How to Advertise

Advertising: Getting Started

This section tells you all the basic information you need to register and start advertising on the site. For more detailed information, and full Questions and Answers, please see the links on the left.

1. I want to place adverts, but don't have time to do it myself - can you help?
2. How do I register and start advertising on PostgraduateStudentships.co.uk?
3. How do I create an advertisement?
4. Can I display a logo on my advertisement?
5. Can I edit my advertisements?
6. Our studentships often have conditions and eligibility requirements: can I show these easily?
7. Can I advertise taught courses and PhD or Professional Doctorate opportunities for which no funding is specifically available?
8. Can I list multiple studentships, scholarships or bursaries in one advertisement?
9. If I buy an advertisement package for several adverts, do I have to use all the advertisement tokens immediately?
10. How long does my advertisement stay live on the site?
11. How much does it cost to advertise?
12. How do I pay for advertisements?
13. How do you attract students to the site?
14. I have other questions - how can I get in touch?

1. I want to place adverts, but don't have time to do it myself - can you help?

Yes! We offer a 'We do it for you' service. We can create an account for you, purchase tokens for you and place your adverts for you - there is a small extra charge of £5 per advert to place the adverts, but even that is waived if you purchase a 20-advert or 50-advert package. We can generally get adverts onto the website within a few hours, unless they are sent to us after 4pm, in which case it may be the next morning, but we will always do our best to post ads the same day we receive them.

Please contact us for details. If you prefer the Do it Yourself option, it's very easy to do - follow the instructions below on this page for a quick guide or Register Here.

2. How do I register and start advertising on PostgraduateStudentships.co.uk?

Registration for Funding Providers on PostgraduateStudentships.co.uk is quick, easy and free:

Step 1: Register yourself - 2-3 mins
Fill in your details on the Advertisers Registration Form

On the next screen, click on the link for your own institution, and on the following screen, you'll see a list of existing accounts held by Departments in your institution with PostgraduateStudentships.co.uk. If your Department is there, click on the appropriate link to affiliate yourself and go on to Step 3 below. If not, click on the link inviting you to Create a New Department and go on to Step 2 below. Before accessing your Account, you'll also need to go to your own email account where you'll find a message asking you to confirm your email by clicking on a link.

Step 2: Create a New Departmental Account - 3-5 mins
Fill in the screen with details of your Central Department, School, Academic Department, or Research Group, and then click Submit to access your Account page. You account will now function on both PostgraduateStudentships.co.uk and MastersCompare.co.uk, and you can use the same login details on both sites.

As part of creating your Departmental Account, you can provide a FREE 50 word general description for your Department: please note that this Description must be general and cannot replace an ad, so it should not mention specific funding or studentships, as you can advertise those, or include a 'call to action'. You can also purchase a Long Department Profile once you reach your account page.

If you're setting up a new Account, we need to activate the Account, which is very quick and doesn't stop you creating ads in the meantime. If you have affiliated yourself to an existing account, the person who holds the account, or PostgraduateStudentships.co.uk, needs to approve that affiliation before your ads are published on the site, but again this is very quick.

Step 3: Purchase Ad Tokens - 2-3 mins
On your Account page, click on the link to purchase ad tokens. You can buy most of our ads and enhancements from your account page, including single ads or convenient discounted multi-packs. This is very like buying anything else online, with a shopping cart and checkout link in the top right corner of your screen. You don't need a credit card as we invoice you separately. You can choose where you would like the invoice sent. When you buy your ad package, you have 6 months to use the ad tokens you have bought, or 1 year for 20- or 50-packs (this may not apply in the case of Special Offers).

3. How do I create an advertisement?

Step 4: Create Your Ads - 3-5 mins per ad
Back on your Account page, you'll see the tokens you've bought. Click on the link beside the tokens inviting you to create your advert, to access our ad easy to use ad creation 'wizard' (your institutional logo is automatically included on the ad). The first 3 screens are tick boxes only, and ensure your ad appears in the right place on the site. On the 4th screen you'll see a number of fields where you can copy and paste details of your ad. You dont have to use all the fields, but at the least, we recommend you use the Title, Description, How to Apply and Application Deadline fields. At the bottom, choose Save as Draft or Save and Publish at the bottom and then make sure you click Submit to load your ad onto the system.

To create an Open Day or Student Profile advert, click on the link beside your tokens on your account page, and for these ads, just complete the single screen you see in front of you, and click Submit at the bottom.

4. Can I display logos on my text advertisement?

Yes. All advertisements will automatically display your main institutional logo: this is included in the price of the basic advert. You can also display additional logos on individual adverts, alongside the main Institutional logo. If you would like an additional logo, or if you would like a variation of your institutional logo (eg for a particular School) please contact us: there will be a charge of £20 per advert for each additional or swapped logo. It is not our policy to display advertisements without the institutional logo of the purchasing organisation.

5. Can I edit my text advertisements?

Yes. You can edit and resave your advertisement both before and after you publish it on the site. However, you may not make changes such that effectively you have posted a different advert for a different funding or study opportunity. We reserve the right to invoice Providers for any new adverts created in this way. You cannot change the date on your Open Days ads to a different date: to create a new open day advert, you need to purchase a new token first.

6. Our studentships often have conditions and eligibility requirements: can I show these easily?

Yes. For each advert, you will be asked to select one of our Funding Statements that indicates who the funding is for. This is then displayed on the advert, so potential postgraduates can identify opportunities that may apply to them quickly. Additional conditions or requirements not covered by the statement can be shown in a special additional field.

7. Can I advertise taught courses and PhD or Professional Doctorate opportunities for which no funding is specifically available?

Yes. When you do, students who view your advert will also be shown the general funding that is available from charities and trusts for your subject area that they could apply for. They will of course only see funding from charities and other general funding organisations or research councils, not from competitor institutions.

8. Can I list multiple studentships, scholarships or bursaries in one advertisement?

Yes, although we may sometimes advise you to shorten or split ads if they are too long to be effective. Our text adverts, created from advert tokens, can be used very flexibly. One advert token can be used to create any of the following ads:
- A singe Masters course or PhD project (or Prof Doc) ad, with or without funding, and with 3-4 paragraphs of descriptive copy.
- A couple of related courses or projects, usually within the same department, usually with a short para of description, plus a weblink for each one, plus 'how to apply' details applying to both. This generally works for closely related courses or projects within one department. We would NOT advise this if you have more than 3 projects or courses, unless you want to just list each of the courses or project titles, with weblink. If you are not sure if your proposed advert will work, please contact us for advice.
- A single 'lump' of funding that can be applied to a range of masters or PhDs across a Department, School, Faculty or across an institution.

9. If I buy an advertisement package for several adverts, do I have to use all the advertisement tokens immediately?

No, you have 6 months to use the tokens, or up to 1 year if you purchase a 20- or 50-pack.

10. How long does my advertisement stay live on the site?

You will be asked to give a closing date for applications or responses when you create the advert, and this will be the closing date for the advert. Adverts can stay live for anything up to a year and can be repurchased for subsequent years. This is particularly useful if you have departmental funding avaialble annually.

Open Day adverts stay live on the site until the event date, and come off the sites that evening. Long Department Profiles and Student Profile adverts last for 1 year.

11. How much does it cost to advertise?

A single advert (see 8 above for how it can be used) cost just £45 for a single advert, with discounted multi-packs which can be used over 6 months or 1 year. Our full price list shows the various advertisement packages available as well as enhancements for individual advertisements (extra logos, home page slots etc): it also shows any special offers that may be available from time to time. When your Department is registered, you can display contact details and a short 50 word description for free. Banner, buttons and other advertising opportunities are also detailed on the price list. If you have advertising requirements not covered on the price list, please contact us to find out how we can help.

12. How do I pay for advertisements?

Higher Education Institutions and other public educational bodies within the UK are invoiced when the advertisement package or enhancement (of whatever type) is purchased. We accept payment by BACS (preferred) or by cheque: please note that we are not set up to receive card payments of any sort. Commercial organisations, and institutions outside the UK may initially be asked for payment before publication of any advertisements. Please also see our Costs and Payments Frequently Asked Questions

13. How do you attract students to the site?

* We run extensive advertising campaigns on Google and other search engines for both PostgraduateStudentships.co.uk and MastersCompare.co.uk, and at particular times on LinkedIn and Facebook.
* Our partnership with The Student Room website in the UK is bringing a new, extra audience to the site.
* We have a strong presence on Twitter and are developing pages for both PostgraduateStudentships.co.uk and MastersCompare.co.uk on Facebook, to enhance our contact with our website users.
* We attend the major Postgraduate Fairs in the UK
* The site is carefully designed to ensure that individual adverts are found by search engines as quickly as possible and we provide advice to help you maximise the opportunities for you advertisements, when you have registered. The home page has a Google page rank of 6.
* We undertake email marketing campaigns directly to potential postgraduates.
* We provide striking posters and leaflets which are mailed to departments - if your department does not already have them on display, please let us know and we will send you some.
* We understand the power of word of mouth, and we are making it as easy (and rewarding) as possible for students to tell each other about the site.

14. I have other questions - how can I get in touch?

You should find the answers to most questions in the following documents which you can find on the following pages:
Why Advertise on PostgraduateStudentships.co.uk?
What you can advertise
Package Costs
Costs and Payments FAQs
Providers and Advertisers Terms and Conditions
Privacy Policy

If you cannot find the answers to your questions in the information above please contact us. We will always respond by email as quickly as we can, generally within 24 hours - but we encourage you to check the information provided on the site to see if we have already answered your question. To keep costs down, we provide email help only.