Hi,
For those of you that don't know me, I'm the product marketing manager for
Perl books at O'Reilly. I'm also responsible for the Perl Success Story
booklets and postings to our Perl site.
All advertising for Perl falls in my area as well. Magazine ads are very
expensive; they can run anywhere from $2,500 for a full page (ex. Sys Admin
Mag) ad to $10,700 (Dr. Dobb's). These prices are based on multiple months
committments. The ads run one time and reach anywhere from 7,000-100,000
readers. It's next to impossible to track whether the ads generate business
or sales. Because of this we have cut our print ad budget drastically and
are increasing our direct marketing efforts.
The only ad I am running for the remainder of 2001 will be appearing in the
revived TPJ. I decided to try an ad for Perl advocacy. In the ad, among
other things, we've invited readers to check out our evangelist site to see
if they would like to join. It will be interesting to see what kind of
response we get. TPJ is now being bundled with Sys Admin Magazine 4 times a
year, so hopefully the readership (of TPJ) will increase. At least
awareness will be increased if the Sys Admin readers decide to look over TPJ.
I would not count on magazines being willing to print an ad as a public
service announcement. They are having a very tough time of it, with
advertisers pulling out right and left. There is no magazine without
advertising, so times are very hard.
O'Reilly is still committed to Perl advocacy and we will do what we can to
support your efforts. I've just printed the 2nd edition of the Perl Success
Story booklet, so if any of you would like copies, just let me know. They
are for the Perl community.
--Betsy
At 10:30 AM 8/14/01 -0400, John Porter wrote:
>Selena Sol wrote:
>> > Andrew (?) Wrote:
>> > Such a campaign should start with small but regular ads in
>> > PHB-friendly outlets such as PC Week and Computer Weekly.
>>
>> This is such a cool idea. Does anyone know how much this would cost?
>> It could be pitched both as a donation back to the community and as a
>> marketing and PR thing.
>
>Since there's not profit-oriented entity behind the ad,
>perhaps it could be run as a public service announcement.
>
>--
>John Porter
>
>
