Are you in the business of manufacturing or selling Amateur Radio, APRS, or GPS tracking related products? It might be a good idea to advertise on aprs.fi.

According to Google Analytics, aprs.fi is visited about 580000 times per month by about 180000 unique users. The number of daily visits went up by quite exactly 100% during 2009!

aprs.fi has a good global reach thank to it's numerous translations. Only 35% of the users prefer the English version. Other popular languages are Japanese at 10%, German at 8.5% and Russian at 7.8%.

Most of the users are very loyal, 55% of them visiting for the 9th time or more, 20% visiting for the 100th time (or more). The users know where to come for their dose of APRS or AIS data – almost 50% of them arrive here directly through a bookmark, or by typing 'aprs.fi' in their browser, not counting the people who type 'aprs.fi' on Google. Based on these statistics I believe aprs.fi to be the most popular APRS site today.

aprs.fi is the preferred site for new APRS users to watch their tracks. It's run as a hobby by a single IT professional, and in a rather professional manner. It's a bit expensive to run due to the increasing hardware demands. By advertising on the site you directly help to cover the costs and keep the service available to the users of your APRS products.

How to place ads on aprs.fi

• Sign up on Google AdWords. Payment is done using a credit card.
• Create an AdWords Campaign for your product (click on New Campaign)
  • Under Locations and Languages: If you can get someone to translate the advertisements, create different campaigns for different languages. AdWords will automatically use the correct ads in the translated versions of aprs.fi based on the visitor's language settings! English advertisements are shown to visitors with different language settings, but they're more likely to click if the content is easily understood.
  • Under Networks and devices: select Relevant pages only on the placements and audiences I manage.
  • In Bidding and budget, set the amount you want to spend on advertising. The exact cost of the advertising depends on how much the advertisers are willing to pay - the biggest offer gets the most visibility. It's an auction. Please check Google's documentation for details.
  • Save and continue!
• Create ads. Currently used ad types are:
  • 728x90 leaderboard, images or text, on most of the info pages
  • 250x250 square, images or text, on the real-time map
  • 200x90 link unit on the real-time map
  • 728x15 link unit on text pages
• In the Create ad group step, target the ads for aprs.fi:
  • Under Placements, Select managed placements, enter aprs.fi in the placements text field.
• Save. You're done, and your advertisement should begin running soon. AdWords and Google Analytics can be used to track the performance of the ads.

If you'd like to run advertisements for a longer time and pay directly to me (without Google taking their cut), please get in touch. As a ham and a gadget geek I might also accept cool new radio hardware as a payment, and if they're cool enough, I'll be happy to review them in my blog. Please contact me at hessu at hes dot iki dot fi if any questions arise (email link can be found in the blog's Profile page).

Statistics shown were collected over March and April 2010. Detailed analytics available to advertisers in PDF format on request!