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I love this Country. We don’t manufacture as many products as we used to, but we’ll always be the masters of the marketing universe. No other country can take something as mundane as a 1,500 watt space heater and repackage it as the Second Coming. A perfect example of this marketing ingenuity is the Amish Heat Surge Electric Fireplace.

It Rolls! It Glows! The Heat Surge miracle heater is a work of genius from the China coast! Real Amish Craftsmanship goes into each mantle! And, to quote the Heat Surge website, “It’s not just a fireplace; it’s a fine piece of furniture.”

But you have to ask yourself: Do I want to spend $587 for a mini electric fireplace on wheels that produces no more heat than any other 1,500 watt space heater costing $500 dollars less?

Just to be fair, this is a valid question for all electric fireplaces, not just the Heat Surge. Believe it or not, you could easily spend more than $2,000 for a combination electric fireplace/entertainment center heated with the same 1,500 watt unit.

No matter how much you pay for an electric fireplace, the cost attributable to the electric heating insert is about $250 (retail). So every dollar you spend over $250 is for the mantel piece. In the case of the Amish Cherry Fireplace, $250 subtracted from the $587 retail price leaves $337 for the cost of the mantel.

Since the Amish heater is a mini electric fireplace, it’s difficult to find a similar sized electric fireplace for the sake of comparison. The best I could come up with is the ProCom 24″ cherry finish electric fireplace.

Although this fireplace is the smallest ProCom makes, and uses a similar 24″ wide heating insert, it’s overall dimensions are still 2 1/2 times larger than the Heat Surge.

The last time I checked, the ProCom 24″ cherry finish fireplace was available online for $400. After subtracting $250 for the heating insert, the mantel piece for the ProCom costs $150.

So why would you be willing to pay more than twice as much for an Amish mantel less than half the size of a comparable fireplace costing 30% less?

It’s the magic of marketing Baby!

If you buy an Amish electric fireplace, it won’t be for the boring 1,500 watts of heat offered by every other space heater out there. What’s going to get you excited enough to whip out your credit card is an unexplainable attraction to the Amish, the promise of superior Amish craftsmanship and pride of ownership.

I can’t explain an unexplainable attraction, but I’ll accept the claim of superior Amish craftsmanship. However, “craftsmanship” comes at a price. Over a three year period, the premium you pay for an Amish mantel piece will add an additional $5 a month, or $180 to your actual heating costs when compared to the purchase price of a Pro Com 24″ fireplace.

This leads me to the second problem I have with the marketing of this product.

If you go to the Heat Surge website you won’t find one picture of the Amish fireplace with the wheels attached. The reason for this, in my opinion, is the wheels make it look “dinky” compared to the “substantial” look it has when pictured without the wheels.

So how much pride can you take in a product the manufacturer is embarrassed to show in its entirety?

This is a shame. The wheels are actually a selling point because they provide the means for zone heating – simply wheel the fireplace from room to room as needed. Zone heating, or heating only the room you occupy, allows you to dial back your home’s master thermostat for substantial fuel savings.

On the other hand, attempting to “zone heat” your home for multiple occupants spread out in multiple rooms with just one Amish fireplace is impossible.

I have a few other issues with their marketing claims that I could delve into, such as “It uses about as much energy to run as a coffee maker” and regional energy costs, but they have little bearing on cost effectiveness when you pay $587 for a 1,500 watt space heater.

Looking for the perfect space heater? You’ll find it at Sam’s Guide to Small Space Heaters. Newly updated for 2010!

Selling advertising space on your blog or website. If you have a blog or website online here’s why you should consider selling ad space to local companies. First, you probably have some affiliate banners or AdSense displaying somewhere on your sites already but I bet your are not really raking in that much cash. Consider this, a few minutes on the phone to local business could reap huge rewards just by letting them know about the opportunity to display there business or on your site. The same tired old affiliate banner or AdSense advert that generates cents per click can be replaced by a banner ad that you just sold for $500 dollars per month.

First lets look at the basics your going to need a web advert management program and we highly recommend Ad revenue for the job. It’s a fully loaded web advert script with full administration and click through tracking functions and comes at a reasonable price. In fact it has the same features as some software selling for over $1000 dollars so go check this out.

Second you need to know a little about how banner ads per form on websites for your own benefit and also so you are clued up on what to say to potential clients. Unless your running a site with thousands of visitors per day your best sales tactic is to persuade local business es about the effectiveness of advertising on your site for brand recognition of their  business. Click throughs are a bonus and can be fully tracked and reported which is an important benefit to your potential clients.

Here’s some really useful data on the performance of banner ads today:

1. Low click-through rates overall With an average of only 0.21% of impressions generating a click, display ads are generally low performing. Online ads are branding tools. Direct clicks are simply a happy byproduct. In the context of direct response, online ads appear to be, at best, moderately successful.

2. Larger is slightly better The largest ad sizes – 728×90 leader boards and 300×250 rectangles – perform above average. They are also the top 2 most popular ad formats according to Nielson (Sept 2008). It’s possible the higher click-through rates are due to placement since these two large ad formats are typically used above the fold (eg., in the header of a website).

3. 468×60 banners perform the worst The oldest format, the original banner size of 468×60, performs the worst! It may be due to the fact that users have learned to ignore ads of this size. Another possible reason is that because it’s smaller than other formats, the 468×60 is typically buried within content, and not given prominent placement like the 728×90 leader board size.

So having that background info you need to sell your prospect on the branding element of their banner ad placement on your site an d again if its low traffic you need to sell them on the idea of a fixed price per month rather then on impressions per month or click-throughs. If your clients don’t have their own banners already why not offer to do it for them for free if they sign up for say a two month period You can create banners easily for little no money and we highly recommend instant banner.

So that’s our quick tip

Start selling advert space directly

Get the web ad management script  for selling banner ads like Ad revenue

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