It always amazes me that startup directories want to charge me to advertise on their sites. We were cold called this morning by www.bview.co.uk – and while I like their concept – an advertising directory with user / customer feedback – I can’t see how they can ask me for £160 per year to advertise on a site that has virtually no traffic. Surely a better tactic for them is to offer free listings to get some decent content onto their site, and then charge once they’ve got some traffic?

Just take a look at how their traffic compares with www.yell.com

OK – so Alexa isn’t perfect, and it’s probably massively skewed data – but the contrast is striking. For a sponsored listing with Yell I pay about twice as much as bview are asking for – but in comparison it’s a bargain. What’s more, bview will apparently only display my ad within 30km of our office. How can that make sense?

Oh, and the real killer of the call? As a special deal I can have 2 years of advertising for £360 - that’s right, more than twice the price of one year!

Where do these people get my number??? Probably from Yell!

bview.co.uk, cold calls, directories, Marketing, yell.com Hide