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We'll just put ads on

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Re: We'll just put ads on

#41

Post by brudgers »

giulianob wrote: post #39
nlh wrote: post #26

Leaving the merits of advertising itself aside for a bit, this post brings up a bigger topic that I think anyone running a startup needs to think about: When you're getting involved in a startup, it is incredibly important that you be honest with yourselves and your partners about what the goal really is (this is to the point made the other day about self-awareness) and what you're really building. A Feature: A piece…

What would you say is the biggest difference between a product and a business though? Is a business just a company with a lot of successful products? Following your terminology, I'd say people create products and if they are successful turn into businesses. I totally get what you mean by features though and sometimes I wonder if tackling these tiny problems with full out services is a legitimate business strategy or…

Businesses can pivot. Products can't.

IIR, 37signals originally built websites (or something like that). They pivoted the company into SaaS around their internal project management solutions.

Re: We'll just put ads on

#42

Post by socialist_coder »

phoboslab wrote: post #25
ashray wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's a forum style thing then discussion systems with a high number of pageviews per unique visitor (vbulletin/reddit/etc) will generally have very poor advertising revenue. Maybe you need to look at a different model though ? Sort of like reddit gold, premium memberships, or some other services that may somehow add value to your site ? It's often surprising how many people are willing to pay $2-$10 per month for…

There's no email address on your profile :) The site is http://pr0gramm.com/ (NSFW) - mostly german visitors and yes, it's 4-5m visits, not pageviews. It's kinda impossible to define what a "pageview" is on that site anyway.

A lot more Hitler related images than I would expect. I didn't think Germans appreciated that type of humor (my wife is German).

Re: We'll just put ads on

#43

Post by arthurquerou »

What you say is both very true and very false, it depends a lot on the product. Advertising can be an amazing way to get money and sometimes, even if you could directly sell to your users, advertising can perform WAY better. The real important factor to decide wether you should put ads or not is "will I probably get a few paying customers or just a lot of users ?". Advertising is all about the volume, the bigger it is, the more money you'll make and a good relationship with your advertisers can lead to really good revenues and a real business model. When we launched our first product with my company, our only competitor was a paid app. We thought "f* it, we'll make it free!". We now have 600k monthly active users and make way much more than our competitor. So maybe not every business should "sell". With social media &cie, it's starting to be really easy to get a lot of users and ads can be an amazing way to monetize it !

Re: We'll just put ads on

#44

Post by orangethirty »

giulianob wrote: post #39
nlh wrote: post #26

Leaving the merits of advertising itself aside for a bit, this post brings up a bigger topic that I think anyone running a startup needs to think about: When you're getting involved in a startup, it is incredibly important that you be honest with yourselves and your partners about what the goal really is (this is to the point made the other day about self-awareness) and what you're really building. A Feature: A piece…

What would you say is the biggest difference between a product and a business though? Is a business just a company with a lot of successful products? Following your terminology, I'd say people create products and if they are successful turn into businesses. I totally get what you mean by features though and sometimes I wonder if tackling these tiny problems with full out services is a legitimate business strategy or…

The product is what you sell. The business is the rest (marketing, sales, etc.). A product itself is not a business, because products don't sell themselves. No matter how good they are, someone needs to market them in any given way. Problem with hackers is that they falsely believe that building a great product is enough. Nope.

Ever see the mountain of downright awful products out there? How do people buy such such garbage? Because those products are marketed well. If people sell garbage with good marketing imagine what a great product and great marketing can accomplish. One word: Apple. Billions of dollars due to great marketing and great products.

Re: We'll just put ads on

#45

Post by cdmorris »

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…

> 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.

Hmm, I wonder what you might define as "reasonable money." This seemed like an interesting take on this question to me: http://answers.onstartups.com/a/40484/23679

Re: We'll just put ads on

#46

Post by ChuckMcM »

nlh wrote: post #26

Leaving the merits of advertising itself aside for a bit, this post brings up a bigger topic that I think anyone running a startup needs to think about: When you're getting involved in a startup, it is incredibly important that you be honest with yourselves and your partners about what the goal really is (this is to the point made the other day about self-awareness) and what you're really building. A Feature: A piece…

This is a good distinction, I find that businesses start with the notion that they will make money so the question is "What can I charge for it?" or "Can I monetize the tool/data/views/Etc?" and a feature starts with "How many people would find this useful?"

Re: We'll just put ads on

#47

Post by ballard »

Why was this guy listening to an audience to begin with? People don't know what they want, and that's entirely different from what they will actually pay for. The only measure is the cash register, i.e., the reconciliation report from the credit card processor(s).

Make something awesome that clearly takes away more pain than the price incurs, more cheaply than you can produce it. If you can't make it awesome or profitable, then it's not a business.

Re: We'll just put ads on

#48

Post by giulianob »

orangethirty wrote: post #44
giulianob wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you say is the biggest difference between a product and a business though? Is a business just a company with a lot of successful products? Following your terminology, I'd say people create products and if they are successful turn into businesses. I totally get what you mean by features though and sometimes I wonder if tackling these tiny problems with full out services is a legitimate business strategy or…

The product is what you sell. The business is the rest (marketing, sales, etc.). A product itself is not a business, because products don't sell themselves . No matter how good they are, someone needs to market them in any given way. Problem with hackers is that they falsely believe that building a great product is enough. Nope. Ever see the mountain of downright awful products out there? How do people buy such such…

How is Instagram a product and not a business in that aspect?

Re: We'll just put ads on

#49

Post by orangethirty »

giulianob wrote: post #48
orangethirty wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The product is what you sell. The business is the rest (marketing, sales, etc.). A product itself is not a business, because products don't sell themselves . No matter how good they are, someone needs to market them in any given way. Problem with hackers is that they falsely believe that building a great product is enough. Nope. Ever see the mountain of downright awful products out there? How do people buy such such…

How is Instagram a product and not a business in that aspect?

Instagram the social network/app are the product. The business is all the social engineering being done to market it, the infrastructure to handle all those booty shots, the HR dept., etc.

Re: We'll just put ads on

#50

Post by orangethirty »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #46
nlh wrote: post #26

Leaving the merits of advertising itself aside for a bit, this post brings up a bigger topic that I think anyone running a startup needs to think about: When you're getting involved in a startup, it is incredibly important that you be honest with yourselves and your partners about what the goal really is (this is to the point made the other day about self-awareness) and what you're really building. A Feature: A piece…

This is a good distinction, I find that businesses start with the notion that they will make money so the question is "What can I charge for it?" or "Can I monetize the tool/data/views/Etc?" and a feature starts with "How many people would find this useful?"

I find that businesses start with the notion that they will make money...

There is a distinction to be made. There are many startups that are the product itself. Their product is just a coy to make it seem as if they are successful. Their only aim is to sell the success to investors/people with money so they can cash out. In this case, the startup/product provides a very different set of usefulness. Yes, these types of businesses are useful. They generate traction for the buyer, their engineering talent put to better use, etc.

Though these days I just start with the question: Who will buy this? If I can't answer that then I move on. No sense in trying to mine a business model that does not exist.

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