Just35.com

[sem4u]

Just 35 are back! Under new management now, but still the same sky high directory prices. They claim to be doing lots more TV work (mostly on Sky channels), SEO on their own site and ads in the broadsheets (which can feature your site).

Salespeople are still pushy. Charging £1,820 for a year, making them perhaps the most expensive directory ever!

[deejay]

£1,820

*picks jaw up off floor*

[ncsuk]

Interesting idea for a site though, more information and limited category space makes it almost worth it as long as you can get some decent exposure...

Still £35 a week is a little excessive but whatever.

[Lord Majestic]

Interesting idea for a site though

I am sure that if they sold out all their inventory then they would have probably changed name to just50 or just1000 ;)

Anyway, they say they are a simple alternative to search engines, but I question whether arbitrary number of 35 is going to provide sufficiently relevant results for web space that has got billions of URLs. I am not even convinced that directory can even be relevant for specific queries that simple have to look over the whole webspace rather than a handful of paid-for advertisers.

[PCInk]

It's an interesting site. Some categories are duplicated under more than one name. The category I would put one of my sites has three categories (all the category titles mean the same thing). This allows over 100 sites in for that market sector. It is like allowing a category for 'cars', then adding 'vehicles', 'automobiles', 'vans' etc...

They phone me quite regularly. They have stated several times that they sponsored Friends. What? At three o'clock in the morning in Outer Mongolia? Has anyone ever seen their 'Friends sponsorship'?

They told me that they planned a massive TV advertising campaign for summer 2003. Did anyone ever see one of their adverts?

To me, it seems to much like a con, and FAR, FAR too expensive. It is much cheaper to get in Yahoo's directory. And I have seen Yahoo adverts.

[Shak]

just35 are full of XXXX

Shak

[tigger]

I had a rep on the phone last week and claimed a listing with them for £1800 was a better investment than Y @ $299 so obviously they are employing muppets

[Lord Majestic]

If I was running business like theirs and I was convinced its good value for money to my customers then I'd offer this:

join free for 30 days (or no question money back within 30 days) and use trusted 3-rd party or even your own ROI tracker to decide if it is worth it to stay for longer (paid for).

This is exactly what Google does with AdWords - low barrier of entry (not free, but inexpensive enough) and its up to you to cancel at any time if ROI is not there. People who don't calculate ROI (only traffic) can blame themselves only...

[Bobby_Davro]

Their Alexa data places them as a middle of the road small player. Probably worth anything up to £50 maximum, IMHO, depending upon the category.

[creative craig]

How can they justify nearly £2000? I can think of alot better ways to spend to £2000 on directory submissions a year.

[TinkyWinky]

just35 are full of XXXX

*** NOD ***

and full of bull too....;)

Have had many coversations with them 'under old management' and no one sang from the same hymn sheet (is that right?)

Stats varied from the millions of page impressions per month to 1 million unique users etc etc etc...

So IMHO stick to smaller players where anything from £10 - £50 wil get you a listing as a one onff fee.. far less risk.

[mack]

I recently saw one of their TV ads. It was actualy pretty good, in terms of getting the massage across. At least their markerting guys know what they are doing. They really need to be realistic about their pricing though.

Mack.

[Lord Majestic]

They really need to be realistic about their pricing though.

Not after all that unrealistic money they must have paid for TV ads - unless it was at some unholy early hours like 3am ;)

[mack]

Well it was actualy well into the wee small hours :)

<confession>

Actualy a commercial break on E4 during Big Brother..

</confession>

Mack.

[ish]

Like a muppet I decided that, despite all the negative press, we would give them a go for 3 months.

We calculated we only needed 110 clicks a day to break even. Seeing as they were predicting thousands, surely a measly 110 would be possible.

Errr no! Our links have been live for about 10 days so far, and during that time we have had a massive 5 clicks. 3 from me, and 2 from my colleague.

I will get my money back!

[TinkyWinky]

LOL... sorry but I hope you suceed... there needs to be some way of stopping cowboys operating on "promises".

Time for ABCE to be a bit more active - if they cut their costs then every advertiser would know the legitimate sites that are not afraid to publish their stats.

[Gymonsear]

Do not touch with a barge pole...

They will take your cash and deliver zero

I am building a hate list of con artists... any other favourites out there?

[TinkyWinky]

LOL... who needs friends ;)

I can think of a few - I will sticky you...

[subway]

just35 are full of XXXX

I couldn't agree more, s**** sales people and very poor TV advertising, the worst money one of my clients ever spent - that was a good 2 and a half years ago.

[bekyed]

Just 35 are con artists and make no doubt about it.
We signed up for 12 months with them a few years back during their channe 4 tv campaign.
We thought with all the exposure the 35.00 per week was well worth it, how wrong we were.
Over the 6 monts we received approx 50 visitors.
We complained to just who informed me our tracking was wrong, so we checked the tracking url and everyhting was fine, they were giving us false reports of traffic by phone every time we rang them.
We tried to get our money back to no avail and just decided to put it down to experience.

Please do not deal with these people!

Bek

[creative craig]

bekyed, you should have called the Data Protection Act on them and demanded to see their data that they had on your sites. You could then have looked through to see the reports yourself.

[bekyed]

Your right Craig,

This was a few years back and we were very green then.

Bek.

[netnerd]

I had some dealings with Just35, but just before i signed up, i cancelled the cheque as i read a lot about them on the net that wasnt very good.

If you ask them in detail about how many visitors your site will get, you will find that the figures they tell you at first are far from what you will actually get.

They tell you about "hits" rather than unique visitors etc.

Be careful!

[sem4u]

Yes, I was quoted highly questionable page views for one category...