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$200k in sales from a $6k advertisement

wifidabba.com

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Re: $200k in sales from a $6k advertisement

#91

Post by ayewo »

moneywoes wrote: post #87
jonathanzufi wrote: post #67

I enjoyed similar success with a DF sponsorship back in October 2015 (I’m guessing his audience has grown significantly since): I purchased a sponsorship my book ICONIC (shameless plug at http://www.iconicbook.com ) for $9,250. Looking back on my stats I approximately tripled that in direct sales, but I’m sure the actual return was higher as I’m certain some folks went to Amazon instead of my site where I was selling…

Sorry, what is a DF sponsorship? What does it entail?

DF: Daring Fireball, a blog written by John Gruber

DF sponsorship: https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/

Re: $200k in sales from a $6k advertisement

#92

Post by treis »

nelsondev wrote: post #36
Pyramus wrote: post #34

The project is very interesting and I hope it succeeds, yet from a financial perspective I do not understand why to fund it through retail investors/franchise model/crowd debt funding. From an investor's perspective there is limited upside with full default risk, yet the risk is hardly addressed. If the risk really was low, then why not self-fund the first X PoPs and convince with data on customers, ROI etc.? See als…

Same question, why not “laser focus” your efforts on convincing one technically proficient investor with deep pockets, rather than having to convince 100s-1000s via crowd-funding? Is it that investors need to provide the roof top too, so it’s a way to reach out to property owners?

>Same question, why not “laser focus” your efforts on convincing one technically proficient investor with deep pockets, rather than having to convince 100s-1000s via crowd-funding?

Traditionally the franchise model allows for small entrepreneurs to tackle local problems while benefiting from economies of scale. In this case, small entrepreneurs can tackle connecting at the neighborhood level while wifi dabba can negotiate bulk equipment rates and tackle things like support. It's hard to scale out something like laying wire in a neighborhood because ultimately you have to hire people that don't really care about the business. They're less effecient and effective than a franchise owner who has a profit motive.

Re: $200k in sales from a $6k advertisement

#93

Post by threeseed »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #90
mattashii wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, HN doesn't make money. Specifically, HN is owned and funded by YCombinator. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html , in section "What's the relationship between YC and HN?"

Good to know. So what is the reason that yCombinator maintains and curates HN? It must cost them money even if it does not make them money. So why do they do it? Is it just good publicity? Contrast this to Reddit. It is a big company with rather similar product, which is its only product and which makes them a lot of money I believe. How can YCombinator offer a similar product for free?

> So what is the reason that yCombinator maintains and curates HN?

1) Dealflow. People start with HN then learn about PG/YC. HN is also free and ad-less and so there is a lot of goodwill.

2) Promotion. It's a great value-add for YC companies to be able to use HN to find talent, promote their products etc.

Re: $200k in sales from a $6k advertisement

#94

Post by thrwn_frthr_awy »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #29
garganzol wrote: post #23

3% is good but fairly common conversion rate for an ad. Not really groundbreaking nor newsworthy. But why it's on HN then? The answer - you are the product and HN is a marketplace. This makes HN kind of spoiled place to be at, as it amplifies the illusion of "good things" you "must have" or "participate in". I really miss the golden era of BYTE magazine in the 80s. That was a classy act. But what we have now is a noi…

How does HN make money?

HN is marketing for YC.

Re: $200k in sales from a $6k advertisement

#95

Post by mattashii »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #90
mattashii wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, HN doesn't make money. Specifically, HN is owned and funded by YCombinator. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html , in section "What's the relationship between YC and HN?"

Good to know. So what is the reason that yCombinator maintains and curates HN? It must cost them money even if it does not make them money. So why do they do it? Is it just good publicity? Contrast this to Reddit. It is a big company with rather similar product, which is its only product and which makes them a lot of money I believe. How can YCombinator offer a similar product for free?

Reasons I can think of (unrelated to YC/HN though):

Fostering a community of tech-savy people interested in the latest technologies increases their brand size. HN is also a place where YC-related companies can advertise to and hire like-minded people. This in turn would increase the chances for those companies to succeed.

Regarding costs: I believe this site is hosted on one somewhat beefy machine, maybe two for redundancy. Compared to reddit, this site is (I believe) comparable to one active subreddit (Reddit has 100s of those), without image or video support. It has a rather simple domain model, only marginal styling, and has generally only a low overhead per page loaded, making it a rather lightweight application for the amount of traffic it receives.

Also, if you're interested, (parts of) the sources of HN are available here[0], it's a rather lightweight server in a dialect of Lisp.

[0] https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/tree/master/apps/news

Re: $200k in sales from a $6k advertisement

#96

Post by mNovak »

If I'm reading the 'buy' page correctly, this is in fact only $10k in deposits with $190k in commitments at an unknown future time, similar to Tesla reservations.

A bit different than $200k in hard sales. Actually for $10k you may as well buy your own reservations just for the marketing value of "$200k in sales"

Re: $200k in sales from a $6k advertisement

#97

Post by jessaustin »

dilippkumar wrote: post #55

> The $20,000 price point of our product + the high friction of the contact process + users that are OK with ads = A high signal to noise ratio from DF visitors. I’m curious about the “users that are OK with ads” part of the equation. (From the article - these are DF readers who don’t have ad blockers and are willing to click on ads). I can’t wrap my head around how this is a signal. Are seasoned tech investors (the…

I never turn off uBO, but when I browse DF I see several laudatory sponsor mentions in the text. (I don't see any flashing sidebars...) When an "ad" is not tied into any ad networks, it is unobjectionable and is not blocked by ad blockers.

Re: $200k in sales from a $6k advertisement

#98

Post by jessaustin »

prefontaine wrote: post #71

What's the point? I live in India and I was in Sikkim in Feb - a highly mountainous state close to China. I had 4G/LTE no problem. I worry more about this when I'm traveling in Europe and America.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25061441

Re: $200k in sales from a $6k advertisement

#100

Post by tracker1 »

It seems like the real lesson is narrowly targeted sites/markets for your ads are smarter than trying to appeal to the machine's data.

It reminds me of the food delivery company that targeted porn sites to better utilize ad spend. Or another article a couple days/weeks ago discussing why an advertiser might want to include/exclude certain groups from ad targets.

In the end, it's ALL about value. I think general brands might be better served with more generic reach than we typically see though. I'd like to see ad networks that only try to bid 2-3 levels and fallback to generic quickly (even if less profitable) rather than go a dozen layers of IFrames in the browser. I think browser vendors could help with this by disabling scripts after 2 layers of IFrames and I've said this for a while.

edit: of course the fact the biggest advertising company is also the biggest browser vendor prevent this from being realistic.

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