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Are “Shameless Plugs” Worth It? Some data

danmaz74.me

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Re: Are “Shameless Plugs” Worth It? Some data

#11

Post by danmaz74 »

zalew wrote: post #8
danmaz74 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here: the desired end result is to get clients, but the first step is to get your readers to know what your "offer" is. The objective of the plug was this first step; then you should measure the conversion of the offer itself, but that's probably quite independent from the plug itself. Anyway, for your curiosity, the end result was only one little gig for now - vs 0 from the first post, for what this is worth.…

Frankly I was surprised so little of people viewed the 'about' section, I've read it's common to check who's the author, and I do it myself. Until I tried to find yours and it took me a moment. You should expose the menu bar better and maybe get rid of the highly distracting binary crap. It may be one of the reasons why the plug generated more views of the 'about' and 'consulting' section - nobody sees those links wi…

The placement of the menu was very conventional and I didn't think it could be a problem, but, now that you made me think about it, I'll consider this.

On the other hand, I don't think that the "binary crap" can be so much more distracting than any other picture I could put there. And I happen to like it :)

Re: Are “Shameless Plugs” Worth It? Some data

#12

Post by zalew »

danmaz74 wrote: post #11
zalew wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly I was surprised so little of people viewed the 'about' section, I've read it's common to check who's the author, and I do it myself. Until I tried to find yours and it took me a moment. You should expose the menu bar better and maybe get rid of the highly distracting binary crap. It may be one of the reasons why the plug generated more views of the 'about' and 'consulting' section - nobody sees those links wi…

The placement of the menu was very conventional and I didn't think it could be a problem, but, now that you made me think about it, I'll consider this. On the other hand, I don't think that the "binary crap" can be so much more distracting than any other picture I could put there. And I happen to like it :)

my point was the pic takes enough attention I didn't notice there is a menu below. the important elements for you are under-exposed. you added the plug but didn't fix the main problem that made it necessary in the first place :)

Re: Are “Shameless Plugs” Worth It? Some data

#14

Post by donatzsky »

danmaz74 wrote: post #11
zalew wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly I was surprised so little of people viewed the 'about' section, I've read it's common to check who's the author, and I do it myself. Until I tried to find yours and it took me a moment. You should expose the menu bar better and maybe get rid of the highly distracting binary crap. It may be one of the reasons why the plug generated more views of the 'about' and 'consulting' section - nobody sees those links wi…

The placement of the menu was very conventional and I didn't think it could be a problem, but, now that you made me think about it, I'll consider this. On the other hand, I don't think that the "binary crap" can be so much more distracting than any other picture I could put there. And I happen to like it :)

While the placement may be conventional, it's actually quite easy to miss the fact that there's some text in all that orange. At first it looks like it's simply another part of the header. Certainly, I didn't notice it until I went back to look for it.

Re: Are “Shameless Plugs” Worth It? Some data

#15

Post by huhtenberg »

danmaz74 wrote: post #7
Camillo wrote: post #3

You make a library for A/B testing. Why didn't you use A/B testing here?

I agree that that would have been the best way to measure the effect of the plug. But that wasn't an experiment, I just wanted to get as many readers as possible; the idea to measure the effect of the plug only came later (actually, it was suggested in a comment here on HN).

Test it now :)

Re: Are “Shameless Plugs” Worth It? Some data

#16

Post by ckluis »

Shameless Plug Why reinvent marketing best practices? At least be aware of them before you test something.

Design - 3-4 C2A at the bottom pointing to your consulting page (or about page) and then A/B test those C2A. Readers are probably more annoyed by a shameless plug then a well designed C2A.

Re: Are “Shameless Plugs” Worth It? Some data

#17

Post by gabemart »

ckluis wrote: post #16

Shameless Plug Why reinvent marketing best practices? At least be aware of them before you test something. Design - 3-4 C2A at the bottom pointing to your consulting page (or about page) and then A/B test those C2A. Readers are probably more annoyed by a shameless plug then a well designed C2A.

What is a C2A please? Google was no help without more context.

Re: Are “Shameless Plugs” Worth It? Some data

#18

Post by asanwal »

gabemart wrote: post #17
ckluis wrote: post #16

Shameless Plug Why reinvent marketing best practices? At least be aware of them before you test something. Design - 3-4 C2A at the bottom pointing to your consulting page (or about page) and then A/B test those C2A. Readers are probably more annoyed by a shameless plug then a well designed C2A.

What is a C2A please? Google was no help without more context.

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Re: Are “Shameless Plugs” Worth It? Some data

#19

Post by benologist »

gabemart wrote: post #5
huhtenberg wrote: post #4

The other way to look at it - 97% didn't react to your shameless plug, and probably a good chunk of these were annoyed by it. An ad is an ad, regardless of how you call it.

>97% didn't react to your shameless plug, and probably a good chunk of these were annoyed by it I think that's a pretty bold claim. I can't remember ever being annoyed by a blog post which included a brief "This is me and what I do" plug.

It's not the "This is me and what I do" plug that's annoying, it's the endless advertisements its attached to.

Right now we have on or just falling off the front page

- 37signals writing about Siri

- Thumbtack writing about ab testing

- weddinglovely on why a startup has a print product

These are advertisements disguised as random bla bla written for HN.

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