One of the ways of promoting a startup like Filmaster is through ads on other websites. We haven’t done much of this before due to small (non-existant?) budget but we’ve decided to sign up for the beta-testing of the new Reddit.com sponsored links system. Spending 20 dollars to promote the site doesn’t seem like a fortune so we thought: “what the heck”!
Choosing the slogan
There are many slogans we may use to promote Filmaster but for Reddit we have decided to advertize the site as the blogging network for film buffs. Why? Well, Reddit is all about contributing and discussions. It makes sense to assume that peple who are active on Reddit watch movies. And perhaps they even want to share their impressions somewhere in the Internet.
Well, Filmaster is the place to do that!
Expectations
As we have decided to try the lowest bid (see how the Reddit system works) we didn’t expect a lot of impressions and visits. Our dream goal was humble: to attact a few bloggers to the site. Of course any extras would be appreciated but one needs to keep it real, otherwise you get disappointed too often.
The results
So, were the results of the little campaign as we’d imagined? Well, take a look at the report below (click to enlarge):
This only shows the impressions and clicks. We received ~25 thousands impressions of our ad which resulted in some 40 clicks (as Google Analytics tells us). Is it good or bad for $20?
I’d say it’s average.
But the good thing is: the people who came to the site, actually signed up and spent some time over there, leaving a few reviews.
Conclusions
We’ll have to see how good the Reddit ad system becomes in the future. It would be certainly great to be able to customize the campaign to only show the ads in the relevant categories or target specific users (e.g. those that put “film” as one of their interests in their profile).
Still, it sounds like a fair new programme and a viable alternative to traditional ad methods like banners or context ads.
We’ll try this again in the future… well, at least we would if we could afford it 
