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How I Promoted my Drupal Design Bookmark site through BuySellAds

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Design Bookmarks

Using advertising for promotion is something that I highly recommend, I always like to share my experiences by example to make things clear, especially when I got good results in my journey of discovering the internet business and online marketing world.

I am going to talk about how I started my site and promote it through BuySellAds advertisement network, and got my new site running in no time by buying the right advertising banners spots to promote my site and spread the word about it.

DesignGizer.com is a new project of mine, I developed this site as a social bookmarking site for designers, so basically it’s about design tips, tutorials, showcase and news. I also created a simple design blog that too much connected with the bookmark site.

I had more than one reason to start a new design bookmark site

Let me share a few of my reasons to start a new design bookmark site with you:

  • I love design, and I was a web designer in the past!
  • I want to have new relationships in the design world!
  • It’s opportunity to make money online
  • I want to help designers and bloggers to promote their work
  • Why not?! .. well.. some times this could be enough reason 🙂

Is it easy to Start a Social Bookmark site?

designgizer.com design news

The fast and simple answer is “NO!”, it’s not easy as you might think, and a lot of people think that with because social bookmarking CMSs platforms like Drupal or Pligg are available free, and with little experience they can setup and start a new site in no time, then they have one of the best social bookmark site out there! it’s not really that simple!

Managing a social bookmark site is a a real nightmare! this is the fact that no body realize when they start their own new social bookmarking sites! as they will need to promote it, tell the world about it, find wasy way for new members to register to the site, and then do some good promotion for their member’s content to keep them coming!

I don’t know about Pligg, I find my self more attracted to Drupal and the Drigg module, although Drigg support is abandoned since long time back, but it still working, and I have the motivation to use it on my projects whenever there is a chance!

How I promoted my site through BuySellAds?

It was super easy, and I started to get new members to the site from the first day of placing my banners on design sites, I picked (as I remember) about 5 sites and design blogs from the BuySellAds network to place my ads, I even bought a big banner ad spot for more than 3 months at TheWebBlend.com as it’s all about design, and from there I got a lot of new members almost everyday registering to my site! I didn’t even published a single blog post to promote it since that time, and this is probably the first post that spotting this site and my experience with promoting a new site using BuySellAds network.

Being a member of BuySellAds network allowed me to understand how to price my banners ads to them sold more easier, and probably playing the role of advertiser was the best part of this experience!

You are invited!

social media loginIf you like design, looking or inspiration, blogging about design, or want to create list posts related to design, visit DesignGizer.com and join the site, it’s freaking easy as I am using a special module that allow you to register using your social media IDs, like Twitter and Facebook, WordPress and even LinkedIn!

Start taking a tour in the site, submit your design articles, and the system will tweet it out for you automatically, and this is not all, I will even tweet your work through several Twitter IDs of mine!

Go, get some design promotion and Energize your Design 🙂

Is there any recommended read?

Indeed! since you already here, I recommend you read these articles I wrote before about online advertisements:

And.. Tell me..

Do you have any good experience with internet advertising? plz share!

About

I create websites with WordPress, and I develop Schema Plugins to help SEOs. I am a social network lover. I am also the night creature who works hard to keep this project up. Owner and founder of the Famous Blog.

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{ 45 Responses }

  1. Mark says:
    The only advertising I have tried is Adwords simply because Google offers the $100 coupon, which actually turned out to be a bait-and-switch that gets most banned from Adwords as now their TOS are longer than an encyclopedia set. I have been thinking of buying some bannerspace. What is you preference Hesham? Mark
  2. dan says:
    Hey hesham, I tried promoting my site through buyselladds but did not see the results that you did. I was wondering if there are any tricks that I am missing that you left out of your post. Thanks in advance bro
  3. Vijayraj Reddy says:
    i applied buysellads once and got rejected..
  4. Mayur says:
    This is a very nice article, i recently advertised through BSA but i guess all the returns on investment depends on the site we are advertising on.
  5. Luqman says:
    Nice and informative post, I hope someone of us can real learn from this post. I am going to reactive my membership at BuySellAds and see how I use the site to my advantage.
    • Hesham says:
      Good luck!
  6. Colleen says:
    Very good Hesham. I wonder how I could made this work for our niche.
    • Hesham says:
      You mean a social bookmark site? Maybe a good idea, but need a plan and a lot of work!
      • Colleen says:
        Yup, emphasis on 'a lot of work!' :)
  7. Laura Davis says:
    Great post Hesham! I love how you're so open about your whole process. It's why I keep coming back :)
    • Hesham says:
      More open, means more information.. more useful to readers! Cool! we like to have you around :)
  8. Ravi Ahuja says:
    There are some good points but I don't find BuySellAds as good pramotion way as I not got any good responce from it.
    • Hesham says:
      What you mean by responce? you mean they don't reply to you? If this is the case, they actually reply to all my emails when I contact them!
  9. Julius Kuhn-Regnier says:
    Nice post Hesham. The interesting question would be how much you spent promoting the site :P I never actually thought about buying ads on BuySellAds but it seems like a nice way to get some exposure.
    • Hesham says:
      Around $500 Just put in mind that I was not selling a product or asking anyone to buy something, I was promoting a site that actually give promotion to it's members! and this is how it works for me just fine!
  10. Hieu Martin says:
    I have singup to BSA but this time they not accpet my blog. I will try it again for get BSA. Thanks for review about DesignGiZER site
    • Hesham says:
      Hi Hieu, Wish you good luck next time! just make sure you get some good traffic to on your site!
      • Hieu Martin says:
        Thanks Hesham., I'm trying get more good traffic to my site. This time my traffic mainly get from stumbleupon. Hope next time its well
  11. Cindy says:
    Hey Hesham, I remember you mentioned you were a webdesigner before... didnt know DesignGIZER belongs to you. BuySellAds rejected my site once as its still new, I might try registering again after a few months. The offer sounds good.
    • Hesham says:
      Yes, I worked as a web designer for a few years, but I do only my own designs and some other personal projects that I am working on! I wish you good luck with BSA next time!
  12. Julius says:
    Another informative article from the Man. Thanks for sharing Hesham! I'll check this out since I am a freelance graphics designer and I try to implement that on Private Corner, (redesigning the blog myself since I can't afford paying for one.. :) ), and on my other blogs. About BuySellAds, hmm, well I'll also check that out too.
    • Hesham says:
      Hi Julius , you are welcome! I didn't know that you do graphic design! that's great!
      • Julius says:
        I do. I am a freelance graphics designer by profession, although I'm more on the advertising side of the field (banners, business cards, desktop publishing, etc.) and just learning to do website design recently. I made another redesign on Private Corner, though not much, but I tried to apply what I know and those that I've learned recently. :)
        • Hesham says:
          This is great, what I like here is that you try to gain new skills! Just wondering why you didn't start a design blog yet?!
          • Julius says:
            As a matter of fact I almost did set up a design blog. But I'm not a good teacher and I'm worse at giving tutorials. I find it difficult to translate into words the things I could with design. But who knows, maybe I'll find the right groove and set up a design blog someday. :)
  13. Tran Tinh says:
    I have bad experience with BSA, just only one sold so far. hope to get more too. Design sites are bookmarking sites seems not really interesting to some advertisers nowadays :-) Good luck to you design site
    • Hesham says:
      mmmm... you are talking about the opposite thing from what we are talking about here :) I am wondering! Design blogs works best at BSA, your blog is not about design, your blog also need more and more traffic to sell ads, and another important thing is your ads pricing!
      • Tran Tinh says:
        hmm :-) I meant that I have seen several design sites but not bookarking sites works best but yes the traffic matter. The more traffic you have the more ads you will get. My case is different as I implied my old blog eblogtip but BSA did not approve so-called offensive ads like gambling. There are several adverisers contacted for that type of ads. Another thing is that I got approved for my new blog, why not yours?
        • Hesham says:
          That's true! and probably because not all of them have a good amount of traffic!
          • Tran Tinh says:
            That is right! It is not easy to select right site to buy advertisement :-)
  14. element321 says:
    Hesham, I remember we where talking about this a few months back. Great stuff. Its good to know that its helping. To bad you are still not getting the traffic. Once I get my traffic up, I will start looking in adspace selling...
    • Hesham says:
      Yes buddy! I am going to focus on bringing more traffic to Design Gizer soon! I am preparing some nice list posts from inside the site to promote those awesome designers who are submitting their articles there, which will help to increase the over all traffic of FB and Designgizer at the same time, and also give some Luv to members! I think Blogging and Designing has to meet with each other :)
  15. DiTesco says:
    OMG! So this was another one under your belt. Didn't even realize it was you doing some RTing :) Congrats for that and I hope it gets to be as popular as MMO and FB. Will help, now that I know its yours ;-) Ad advertising worked well for me, specially because I had a compelling banner and I guess that was one of the factors that made it have a reasonable CTR. As you said, if you choose properly where to advertise, then I think it is an excellent medium. I used PPC and the return was horrible.
    • Hesham says:
      lol! there is always more awesome stuff in the bag :) It's so funny that I didn't had a chance to mention it that much or write about it before! I was actually using a super big size animated ad banner, let me remind you with it!
      • DiTesco says:
        Yeah! I saw that. Ever heard of "ad blindness" haha. Anyway, now that I am aware, I will make other people aware too... Good project buddy. Wishing you all success with it. That's a different audience ;-)
  16. Harsh Agrawal says:
    One thing is very true about Buysellads is : Design sites are hot cake and such sites get lots of advertisement.. so once your design bookmarking site is full fledge up and running..Probably you can easily make more money you invested via Buysellads...
    • Hesham says:
      I still don't get good mount of traffic, just thought they will reject the site at this level, but I will give it a try.. won't lose anything! Although I was able to sell some direct ads for a few months! Heading to BSA :)
  17. Wayne Howard says:
    I've been trying to use BuySellAds to buy ad space but every single time it tells me my CC info is incorrect when I know it's right! Guess I gotta wait til I get my PayPal situated. But some of the prices are really good so I can't wait to start using it.
    • Hesham says:
      I am really not sure about the PayPal account issue, but you can always contact them and ask for their advice! The only one challenge I faced while using any advertising network is to chose the write blogs to advertise on, of course even sites that has high traffic will not drive that much traffic to your site, but hopefully it will increase your chances to convert! Note that I was not trying to sell any product, I was just promoting a site that help you promote your own articles for free, and I had to spend a lot of money to reach that point!
    • Harsh Agrawal says:
      Wayne I suggest try their customer support. I know few of them and if you Email them @ day time ..You will get reply within minutes...
      • Wayne Howard says:
        Yea, I emailed them and they told me to just try using paypal. I was using my regular debit card and it kept saying the zipcode was wrong (it wasn't). I will just try again later.