Originally Posted by Gaybucks

We've run bunches of ads in various gay publications for our sites and for our DVDs.

Couple things I've found:

-- If you're going with a smaller circulation publication (i.e, not Hustler or Penthouse), be very skeptical of any circulation numbers quoted. One magazine we went into claimed some 20,000 circulation; we discovered it was actually about 2000 paid circulation, and a bunch of newsstand (which has tons of returns) so the actual circulation was probably closer to 5-10,000, although 20,000 were probably printed originally. It doesn't mean that the smaller mags don't work, only that you probably aren't going to get the sort of response you're expecting based on the circulation. Haggle aggressively on price, as the ratecard is usually a work of fiction.

-- While we do experience a bump in sales each time a magazine hits, we find that we generally get much better response to ads for DVD sales than to ads for membership websites. On the gay side, anyway, the magazine buyers tend to be older guys who are less likely to be Internet savvy. I would guess that (with the exception of the largest publications available at the corner store or at Borders) that this probably also generalizes to the straight market.

-- If you do advertise, be sure to offer a special deal (extended time for same price is what we usually do) and set up a special tour/join page for each magazine you run in. That way, you can directly quantify your sales from that publication. Of course, some dumbasses will enter the root URL and sign up at the regular price anyway, so it won't be completely accurate, but it will give you a good idea what's working and what's not.

-- Make sure your designer knows how to do print ads... many web designers have never done print, and the preparation and specs are very different (CMYK vs RGB; 300dpi vs 72dpi; ads where content or background "bleeds" to the edge of the page must be slightly larger than the space they are going into, and ads must have crop marks.)

Hit me up if you have any more questions, I'll try to help.