a while back. 😛

 

[David]

Its not all about clicking. It can be about obtaining quality backlinks, which in turn helps your PR.

Also, there are many who do click those links. If you see a great looking graphic, you will tend to click and see what they provide.

 

[Cosmic]

Do three links to the same forum on the same page help though? I have seen promotion forums with about 3 link services on the index.

 

[Nebulous]

Its not all about clicking. It can be about obtaining quality backlinks, which in turn helps your PR.

How many forums really rely on search engines for traffic/members? Page rank is pointless for about 90% of forum owners out there. If a lot of these people (even with high page ranks) sat and waited around for search engines to magically send them members, they would be at a very lonely forums.
:lol:

 

[David]

Nah, I meant assuming the owner's forum is active, they can then utilize the links. 🙂

 

[Nathan]

Actually David is right, if you think your forum can rely without search engines then ask to be removed from search engines or set your robots.txt to disallow search engine bots and see how much traffic you get.

It's always funny to see these rants, but yet the users who make them don't realize it's exactly the same with their forums with the exception that they don't provide services :roll:

Also for the millionth time, it's not always about clicks, literally.

 

[Cosmic]

Still, I doubt it helps very much at all and is really worth posting 10 / 20 posts on a less than 500 member promotion forum to get a few links on the homepage for only a weeks time. If SEO were the only concern, then why do these forums have banner ads and text ads, rather than services similar to Nathan's link jumble in promotion source?

Also a thousand ads makes a forum look less attractive and, while making it a good farm for backlinks, isn't that user friendly.

 

[Joe 2]

Also, there are many who do click those links. If you see a great looking graphic, you will tend to click and see what they provide.

I agree 100% mate. :great:

 

[David]

Still, I doubt it helps very much at all and is really worth posting 10 / 20 posts on a less than 500 member promotion forum to get a few links on the homepage for only a weeks time. If SEO were the only concern, then why do these forums have banner ads and text ads, rather than services similar to Nathan's link jumble in promotion source?

Also a thousand ads makes a forum look less attractive and, while making it a good farm for backlinks, isn't that user friendly.

I would click an attractive looking banner, so its also a test of the owner's graphics skills. Every little bit does help. You won't see it in the short term, but when they all build up, you will see what I mean.

 

[Cosmic]

But many forums have methods other than banners. Using this forum as an example, how often do you click on text ads and featured forum ads? Also, how often do you click on the services which show about 20 links with different fonts / colors? (FP doesn't have that, but I could name two promotion forums which do.)

(NOTE: These questions are not rhetorical. I am interested in the answer.)

 

[David]

Honestly, if I see an attractive looking banner, I do in fact click it, and see what they can offer me.

For featured forums, I rarely read the text, but if the image looks interesting, I would click it. Same goes with the text ads. The only one I think is pointless is the signature ads.

 

[Cosmic]

and after clicking, about how many times per month would you register?

And would anyone else like the answer the above questions? It would be nice to get a more broad list of opinions.

 

[David]

Honestly, I would want to register most of the time, but don't have any motivation to fill in that register form. Its probably the most boring thing on a forum. So to answer your question, probably 3 times 😛

 

[Justin]

As my blog that is soon to be posted here says, any promotion forum that only includes link services or services that only show on the promotion forum, they will fail.

 

[Nebulous]

It can be about obtaining quality backlinks, which in turn helps your PR.

How do you increase your number of back links by using a temporary service on a promotion forum? Your "quality backlink" will disappear in a week usually.

 

[David]

If search engines index it in time 🙂

 

[Nebulous]

:lol: Thats true quality right there. 😛

 

[Bluezone777]

TBh most of these promotion forums are pretty useless unless your target audience is forum admistrators which most of the time isn't the case.

The only forums that would really benefit from advertising on a promotion forum are other promotion forums(lol) and resource boards.

If you do however get something from an ad board and aren't a resource/promotion forum then the only thing you are going to get is someone who's mission is not to contribute to your forum but to leach off it but drawing your members away from your forum and onto their forum.

 

[Cosmic]

TBh most of these promotion forums are pretty useless unless your target audience is forum admistrators which most of the time isn't the case.

The only forums that would really benefit from advertising on a promotion forum are other promotion forums(lol) and resource boards.

If you do however get something from an ad board and aren't a resource/promotion forum then the only thing you are going to get is someone who's mission is not to contribute to your forum but to leach off it but drawing your members away from your forum and onto their forum.

Agreed, though on forums like this you can also get more common audiences like gamers, debaters, and so on.

And some of these promotion forums don't even show up on google if you search for them. Sure, you might get nice backlinks from promotion her,e but would you get that from using a service from your stereotypical 50 member freeforums.org hosted promotion forum?