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We'll just put ads on

blog.codeable.io

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Re: We'll just put ads on

#11

Post by ashray »

tzaman wrote: post #8
ashray wrote: post #7

This post has a very naive understanding of online advertising. Here's a breakdown: - If you're thinking of advertising in terms of just slapping on some Google Adsense then you need high amounts (millions of users per month) of traffic to make reasonable money. - If you're thinking of specific kinds of targeted advertising, this can be very powerful depending on your niche. If you can hire a sales team to push adver…

In my personal experience 90% of people with ideas think about advertising, when in reality, only 5% (I'm guesstimating) make serious money with it. Or maybe even less.

You're right, and the problem here is a naive understanding of advertising as a business model rather than it not being a good business model.

I happened to go the opposite way. My first major project was an online advertising success. I naively applied my 'learning' to my 2nd project. That obviously didn't pan out. That led me to a better understanding of business models and how and where they may work. So I guess it can go both ways.

Most people are only familiar with 'big names' like techcrunch, lifehacker, facebook, etc. which are very much advertising supported platforms. That's probably why they think 'advertising' is the answer even if they're not building a high traffic web app.

Re: We'll just put ads on

#12

Post by bdcravens »

jeremyjh wrote: post #5
mcherm wrote: post #2

> If the answer involves advertising, think again, chances are it’s a poor business model. Now you might say that [insert your favourite startup here] did it and succeeded, but let me warn you, those are the exception to the rule. Perhaps. But the startup that succeeds is the exception to the rule, REGARDLESS of their model for making money. And I have seen quite a few that worried first about getting customers and o…

I don't think you can just separate these two issues. If you do not monetize your solution it will often be more attractive and thus the traction you get will be misleading. For example, I'm sure I could make a very popular product by simply giving away terabytes of free storage and bandwidth exposed through a simple API and web interface. But that would do nothing but attract the kind of takers that would never pay…

If you do not monetize your solution it will often be more attractive and thus the traction you get will be misleading.

Probably the wisest thing I've ever read on HN.

Re: We'll just put ads on

#14

Post by mistercow »

tzaman wrote: post #8
ashray wrote: post #7

This post has a very naive understanding of online advertising. Here's a breakdown: - If you're thinking of advertising in terms of just slapping on some Google Adsense then you need high amounts (millions of users per month) of traffic to make reasonable money. - If you're thinking of specific kinds of targeted advertising, this can be very powerful depending on your niche. If you can hire a sales team to push adver…

In my personal experience 90% of people with ideas think about advertising, when in reality, only 5% (I'm guesstimating) make serious money with it. Or maybe even less.

What portion of the other 10% make serious money with non-advertising models?

Re: We'll just put ads on

#15

Post by uahal »

Fred Wilson covered the validity / opportunity / challenges associated with advertising as a business model in a recent post. The whole thing (and the comments) are informative but here's my high level summary;

- Huge difference between ads that are sold (niche) vs ads that are bought (scale).

- It takes millions of users a month to be successful at scale. It takes a great sales team to be successful in a niche.

- The absence of scarcity in online and mobile advertising creates structural downward pressure on CPM.

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/12/mba-mondays-revenue-models-a...

Re: We'll just put ads on

#16

Post by tzaman »

mistercow wrote: post #14
tzaman wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my personal experience 90% of people with ideas think about advertising, when in reality, only 5% (I'm guesstimating) make serious money with it. Or maybe even less.

What portion of the other 10% make serious money with non-advertising models?

touche :)

Re: We'll just put ads on

#17

Post by mbesto »

The most important thing when creating your business model is to understanding precisely who you're customer is. Often, someone creating an advertising thinks their customer is a the person viewing the page. In fact, this is just a sourcing effort.

Re: We'll just put ads on

#18

Post by ahoyhere »

jeremyjh wrote: post #5
mcherm wrote: post #2

> If the answer involves advertising, think again, chances are it’s a poor business model. Now you might say that [insert your favourite startup here] did it and succeeded, but let me warn you, those are the exception to the rule. Perhaps. But the startup that succeeds is the exception to the rule, REGARDLESS of their model for making money. And I have seen quite a few that worried first about getting customers and o…

I don't think you can just separate these two issues. If you do not monetize your solution it will often be more attractive and thus the traction you get will be misleading. For example, I'm sure I could make a very popular product by simply giving away terabytes of free storage and bandwidth exposed through a simple API and web interface. But that would do nothing but attract the kind of takers that would never pay…

YES. Thank you.

If you hate drunken frat boys, don't open an Irish pub. Everything you do attracts a certain kind of person. Better do it deliberately, or you'll screw yourself.

Re: We'll just put ads on

#19

Post by phoboslab »

ashray wrote: post #7

This post has a very naive understanding of online advertising. Here's a breakdown: - If you're thinking of advertising in terms of just slapping on some Google Adsense then you need high amounts (millions of users per month) of traffic to make reasonable money. - If you're thinking of specific kinds of targeted advertising, this can be very powerful depending on your niche. If you can hire a sales team to push adver…

I have a site that has around 4-5m visits per month, yet all attempts to monetize it have failed. I'd love to use Amazon's referral program or Google Ads, but I can't because the site's content is somewhere between reddit and 4chan - deemed too shady for anything else than porn ads.

So, the site still remains a hobby project - exactly as when I launched it 6 years ago.

Re: We'll just put ads on

#20

Post by vidarh »

ashray wrote: post #7

This post has a very naive understanding of online advertising. Here's a breakdown: - If you're thinking of advertising in terms of just slapping on some Google Adsense then you need high amounts (millions of users per month) of traffic to make reasonable money. - If you're thinking of specific kinds of targeted advertising, this can be very powerful depending on your niche. If you can hire a sales team to push adver…

I think the reason that most people in this story laughed at it when advertising was brought up is simply because advertising is the "default" answer from people who have not thought one bit about how to monetize.

And who, because of that, are not just answering "advertising", but are answering advertising without having a credible story of much about it in general as well as without having the faintest idea of what kind of model would be realistic to model their idea's income potential with advertising.

So really, "advertising" was a proxy for "haven't got a clue".

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