I am not much of an internet advertising expert. I wondered what makes TV a financial success. It is number of hits or amount of content or number of Google hits. How is the cost of an ad determined?

How does it work?

Is it better to have more content hence more hits or is bandwith a consideration. Should content be limited?

Answer to "How is the cost of an ad determined?" Thaivisa Marketing and Advertising

Personally, I have never (knowingly) purchased anything from an official sponsor of TV.

However, I have often (very often) been influenced by comments about goods and services posted on TV.

I follow the 'best breakfast', 'best fish and chips', 'best sausages', etc. threads and almost always try the ones that other members recommend, at least once.

Most of the time I am not disappointed and I have become a regular visitor to some of those places.

I just wonder whether the owners know that they have received all that free advertising - the only place that ever asked how I found out about them was Western Wholesale (the English butchers on Soi Chayapruk 2) and I told them I read about them on Thaivisa. I just got a blank look.

So, I guess a heck of a lot of business is generated from the general chit-chat on TV, but some of the business owners don't know it.

I would think content is more important. Ads are over-rated. People tend to trust chat on personal experience more over random ads

I would think content is more important. Ads are over-rated. People tend to trust chat on personal experience more over random ads

Agreed.

I would add that there are certain members who's recommendations I would trust - others I would ignore.

So, I guess a heck of a lot of business is generated from the general chit-chat on TV, but some of the business owners don't know it.

A lot of the "chit-chat" is generated by the business owners themselves, pretending to be happy customers.

It is number of hits or amount of content or number of Google hits. How is the cost of an ad determined?

Google ads and sponsors.

With the former, the more hits the better as more chance of someone clicking an ad. Ads free, supplied by Google with income generated by people clicking... price per click determined by the site that creates it on a bidding system (Adwords).

Income from forum sponsors goes without saying.

Generally, the more content the better, although quality is a major player - relevance/keywords (that someone would search for on a given topic outside of TV). Other than creating the content, members are less likely generate income (ie, not clicking ads... ad-blind), that is the domain of outsiders hitting a thread from Google SERPs (results), see above.

There's also travel and insurance brokerage.

So is more content a good thing? Or is the space it takes up, bandwith expensive and a bad thing?

So is more content a good thing? Or is the space it takes up, bandwith expensive and a bad thing?

It seems to depend upon the content. I've seen a thread closed due to concerns over sponsors etc......but then it was a 'toilet humour' style thread.

I'm not convinced this is a major factor (yet) or posts made say 5 years ago would surely have been canned by now for example.

However I'm certainly not an expert.

Do the math, ads and more ads. Mods that volunteer, plenty of free content (supplied by us and news orgs) equals relatively low overhead

equals relatively low overhead

Guess you have no idea the cost of the multiple servers, the IT staff that keeps them operating, the bandwidth costs of multiple lines, the forum software annual maintenance costs and a myriad of other things that put the operational costs at a pretty hefty level.

No content--> no visitors --> no point of having ads (or no takers to pay for them!)--> no revenue...

The foremost important obviously is content. I doubt we have a lot of visitors just for looking at ads

Once you build up content and hence visitors, you can start generating revenue through advertising, affiliate stuff, Google ads and so on.

Proper content which attracts certain visitors, and combine that with advertising by companies/businesses who see those visitors as potential customers.

ThaiVisa is no different then any other website or business! You start out with investing in the hope of being able to build your venture up and then later on recouping your investment and creating income!

Edited August 17, 201015 yr by monty

more content, more pages, more visitors, more for the search engines to pick. More is always better. Search any random thing about Thailand and Thaivisa almost always shows up.

Edited August 17, 201015 yr by BillR

you guys underestimating the amount of people who browse this website. the guys who have thousands of posts and spend their entire life clicking on refresh are not going to click ads and they are not the target base for advertisers.

equals relatively low overhead

Guess you have no idea the cost of the multiple servers, the IT staff that keeps them operating, the bandwidth costs of multiple lines, the forum software annual maintenance costs and a myriad of other things that put the operational costs at a pretty hefty level.

define hefty. the site generates around 1.5m baht a month in advertisement income by my rough estimates.

Undoubtedly, the Members and their input/comments make Tv a success,without them there is no business.

Nobody comes on Tv to look at the Ads.