Show HN: HotLinkx – Word of mouth advertising for your side-projects | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: HotLinkx – Word of mouth advertising for your side-projects

2 pointssfilargi5 comments

I would like to present my latest side project (https://hotlinkx.com/about.html). It is a marketplace for text ads. The idea is that if I want to advertise a product or a service I can find someone with a popular blog, twitter, facebook, reddit or other account and ask them to create a post for my product and pay them per-click. HotLinkx will keep track of the clicks and act as a middleman in the whole process.

The main drive behind it is my experience while trying to advertise my past side-projects. I observed that a mention on a relevant sub-Reddit by a popular user was giving me better results than hundreds of dollars in Reddit and Google ads.

Another objective is to allow social media users to earn their share of the advertising budget, something like Uber for advertising.

Some other advantages of using HotLinkx are: a) text only unobtrusive ads, which is great for end-users, b) complete control of what ads are displayed on one’s blog or webpage, c) similar control for advertisers; they know exactly where their ads will be displayed and when, d) word-of-mouth like effect on the advertised products/services.

Ok this may sound abit harsh, sorry, but you were asking for feedback in another thread, so...

There are plenty of services offering this "Uber for advertising" (inc. a,b & c), the biggest of course being Google. And I'd wager some have been around before many HNers were born. So why would anyone use your service? You have a big chicken and egg problem to solve.

So you may have a very nice solution technically but I am not sure how you can compete without some kind of twist or an edge.

Actually I thank you very much for your comment and criticism. I really appreciate it.

The differentiators are many actually.

- For promoters:

1. They can place the Ad on Facebook or Twitter. Yes I know that it is against their terms and conditions, but I am happy to challenge that. They use the user's content in order to display ads next to it and earn huge profits by it. I don't see why the users should be allowed to earn money as well by advertising what they want.

2. For non social media users: They have 100% control of what is displayed on their blog/webpage. No trackers, not cookies, no third-party javascript, nothing.

3. Much better payouts. HotLinkx keeps only 10% what the advertiser pays. The rest, 90%, go straight to the promoter.

- For advertisers:

1. 100% transparency. They can visit the specific blog/social media account and decide if they want their ad there or not. They can see who is visiting them and exactly from where. They also have the ability dispute clicks. Also no automatic bidding/bidding wars. They have complete control.

2. The ads appear as something coming straight from, and endorsed by, the promoter. Not some automatic ad on the side of the page, that users have learned to ignore.

3. Not proven, but theoretically much lower bouncer rate, since the ad is place in a hand-picked location.

4. Much simpler.

- For end users:

1. By nature the ads are text-only and non-obtrusive. No java-script, no annoying animations.

Do you think these are not enough differences?(Honestly asking)

The main thing to check for me (single data point) is what advertisers do you have, and how much will I make from your ad work vs say Adsense.

If I already have advertisers and just need a system so they can self serve that would be good too as long as the pricing is reasonable

In the bitcoin "niche" there is something like this but i think you pay per day or hour. Anyway i think this is a great idea which i would love to use but probably hard to get started. I registered and hope you send out emails if things get started :)

I wasn't aware of the bitcoin equivalent, I will definitely have a look. Thanks for the heads-up and thanks registering :D

I guess it will be a bit challenging to start things up, but will give it a fair shot.

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