Advertisers Smadvertisers....go jump in a lake!

Running a business has some interesting draw-backs.

If you think you get lots of spam and credit card offers now, just start up a business!

Holy crap I get a bunch of stuff pandering for my money!

For example:
Today I was called by a TV show called "Worlds Greatest". They highlight your business on Cable on the ION channel (ever heard of that one? Nope. Me neither). Anyway, they butter ya up, get you thinking "Hey, I'm gonna be on TV!" and making it sound really great.

He wanted to know all about my company, how I got started, why I stand out from others, blah, bu, blah, blah, blah......you know, get me all excited about being on Tee Vee!!! Whoop-T-Doo!!!

And then, of course, here's the kicker (there always is one, isn't there?
"If you'd like us to send a film crew out to your place to start the process, we just need to get...oh....not much, just $9,000 down, is that going to be a problem?" COUGH, CHOKE, Ahem! WHAT? I thought you were featuring me not me paying for you to operate your lame TV show! No thanks! Go sucker someone else.

I mean, c'mon, which of my customers (mostly people that WORK for a living) are going to be sitting on their couches at 11 AM on TUESDAYS!!!! HELLO!!!!

Nope. Don't think so.

The next one today was a renewable directly called The Redirect Guide.
It's a pretty cool guide & all and is put in lots of convenient stores & stuff for people to take ...well, ok, mainly it just sits there unless you're up in the green land of Park City where everyone thinks it's "Sheik to be Green". Down in the valley of Utah where I live where people have to work for a living (instead of drinking their Latte's while smoking cigars & making movies up in the Mountains, all of which who drove their in big SUV's but who complain about the fact that "people that drive SUV's are evil, evil, evil!"), people don't even SEE this thing!

And, besides that, here's an interesting fact....we really don't sell much stuff to people in Utah. Really! I'm dead serious! We used to, but Utah's Biodiesel homebrewing interest is about as dead cold as the snow is up on "Utah's Finest Ski Resorts"...

The oil rendering company's (well, ok, one particular rendering company) drove them all away & now not many people make Bio in Utah anymore. There was a time in the not-too-distant past when Utah was one of the hotter spots in the nation where Homebrewing Biodiesel was occuring...now it's just a shadow of that....

....and so most of the stuff we sell leaves our state (boy, would our Utah governor be proud or what? Contributing to Utah's Exports!--he's big into that kind of thing).

Anyway, the point is I get slammed with tons and tons of folks that want me to advertise in their po-dunk publication that no one will ever read, or pay people lots of money to produce a TV segment on a cable TV network that no one watches....interesting, eh?

So, where do I advertise you might ask? Well, word of mouth is the best advertising per se, but there are three places that I will spend money on advertising.

1) Diesel Power Magazine
I like what they do, what they stand for, and their subscription rates are justified to send them my hard-earned money

2) Biodiesel Smarter
I just really believe in what these guys are doing and, their readers fit the profile of people that would buy from us. Frankie has done such a great job of creating a publication that isn't full of fluff but has real content that I'm continually impressed.

3) The Infopop Biodiesel Forum
http://biodiesel.infopop.cc
I can claim the fame of being their first real advertiser too! (well, ok, if you don't count all the Google Ad Words they had before they picked up "real" advertisers.

When Shaun started thinking about doing it, I was one of the first one's he contacted & was honored.

I've been a fan of this website for years. It's given me a great amount of knowledge and I've tried to also return the favor to people that visit there as well.

I also believe in what Shaun is doing with it (keeping it as a really nice, open speech area where people can pretty much say what they want w/o the fear of being censored--well, ok, yeah, so there's some things they won't allow, but you get the idea).

And, well, that's it!

I do have some partnership links on the web to other places (I signed up for some ecofriendly advertising site years ago and I think my link is still there) but other than that, we try to keep the budget slim (means we can get more cool products & keep the prices low; which means a better deal for our customers.)

...now, what to do with my gazillion credit card offers.....hmmm....I bet they'd start a really nice fire in a fireplace somewhere. I wonder if I added some glycerin to them if they'd burn any hotter! Of course the interest rates they're offering in half of them are so screaming high that I bet that'll act as a fire starter anyway.

[stepping down from my "I hate advertisers" stump]

-Graydon