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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

#191

Post by 22289d »

wholinator2 wrote: post #177
22289d wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol parroting what they say on social media. Very interesting way you put that and sorta gets to the heart of the matter. To me it doesn't even make sense, like, why would I get my information on social media. I'm telling you what I've seen on Reddit. But you went to what people say other places. Which is clearly how a lot of you are getting your information. And ya, I've seen the receipts. I've got some receipts of…

Just for context, your responses read here as full of sarcasm and self assurance. I think your ideas might be more well received if you communicated them with a kinder and more accepting tone. For what it's worth it does sound like you spend a lot of time in toxic online communities, and i believe you have an expertise in those areas.

Man, HN has sure changed. Clearly I'm not among fellow hackers if people are worried about tone rather than truth.

If someone needs their ass kissed to recognize I'm right, that's on them. Not me.

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

#192

Post by ryandrake »

hennell wrote: post #184
dale_glass wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Yout…

In general, I don't want to "discover" products, not at all times of the day, on every web site I visit, every radio and TV station I tune into, every billboard I pass.

Marketers have this notion that people are all merely 24/7 product-consumers, constantly on the lookout to discover new products to consume, and as long as their "message" reaches my brain, it's an unambiguously good thing for both parties.

When I'm browsing the web, or driving to work, or watching a show, or trying to complete some basic task around my life, I'm definitely not trying to discover your product. I wish marketers would stop assuming I am. If I want to look for an unknown product, I'll deliberately go out and do so. In that case, and only in that case, ads are welcome.

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

#193

Post by konschubert »

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…

Yea, it’s pretty normal - people are rightfully try to poke at your solution before they spend money on it.

Sometimes they are simply not the target market (yet) and that’s okay.

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

#194

Post by nlunbeck »

callalex wrote: post #179
joshstrange wrote: post #91

Quora being a good option is incredibly surprising to me. I never click on Quora links as 90% of the time the "answers" are just ads or people who want to pretend they are a bigger deal than they are and know more than they do. I'm a little surprised podcast ads weren't tried, mostly because I'd love to know how well those do/don't work out for a tool like this.

It’s great for advertisers for the same reason people still use Nigerian prince scams: the victim has already demonstrated a clear lack of judgment and high susceptibility to bullshit.

Most people I know who actively use Quora are in the 65+ demographic. I've asked what's keeping them, and it turns out they have much more tolerance for things like sponsored posts and mandatory signups than most users would

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

#195

Post by [deleted] »

vageli wrote: post #154
Buttons840 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think this really works. While at Datadog, at one point I would write deep dives on monitoring applications like HAProxy, OpenStack and others. I would start with what to look for, how to monitor those things with off-the-shelf tooling, and finally how to do it with Datadog. The response from the community was overall very positive, regardless of whether or not they ended up converting to users (though many did).

[deleted]

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

#196

Post by llbeansandrice »

22289d wrote: post #80
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…

One could say you're doing the exact same thing to Redditors that you say they do. Being negative for the sake of being negative. Just love to hate when there is no human face - or even someone to reply. But oops, here one is ;) Redditors are entitled and they are demanding and they are quick to jump all over you. And they can be wrong. But it's not for the sake of negativity and it's not because there is no human th…

> That culture is damned effective at filtering out bullshit and bad actors and getting to the facts.

No idea how anyone can say this earnestly about Reddit while having spent as much time there as you claim you have. It's a horrible corner of the internet rife with all kinds of bigotry and hatred and negativity for the sake of it. Not to mention it's the easiest place to astroturf ever.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Sunil_Tripathi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_celebrity_nude_photo_leak

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti...

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

#197

Post by nextaccountic »

dale_glass wrote: post #64
Lutger wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe ads work by making a brand name familiar, which helps you recognize it in the sea of information. And that makes it automatically somewhat more attractive and reputably. You can be entirely unaware of this and it still works. Maybe the ad is not what convinced you, not at all, but it did prompt you to wonder if this LaunchDarkly thing is any good. Youtube kept spamming it in your face and you kept ignoring…

Yes, but it can work in the opposite direction as well. Eg, all the Youtube ads of NordVPN only did was to convince me that if I'm ever in the market, I'll use someone else. Part because all that advertising has to cost a lot of money, which of course the subscription has to pay for. Part because some of their advertising is less than completely honest about what they provide.

thr notdvpn ads may have enlarged the consumer market for vpns as well, which may benefit other vpns like mullvad (people that never heard about vpns are convinced by the ad that vpns are needed, searches more on google or reddit and end up selecting what is considered the "most private" one, that is, not nordvpn)

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

#199

Post by anonzzzies »

cm2012 wrote: post #144
anonzzzies wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My social feeds are filled with ads for enterprise software products. But what's the conversion; as the article (and many more anecdotes and articles and real life P&L's) shows, is that very many companies are just randomly burning money on ads without conversion. So that you see the ads doesn't mean they convert at all. Did you ever buy anything via them? Or even sign up or click one? I'm not saying you are wrong…

I've targeted developers on FB/IG at high budgets successfully with good ROI attributed to it.

Could you provide some more info? Like for what for instance? Desktop apps, mobile apps, saas, job openings, certification, courses, …?

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

#200

Post by jklinger410 »

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’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.

And how many of those startups had a great product market fit and were successful, without a ton of incumbents in the industry eating their lunch?

How much budget did they have and how much of their runway did it eat up to try and run ads?

Many people blame ads for simply having a bad product that no one cares about and never finding the right audience for that product for them to even serve ads to in the first place.

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