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Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool – what we've learned

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Re: Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool – what we've learned

#181

Post by 22289d »

wholinator2 wrote: post #172
22289d wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was an extremely biased and jaded characterization that focuses only on a narrow set of negatives. Have those things happened on Reddit? Ya. Was that in any way an accurate summary of what Reddit is? No. And it's absurd to claim that it is. "But look at this example and this one" I could make a huge list of the times Reddit has been bad, too. That doesn't change a single thing about what I just said.

I think the problem is that we're talking about "reddit" like it's one group of people who have the same characteristic responses to things across time. But the whole point of reddit is for there to be disparate communities who may or may not communicate with each other and may or may not share or hold diametrically opposing views on any topic that can be written in words. When submitting to reddit, you elplicitely c…

> These subreddit can be as varied in response as humans can

I've never been anywhere on Reddit that doesn't have the specific characteristic that I'm referring to. If people think you are wrong, they tell you. If they think you're lying or spinning bullshit, they say so. If they think your method is suboptimal, they let you know the way they think is best.

This also applies to people on HN. We're engaged in it right now.

Re: Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool – what we've learned

#182

Post by hermitcrab »

simonsarris wrote: post #159

Have spent six figures yearly on ads, mostly for reach for the developer-focused diagram library GoJS ( https://gojs.net ) > Each experiment will need ~$500 and 2 weeks I would add a zero if you want serious data. I would also double the timescale. $5,000 over 4 weeks I second the uselessness of Google Display, it might look like conversions numbers are good but they are 100% too good to be true. As soon as you look…

I looked through someone's Google Ads account once to find that he has spent several thousand dollars on clicks from mobile games for under 5s. This was B2B software. Never accept Google Ad defaults!

Re: Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool – what we've learned

#183

Post by 22289d »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #166
kortilla wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That culture is damned effective at filtering out bullshit and bad actors and getting to the facts. Lol, that’s not at all what the culture is good at. It’s an internet mob with famous examples of false accusations, doxxing and harassment. Any subreddit that isn’t severely moderated is gamed by people who know how to appeal to the local crowd. Being cynical and anti-business is not about “getting to the facts”. It…

> Lol, that’s not at all what the culture is good at. It’s an internet mob with famous examples of false accusations, doxxing and harassment. You're both wrong :). There is no "Reddit culture"; on Reddit, culture is scoped to a subreddit . You and GP are likely hanging out on different kinds of subreddits - but if your experience is that of "an internet mob with famous examples of false accusations, doxxing and haras…

> There is no "Reddit culture"; on Reddit, culture is scoped to a subreddit.

There is both.

For example, anonymity. There is nothing stopping people from using their real name as their username or openly revealing who they are, where they live and work etc. But the Reddit culture is to be anonymous.

Are there exceptions? Yes. But those exceptions don't change that it's an anonymous culture.

Re: Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool – what we've learned

#184

Post by hennell »

dale_glass wrote: post #139
cj wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, "Word of mouth" for all services. This is one of the most difficult marketing channels for marketers to promote. It basically requires astroturfing (e.g. planting biased questions on social platforms and encourage organic engagement). I hate to admit this but this is how I got the first 10-20 paid users for my B2B SaaS. Our product is a dev tool that integrates with a bunch of other tools, so we found…

> In other words, "Word of mouth" for all services. Yup. I avoid every single ad I can on principle. Only exception I used to make was for youtube sponsors, mostly out of laziness, until I finally installed sponsorblock. I've gotten so good at it that at this time I haven't the faintest idea of what movies are there to see at the cinema. Not a single one. I'm probably a very extreme case in actually having succeeded…

There is a real problem with discovery without any ads. I'm still aware of movies, but I never have much idea what TV shows exist anymore, or even when shows I like might are back on the air/streaming.

I might hear about about something interesting on social media or a podcast, but won't remember it until I see a picture on the streaming platform months later, when it's already been canceled for lack of viewers.

Youtube is actually the only place I actively block all ads, because they seem unable to stop spamming me with android games that are nothing like the ads at all and are unbelievably annoying. Most websites and stuff I'll let them show ads by default, then block the site if they have more ads than content etc. Although I also just try to avoid those sites in the first place.

Re: Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool – what we've learned

#185

Post by hermitcrab »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #32

I’ve had my own startups and worked with tens of others. I don’t know anybody who has had good experience or ROI with paid ads. There is something “emperors new clothes” about the whole industry where we all play the game but nobody admits they just aren’t very good. Yet we all keep paying the Google bills thinking it’s something you have to do.

I started using Google Ads in the early days and could get loads of well targetted clicks for £0.05 to £0.10 each. Those days are over. The "law of shitty clickthrus" says that every advertising channel gets less profitable over time.

Re: Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool – what we've learned

#186

Post by hermitcrab »

throwawysn38 wrote: post #72

> Seriously, I don't know why more people don't use Quora.* It's a horrible website full of horrible answers. the UI is terrible and you often end up reading stuff that has nothing to do with the original question you were looking for. I think it's understandable that advertisers would avoid it based in their personal experience. Quora was supposed to be the TED of QA. Well, not even TED is the TED of TED anymore so.…

It seems to be increasingly full of pro-Putin trolls. and ridiculous 'questions' such "Why is such a shithole?".

Re: Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool – what we've learned

#187

Post by tayo42 »

Buttons840 wrote: post #145
iamben wrote: post #35

The Twitter 'thick skin' part made me laugh. A past startup had the same experience with Reddit ads. The initial replies were so negative ("I could do this 3x cheaper myself" etc), and often negative for the sake of negativity. It took a little time, but we replied to most of them with gentle words along the lines of "thank you for your thoughts and comments; we're a small business trying to do things ethically; gett…

Go a step further, write some company blog posts outlining how to do it yourself. Do a good job, honestly show how easy it is to host your own alternative, you're making the world a better place by doing so. You want readers to think "that would be easy, maybe I'll do it". They start to believe it's important they have what you're offering and they think they'll do it themselves. Well, we know how attention spans are…

As long as it's tastefully done. I forgot what it was but I was reading something like this to learn and they plugged their product like every 2 paragraphs. It came off really incincere and I wasn't even sure if the content was trustworthy at that point.

Re: Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool – what we've learned

#188

Post by bigbillheck »

22289d wrote: post #89
kortilla wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That culture is damned effective at filtering out bullshit and bad actors and getting to the facts. Lol, that’s not at all what the culture is good at. It’s an internet mob with famous examples of false accusations, doxxing and harassment. Any subreddit that isn’t severely moderated is gamed by people who know how to appeal to the local crowd. Being cynical and anti-business is not about “getting to the facts”. It…

I can see that Reddit really hurt you. On behalf of the community, I'm sorry. > It just means they need a different type of marketing. That's correct. And Step #1 is to have a product which will make it past the collective bullshit detector. Step #2 is to provide real and actual value. To have a legitimately good product. So much of marketing is built on deception. If you try to deceive Redditors, you're going to get…

I've been a reddit user for a number of years, and while there are indeed some good subreddits, by and large my experience lines up with kortilla's.

Re: Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool – what we've learned

#189

Post by mft_ »

waynesonfire wrote: post #131
mft_ wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not dissimilar to HN then :) ‘Show HN’ posts often have a mix of different comparatively negative comments: from the (classic) I could do this quicker/cheaper/easily, alternatives being posted, genuine criticisms (+/- misunderstandings) of the offering, criticism of the underlying website due to choices made around design/fonts/contrast/processor utilisation/JS use… It’s such a nice surprise when there’s a ‘Show HN’…

I like the mixed reviews. A lot of times there is truth in the non-positive feedback. It's the authors ego that gets hurt and to that I say, deal with it.

Totally with you - feedback is a gift. The challenge (in all fora, not just HN!) is parsing out the well-meaning, helpful, truthful feedback from the other noise.
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