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Dumbest advertising mistake you've ever made?

by Rich Struck
13 replies
A few years ago we spent a small pile of cash using radio ads to promote a dating site. The domain was super short & easy to remember but it didn't occur to me that people listening to the radio at that time of day were probably driving and very unlikely to commit it to memory. Oops. 6 weeks of daily ads and exactly 0 sales. Oops again. We tried changing the ad, no luck.

OTOH, the same site actually had a bit of luck with tiny classified ads in small town newspapers so we still try that a bit from time to time.
#advertising #dumbest #made #mistake
  • Profile picture of the author abednego
    Hey, at least your niche was wanted and potentially profitable...

    I tried selling Zynga / FarmVille guides that no one wanted to buy!
    Okay. Maybe a few people did... but it didn't sell well.

    Live and learn!
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    • Profile picture of the author Rich Struck
      Originally Posted by abednego View Post

      Hey, at least your niche was wanted and potentially profitable...

      I tried selling Zynga / FarmVille guides that no one wanted to buy!
      Okay. Maybe a few people did... but it didn't sell well.

      Live and learn!
      Don't know about Zynga but you'd think that FarmVille guides would sell like crazy. Go figure.
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    • Profile picture of the author Linda Sweetfield
      We put up signs, for CPA offers, at traffic lights and junctions where there is a lot of sitting traffic at peak times. Everyday the council would come and remove them, usually at night for some reason.

      One day we thought, "hey what if we affix them to railings rather than have them free standing???" Hey presto, the council guys could not be bothered cutting them off and now they are a fixture.

      Could have saved a lot of signage cash if we had thought of that earlier.
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      • Profile picture of the author Rich Struck
        Originally Posted by Linda Sweetfield View Post

        We put up signs, for CPA offers, at traffic lights and junctions where there is a lot of sitting traffic at peak times. Everyday the council would come and remove them, usually at night for some reason.

        One day we thought, "hey what if we affix them to railings rather than have them free standing???" Hey presto, the council guys could not be bothered cutting them off and now they are a fixture.

        Could have saved a lot of signage cash if we had thought of that earlier.
        Did the signs work?
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    • Profile picture of the author Edk
      Money spent on PPC. I was following the advice given by certain dubious products. And as I was nibbling at success, a major SE changed the rules on me - twice they did that; their last hit was fatal
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      • Profile picture of the author Linda Sweetfield
        They work bigtime yeah. A "work from home" free trial offer for all those guys sitting in traffic thinking "god I hate my job" Works like a charm
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        • Profile picture of the author Rich Struck
          Originally Posted by Linda Sweetfield View Post

          They work bigtime yeah. A "work from home" free trial offer for all those guys sitting in traffic thinking "god I hate my job" Works like a charm
          Hmmm... interesting. Thanks for the info.
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      • Profile picture of the author Rich Struck
        Originally Posted by Edk View Post

        Money spent on PPC. I was following the advice given by certain dubious products. And as I was nibbling at success, a major SE changed the rules on me - twice they did that; their last hit was fatal
        That sucks, sorry it didn't work out for you. I used to do a lot of PPC a long time ago and had good luck with it until my sponsors vanished. sigh.
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  • Profile picture of the author Linda Sweetfield
    Yeah, no worries at all. I tend to do a lot of CPA stuff offline these days.

    The right offer on a pizza box works like gangbusters too btw.........
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  • Profile picture of the author AffiliateCashPile
    The worst mistake ever!!!!!!!!!!!

    I WAS SUCH A NOOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    When I first started Affiliate Marketing years ago I didn't select what country I wanted to target my offer to. I spent like $500 on adwords sending international traffic to a USA only offer. $0 SALES, TOTAL LOSS!!!

    LOL, to this day im embarrassed to admit it. :p.
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  • Profile picture of the author CDarklock
    I sold advertising space on my server to my hosting company.

    They didn't speak advertising, for some reason. They didn't seem to think "CPM" meant "cost per thousand," because "thousand" doesn't start with an M. They also didn't understand that "impressions" was not the same as "unique IPs."

    Essentially, when we told them we got 200,000 page views a month from about 3,000 unique IPs, they thought our offer of a $5 CPM meant that they were going to pay us $1 a month. Once we established that $5 CPM meant $5 every thousand views, they wanted to only count unique IPs and pay us $15 a month.

    Meanwhile, I felt we had accurately described how many visitors and page views we got, and therefore the hosting company owed us $1,000 a month for the four months they were busily arguing the meaning of standard advertising terms.

    So we moved our operations to a new server, and then the hosting company refunded the previous three months of hosting fees on the grounds that we had been hosting pornography and our contract should have been terminated three months earlier. Eventually, we just left it lie, and wandered off disgusted about it.

    I don't identify the hosting company, because I seriously doubt the people who mistreated us over ten years ago are still there, and it's not fair to punish the company for what amounts to a couple of idiots in marketing and promotion.
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    "The Golden Town is the Golden Town no longer. They have sold their pillars for brass and their temples for money, they have made coins out of their golden doors. It is become a dark town full of trouble, there is no ease in its streets, beauty has left it and the old songs are gone." - Lord Dunsany, The Messengers
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  • Profile picture of the author JeffLam
    CDarklock: Ouch. But I'm guessing the hosting company didn't profit much from the advertising on your space either with the 200,000 impressions, hence their stubborness in paying your their fees.

    Not saying that they're right of course!

    Anyhows, my own mistake is simply using PPV without proper preparation and study of the whole shebang. In the end? $ all down the drain.

    It was disappointing. Very painful lesson indeed...
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