Advertising and Business Opportunities

Submitted by admin on Mon, 08/03/2009 - 18:10

WayToRussia.Net is the most popular guide to Russia on the internet visited by more than 1.5 Mln people every year and 789 000 of them are from USA, UK, Canada and Australia. To put his into perspective, about 500 000 travelers from these countries visited Russia in 2008. Therefore if you advertise on Way to Russia you can be sure that you will reach most of the English-speaking travelers to Russia just through this website alone.

US visitors levels - comparison between WayToRussia.Net, TheMoscowTimes.com and Expat.Ru by Compete.Com

We have been recommended as the best Russian travel portal by The Lonely Planet and Rough Guides, BBC, USA Today, The Moscow Times newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, Toorista travel portal and several other respected publications and organizations worldwide. You can see some scans of the articles here.

Way to Russia is an information resource, not a service provider. We create original content about Russia and advertise the best travel deals on our site. We constantly monitor both our content and the deals offered by our advertisers. This ensures that our readers get the most up-to-date information and high-quality services.

Way to Russia offers the following services to businesses:

• Advertising campaigns;
• Original content licensing (texts and photographs);
• Market research and consulting;

Advertising on WayToRussia.Net

If you advertise your business on Way to Russia, you have a chance to reach all your potential audience at once and we will show you how:

In 2008 more than 1.4 Mln people visited WayToRussia.Net. Most of our audience came from the USA (about 36.3%), United Kingdom (12.4%), Russia (8.1%), Canada (4.5%), Australia (3.2%), Germany (2.4%), France (2.4%), Italy (1.7%), Netherlands (1.6%), and Turkey (1.5%) - (data from Google Analytics, available upon request or below)

To illustrate the potential reach of advertising on Way to Russia, let's compare this data to Russian travel statistics. According to GosKomStat, about 300 000 USA citizens visited Russia in 2008. At the same time, about 500 000 Americans visited WayToRussia.Net in 2008. These data indicate there's a high chance that almost every USA citizen who is planning a travel to Russia will visit our site.

By advertising with Way to Russia you have a chance to increase brand awareness among all your prospective customers at once and make sure that they consider your offers before they travel to Russia.

How much more targeted can your advertising be?

There are two ways to advertise your business on Way to Russia: banner advertising and listing inclusion.

Banner Advertising

There are four available banner positions: two graphic ads at the top of each page (A and B), a visual ad at the right column (C), and text ads (D).

We always work very closely with each advertiser to identify the sections of our site where their ads will appear. Our goal is to bring the most interesting content to our readers and we believe that good, relevant advertising is a very useful addition to the information on our site.
That is why you are guaranteed highly targeted campaigns when you advertise with Way to Russia.

The price varies from £10 ($19 or 15 EUR) for positions A, B or C to £0.15 ($0.25) per click for text ads. The minimum contract is £200 ($380 US) per month. All terms are negotiable.

To add your banner to our system, just send us a message to dima at waytorussia point net

Travel Services Listings Inclusion

If your business provides high quality and original services to customers, we may consider including it to our travel services listings. We have the following listings on Way to Russia:
• Accommodation (B&Bs, hostels, and private hotels)
• Train Tickets (train ticket providers are listed)
• Apartment for Rent (short-term rentals)
• Tours (city and adventure)
• Russian Visa Support
• Taxi and Airport Transfers
• Business Services
• Airline Tickets

The main conditions for inclusion are that (1) all your customers receive a reply within 24 hours; (2) fair combination of price and quality; (3) reliability, privacy, and security for the customers;

The price of inclusion depends on each particular case, but in general we work on the basis of 15% commission for each successful (paid) booking with a minimum fixed fee of £100 ($190 US).

To add your company to our listings, please, contact us.

If you were already approved, just follow the instructions to add a new company in the relevant listings section.

Way to Russia Statistics

Currently (as of 01/2007) more than 140 000 people visit Way to Russia every month, that is more than 1.4 Mln people per year. Most of our audience comes from the USA (about 33.2%), United Kingdom (11.6%), Russia (8.9%), Canada (4.6%), Australia (3.1%), Germany (2.6%), France (4.4%), Italy (1.7%), Netherlands (1.6%), and Turkey (1.5%) - (data from Google Analytics, available upon request).

Visitors by Country, 15 Jan 2001 till 15 Feb 2001

In average about 16,000 pages are viewed daily and each visitors on average spends about 1 min 50 seconds on each page (data for the 500 most popular pages), which shows that Way to Russia content is very interesting for our readers. Each reader views 4 pages in average .

The most popular sections of the site are:

Directory	Percentage	Pageviews 14/12/06 till 14/01/07	Avg Time Spent on each page in the section	% Visitors Leaving Site after reading this Section
/TalkLounge/	22%	96142	1m 15s	16%
/WhatIsRussia/ /Features/ Blogs	12% 5% 1%	70448 6368 2791	1m 34s 2m 26s 1m 17s	32% 31% 19%
/Moscow/	8%	35774	1m 44s	38%
Train Tickets Listings	7%	32294	1m 08s	13%
/Services/	6%	27563	1m 21s	22%
/Transport/	5%	24319	1m 58s	32%
Apartments Listings	5%	23618	0m 54s	10%
Main Page	4%	16122	1m 06s	20%
/TransSiberian/	3%	12741	1m 48s	24%
/Practicalities/	3%	12088	2m 42s	47%
/Siberia/	3%	11543	1m 27s	30%
/SaintPetersburg/	2%	10517	1m 48s	40%
/RussianVisa/	2%	9016	2m 12s	30%
/FarEast/	1%	5880	1m 36s	33%
/GoldenRing/	1%	5831	1m 18s	30%
/Baikal/	1%	4183	1m 15s	22%
/Altay/	0.3%	1876	0m 54s	33%

Data from 14 December 2006 until 14 January 2007 from Google Analytics. More detailed stats is available upon request.

The most popular Destinations Guides on Way to Russia are the guides to Moscow, Trans-Siberian, St. Petersburg, Vladivostok, Novosibrisk, Irkutsk and Golden Ring. Inside city guides the most popular pages are the Arrival / Departure, Clubbing, and Accommodation guides.

The most popular pages on Way to Russia are the main index page (viewed about 16000 times monthly), as well as the Russian Food page (10000 main page / 18000 all sections), Russian Language tutorial (10000 / 34000), train ticket order page (7000) - data Google Analytics (01/2007).

The average CTR is 1%.

We marked with bold the most interesting sections for advertisers in our opinion. For example, banner advertising will work the best in Moscow and St. Petersburg guide as well as Practicalities section, as about 40% of visitors are looking to leave the site when browsing these sections. At the same time, these sections are where our readers spend the most time on the site, showing that there's a great interest in their content.

The data below from Google Analytics shows the breakdown of visits / pageviews by weekdays (data: 15 Jan - 15 Feb 2010).

The audience of Way to Russia grows about 80% each year. The peak of growth rate is March to May when there is a seasonal growth of interest to Russia.

More detailed statistics, including breakdown by countries and cross-segment performance is available upon request.

Clients about Way to Russia

You can read the testimonials from our readers or see the most recent feedback on Way to Russia Facebook page.

Press about Way to Russia

Rough Guides to Russia: "Way to Russia: Russia-based information portal with links to providers of apartments [...] This website has a regularly updated section on the ever-changing rules governing visas and registration"
(2006 edition, page 383)

Lonely Planet Guide to Russia and Trans-Siberian: "A much recommended resource for independent travelers to Russia, produced in Russia by Russian travelers - Waytorussia - Founded by Moscow university students, this slick site features visa and transport info."
(2003 and 2005 editions)

BBC: "Way to Russia - Actively run by a group of Russians with a passion for their country, this contains terrific and often entertaining information www.waytorussia.net"
(see bbc.co.uk - "BBC Recommends" section on the right or just make a search on Russia)

USA Today: "The travelers' information from WaytoRussia —www.waytorussia.net/Moscow/Guide.html— includes addresses of Internet cafes and tips on prepaid Internet cards. Check out "Getting to, from & around Moscow" to learn about public transit. And look to the top of the page for maps and a photo gallery."
(28 April 2004, See www.usatoday.com for the full text)

Go-Magazine (The Moscow Times):
"One of the most comprehensive Russia-travel web portals in English [...] They provide a generous selection of information about Moscow, St. Petersburg and several other Russian cities [...]"
July 8 - September 9 2005, Go-Magazine, The Moscow Times - http://www.go-magazine.ru/articles/show/255

Way to Russia can license original content (texts, photos and maps) to your company. All our texts and photographs are created by our staff writers and are maintained up-to-date. We never copy and paste information from Way to Russia, instead we create something new and relevant for our clients' purposes.

See some examples of our products:

• This is Like... Russia – the new generation of associative travel guides, created for ThisIsLike.Com

• Snowboard Guide to Russia created for The World Snowboard Guide - the most popular independent snowboarding guide in the world.

• Guide to Russia for MosNews.Com - a popular English-language online Russian newspaper.

• Guide to Russia for TravellersLounge.Co.Uk

• Guide to Moscow for TimeOnline internet cafe, Moscow

The price of content license varies depending on your requirements. Generally, a mini city guide (text only - like the guide for TravellersLounge above) or a small article can be licensed for about £200 ($400), while a full-featured guide integrated in your company's website or guidebook starts at £2000 ($4000) - example: World Snowboard Guide above.

Please, contact us for more information.

Marketing Research and Consulting

Way to Russia staff provides consulting services to journalists, business people, and individuals. If you need to do a fact checking for your article or find certain information in Russia, we will be happy to help you. Our rates start at £30 ($60) per hour and can be negotiated depending on the services you require.

Please, contact us for more information.

We also offer marketing research of the Russian travel market and online travel market worldwide. During 10 years of work we've accumulated a lot of useful and interesting information about the local travel market, aggregate purchasing patterns, popularity of various destinations in Russia and beyond. If you'd like to get a sample of our bi-annual publications for travel industry professionals, please, contact us.

Way to Russia Structure

The website WayToRussia.Net and all affilliate websites are privatly owned by a group of partners. If you would like to learn more about members of our team, please, see About Us section.

The British company Ways Ltd is exclusively authorized to sell advertising space on Way to Russia and to arrange commercial partnerships.

Way to Russia Guides is a partner of This is Like Network.

Ways Ltd details:
Director: Dmitry Paranyushkin
Company number: 5039341
Registered office: England
Telephone: +44 (0)207 993-8896
E-mail: billing ATT waytorussia POINT net

Please, send all post to:

Ways Ltd, c/o Chris Mollan & Associates
3 Maple House, Northminster Business Park, York, YO26 6QU, United Kingdom

or

Way to Russia Guides, c/o betahaus
19 Prinzessinnenstrasse, 10969, Berlin, Germany

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