Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

indiehackers.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 211 posts

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#141

Post by leeoniya »

leeoniya wrote: post #126
asperous wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Google may be paid per click, the value of that click (how much companies are willing to pay), is directly dependent on their conversion rates. So Google is incentivized to get you the most converting clicks as possible.

i think it's safe to say that the incentives are not exactly aligned. if i was google, i would make sure that the ctr was as high as possible while the conversion rate was just enough to be worth it. there are a lot of fine-grained controls missing from the adwords backend which waste money. for example, you cannot segment iphones from android, or forcibly exclude ie11 because you have chosen not to support it any mo…

ok, i guess there is a way to target to specific mobile devices:

https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7101715?hl=en

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#142

Post by aschatten »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #106
code4tee wrote: post #33

There is a winter coming for the online ad model when more people realize, as this author has, that most online ad spend was probably a total waste. That combined with the increasing crackdown by the consumer on blocking data tracking raises serious questions on the long term viability of the business models of some big players in the industry.

I'm in adtech and godddamn, I can't wait for the industry to wean itself off user tracking, shaking and crying like a heroin addict. For years myself and other engineers have been warning the product owners that third party user tracking's life span is very much finite - Firefox was going to block 3rd party cookies by default several years back, but walked it back because Google weren't ready for that and threatened…

I understand how ETag works foe tracking, but can you point me in the direction to learn more about steganographed PNGs?

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#143

Post by sopooneo »

ryguytilidie wrote: post #83
TeMPOraL wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't get too fancy with your taglines. People don't have time to understand what you are saying. People don't like fancy terminologies except for what is popular. It's worse than that. And it's my pet peeve about many startup landing pages these days. It's not like people don't have time to understand - there's nothing there to understand ! "Full stack adaptive delivery" is a near-meaningless phrase. It can be con…

I do recruiting consulting and it blows my mind how every time I ask a startup how they differentiate from other startups and what specific advantages they want me to discuss, they give me a bunch of meaningless phrases. Its like founders are being taught a different language that they think provides value but makes no fucking sense.

I am with you on this. When I look up new companies and can't get a basic idea of their product/service even after spending minutes on their home page, it drives me batty.

But I also have a lesson from my former decades on earth: if lots of people are doing something that seems crazy to you, there is probably something you don't know. So could it be that there is some reason all these startups are so maddeningly obtuse? Other than just being bad at communication, I mean? Is there some incentive to not actually say what you do?

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#144

Post by StavrosK »

shripadk wrote: post #43

Left a comment on the IndieHackers page. Keeping a copy here for those who aren't reading the comments section. I have noticed this a lot in various websites I have helped in ad campaigns. Their biggest problem is their landing page. Just like this article uses lots of jargons to explain simple concepts, their landing page reflects the same. For those of you wanting to know more about landing page optimization just w…

You have inspired me to add a simpler landing page to one of my services:

https://imgz.org/?v=s

Also, should landing pages differentiate based on the query string ("?v=s" here), or be hosted on a new path?

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#145

Post by brianna_dickey »

>Take a test-and-learn approach with small budgets to quickly fine-tune campaigns, focusing on page quality and clickthrough rates.

A good reminder that you can apply The Lean Startup methodology (Build > Measure > Learn) to projects of all sizes from forming a new company to running an ad campaign. Ship early, test often, rinse and repeat.

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#146

Post by mkl »

StavrosK wrote: post #144
shripadk wrote: post #43

Left a comment on the IndieHackers page. Keeping a copy here for those who aren't reading the comments section. I have noticed this a lot in various websites I have helped in ad campaigns. Their biggest problem is their landing page. Just like this article uses lots of jargons to explain simple concepts, their landing page reflects the same. For those of you wanting to know more about landing page optimization just w…

You have inspired me to add a simpler landing page to one of my services: https://imgz.org/?v=s Also, should landing pages differentiate based on the query string ("?v=s" here), or be hosted on a new path?

That's great! Your default landing page is pretty clear and to the point, too. I think a new path. "/simple"? "/nobullshit"? "/what"? I don't know.

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#147

Post by baddox »

sopooneo wrote: post #143
ryguytilidie wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do recruiting consulting and it blows my mind how every time I ask a startup how they differentiate from other startups and what specific advantages they want me to discuss, they give me a bunch of meaningless phrases. Its like founders are being taught a different language that they think provides value but makes no fucking sense.

I am with you on this. When I look up new companies and can't get a basic idea of their product/service even after spending minutes on their home page, it drives me batty. But I also have a lesson from my former decades on earth: if lots of people are doing something that seems crazy to you, there is probably something you don't know. So could it be that there is some reason all these startups are so maddeningly obtu…

For many companies, the home page is probably simply not used for selling their product or informing new people about the company, and instead serves more as a symbol of the company's aesthetic and a way to welcome and comfort visitors.

Think of it more like the well-appointed lobby of an office headquarters. I don't think anyone would expect the lobby of an office building to explain what the company does. It's just supposed to look nice and welcoming.

This makes sense to me. You generally don't see uninformative homepages from consumer software-as-a-service or direct-to-consumer companies, for instance. Airbnb and Airtable both seem to immediately explain in fairly clear terms what they do, for example.

Even massive software companies with a huge range of products that self-serve to business customers have pretty explanatory homepages. Salesforce is a decent example.

I think the home pages that get these sorts of complaints are either companies that don't have product-market fit (and thus don't even know what they are yet), or companies that have long involved sales processes with large enterprise clients where they probably tend to negotiate highly-customized services. An example of the latter that comes to mind is Splunk, whose website uses a lot of buzz words and seems to basically be saying "trust us, if you're a big company with a lot of data, we can do anything you need regarding your data."

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#148

Post by StavrosK »

mkl wrote: post #146
StavrosK wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have inspired me to add a simpler landing page to one of my services: https://imgz.org/?v=s Also, should landing pages differentiate based on the query string ("?v=s" here), or be hosted on a new path?

That's great! Your default landing page is pretty clear and to the point, too. I think a new path. "/simple"? "/nobullshit"? "/what"? I don't know.

Thank you! In the interest of fairness, I have added a complicated landing page as well:

https://imgz.org/?v=c

I will break them out into new paths, thanks.

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#149

Post by ryanlol »

underdown wrote: post #91
ryanlol wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SEO should be as natural as possible Natural looking to googles algos, not actually as natural as possible. There are highly effective “unnatural” SEO strategies, for example you could just generate fake bounces on your competitors pages using proxies. > Don't start by gaming the system. Start by doing it as natural as you can. This is good advice. You can always game the system, but you probably shouldn’t start ou…

> There are highly effective “unnatural” SEO strategies, for example you could just generate fake bounces on your competitors pages using proxies. That's not unnatural seo it's negative seo.

Why can’t negative SEO be unnatural?

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#150

Post by [deleted] »

leeoniya wrote: post #141
leeoniya wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think it's safe to say that the incentives are not exactly aligned. if i was google, i would make sure that the ctr was as high as possible while the conversion rate was just enough to be worth it. there are a lot of fine-grained controls missing from the adwords backend which waste money. for example, you cannot segment iphones from android, or forcibly exclude ie11 because you have chosen not to support it any mo…

ok, i guess there is a way to target to specific mobile devices: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7101715?hl=en

[deleted]
Post reply on HN