Ask HN: Went from $30 a day to $300 with less traffic. Um...now what?

On the back-end I built a small app that showcases a attractive young seductively sad female asking one question "Do I rock?" their are two buttons with an answer...YES & NO clicking on either well let's just say I was able to get 1,200 facebook likes in 2 hours....ok so I can make this thing viral at my choosing...CHECK.

Are you saying that you made it so that clicking either the yes or no button resulted in the clicker "liking" your site on Facebook?

Yes but they knew about the opt in I called it a "game"...the disclaimer was in a jquery popup.

I hope that your implementation is clear and explicit.

It is I simply said "Before you click yes or no I'm not really who you think I am. I'm a dude...no not a chick with a penis! Focus here, clicking either button will share this link with your facebook friends. You've been warned and um you kinda rock too!"

Wait, you're getting $300 per day from that site? boggle

Yeah I'm spending $25 a day on targeted traffic from various sources (8 sources) to make $300.

So $50 daily for $600 and $100 daily for $1,200! That's without counting on viral confetti's/increase in organic traffic.

Can you share your traffic sources? Are they just good for social websites/apps?

You've got it all wrong I run over 15 other websites and using the same data on any of them isn't going to give me admirable results. Just as each human is complex so is each online iniative, sorry their is no magic pil so dig a data hole and keep digging.

This works a lot like affiliate marketing. Get traffic + Improve conversation = More profit. A/B testing helped quite a bit to make the profit grew.

First of all - congratulations, you've blown my mind with your figures!

Secondly, I have a small worry about your traffic sources; is there any chance that the visitors are encouraged to click on your ads? If so, I'd imagine that Google might close your account soon. That said, I hope it's working for both you and the relevant advertisers :)

Well I've been with Google for 4 years and have some buddies of mine who work there and what your seeing is the front-end, am I encouraging you to click on ads? Nope the other pages don't do that either they just realized truths because of data analysis like: Users in india like the background to be green and the ad title to be pink but only on a time zone of +7 EST and on a Thursday and for only 9 hours.

Your multiple A/b Split tests, Multi country view is spot on when looking at ad units. Imagine trying to have 1 ad unit for both japanese and a US website.

I'm a bit confused. I only see a Google text ad. Plus there are 339 likes, not 1200?

How come you haven't got a tweet this button?

Nice simple concept though!

I don't see any ads. What country are you in?

I see the same as JamesDB. I'm in Canada.

Thanks...adding other social network buttons would negatively affect the ctr of my facebook like this button and my users love facebook more than twitter like 93% of them! I listen to the data.

Also I only use Google text ads and the 1200 wasn't likes to go directly to the site it was pointing to another link for testing its virality.

I'll be honest, I don't get what your site is about. I refreshed the page a few times and got some sentences that barely made any sense, were not specifically funny or insightful. I think I understand the idea (like a Chuck Norris jokes site but for "why I rock"), but I couldn't link what I read to it.

Also, you're talking about GUI, but I feel like I'm missing something: I could see "design", but "GUI" puzzles me a bit since there isn't much to interact with.

I don't make sites just with my perspective as a developer in mind if I did that I'd change Google logo and the colors of Thisiswhyyourock would be green (my favorite color) I build based on data and the consensus that confirms what they want to be entertained with. I created the responses same way every single user on facebook doesn't have 5,000 friends It was and still is not my intention to please every user. Just the ones that enjoy the site lol

We'll yes their isn't much interaction in terms of GUI so your correct, I want to go from a more one sided design experience to a robust GUI for the updated version.

Thanks for your input.

Clickable link for the lazy (like me): http://www.thisiswhyyourock.com

I also own tiwyr.com might be re-branding it as such (for viral purposes...easy to pass along to friends than the insanely long url) not sure.

true... but what about yourock.gd (or other short URL). Rebranding as TIWYR could work, but people searching that: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=tiwyr&meta= will be told: Showing results for twitter. Search instead for tiwyr

Sure you would be able to gain traction with the name over time.

Alt ThisIsY.co/yourock - also gives you a miriad of spin-offs: ThisIsY.co/YouSuck /AreFired /etc.

Simply brilliant! Thanks for the insight didn't think of this going back to the drawing board this week.

What kind of ads are you running? I guess I am not in one of the 5 niche countries and they aren't being served to me.

It sounds like you may be doing some click jacking and may be kicked off then ad networks soon, but keep getting it while you can.

Also, what the heck has Obama done so far?

Well I've been with Google for 4 years and have some buddies of mine who work there and what your seeing is the front-end, am I encouraging you to click on ads? Nope the other pages don't do that either they just realized truths because of data analysis like: Users in india like the background to be green and the ad title to be pink but only on a time zone of +7 EST and on a Thursday and for only 9 hours.

Maybe it's my age, but I don't understand this site. At all.

Ha yeah the userbase according to the data is 14-24 so if your over that you don't really even exist in our data. So yes this bright pink remote controlled pony isn't meant for you. Also the site is growing internationally/Europe so I have yet to see it's appeal in other nations so that could also play a part in your enjoyment.

I'm 16 years old and confused as hell.

Can't help you your suppose to laugh if you don't well then you don't find it humorous. I mean millions of people love family guy I think that show is moronic and dry.

To each his own your doing going to like everything that everyone else likes because your an individual nothing really to get buddy.

It is very easy to click on the ad as the page refreshes the different sized text blocks - could this be what ultimately your design has been optimised for?

Are you insinuating if I intentionally didn't place the adsense in a separate div with additional css settings and that the current implementation was intentional ad placement? Then yes it was intentional, you use a heatmap algorithm when building my gui's that shows me where attention is for starters so the data to move forward on it was a no brainier but how many pixels up etc impacted revenue by 15%! Still testing that element out.

I am making the point that if you blindly optimise for certain outcomes (e.g. ad clicks) you may not actually be getting the desired behaviour you want (users clicking ads they are interested in with the possibility of completing a transaction)

If the CTR is too high or completion rate is too low, you are likely to be banned, no matter what the Adsense TOS say. See this thread for comparison: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2049105

OK, so when the page resizes and the mouse cursor is left hovering over the adsense ad, some people click without realising and get taken to the advertiser's site. Really, quite often my mouse is exactly over the ad's title. If this isn't against the adsense T&Cs then well done.

It get's left hovering over the ad based on the amount of content wrapped on the page. Some sayings are larger and it's downward and goes with the flow of the content others are shorter and the ads shouldn't be placed the same way a longer sentence would.

Nothing in adsense TOS says that doing that is wrong.

Great! I'm genuinely happy for you :)

The reason why I keep asking about adsense TOS compliance is that if you get banned for click fraud, you don't get to keep all of your earnings to date - Google can and will not pay you for anything that isn't in your bank account, trust me on this ;)

If I click on the button sometimes the ad moves to the center of where my cursor is. There could be some accidental clicks here.

Google will negate the click if they are seeing high bounce rates.

Indeed but their isn't a person sitting behind a computer called the bounce rate reporter buddy...it's an algorithm and I used an algorithm as the foundation of my data analysis. So if bounce rates are normal but high for other publishers then everything is well.

It's in the algorithm. Theirs is better then yours. Trust me on that one.

When a few publishers complain to their adwords representative that they get no conversions from your site a few flags could be raised. Such as a site audit by a Googler.

Make sure you monitor your adsense messages just in case.

I have mate and I have a direct number to my publisher manager. I have a different relationship with Google. It's more personal. I also reply on paid traffic because it will converts better for us both.

In the end this is exactly what the big boys do....just check out statistics of facebook for example running ads on Google Adwords or Techcrunch or even Sears.

for one thing I'm not done testing nor will I ever be I don't need tens of thousands of clicks now as I did initially.

Um the amount od negative clicks compared to the amount of positive clicks is very insignificant....every single publisher/advertiser of adsense (adwords) is well aware that their will be clicks with no conversions.

"user: nickjr created: 10 hours ago karma: 54"

Now, just why should I not think that you are lying?

It's not even that he may be lying. It is that this is so obviously a disposable site run as a marketing gimmick by a marketer. This doesn't strike me as "Show HN" as much as "Market to HN." Almost every post is so thick with marketing buzzwords it's impossible to read them.

This whole thing seems more like a get-rich-quick scheme than a business. HN has never seemed like a place where get-rich-quick schemes are valued.

I wasn't selling anything lol dude and um ok if you want to weight your spectacular insane ramblings about something you don't understand to clearly point out why Hack News sucks and isn't valuable to anyone anymore then fine. To each his own your not going to like a service that goes mainstream all of the time, no one forces you to come here and post...noone!

FIRST off this is me!

http://mashable.com/2008/02/19/gimado-funded/

http://mashable.com/2008/05/02/epic-fail-take-two-dorble-ris...

I also run these sites:

Nerrot.com Articleram.com Whipers.com Jenple.com Appiker.com to name a few!

I joined to post this as I've been a reader of Hacker News but not a member. So if a new user joins makes a post and it gets noticed their considered falsifying info? But if this wasn't helpful to you then ok that's your opinion to not be open minded and understand what I was offering and encouraging others to do. I wasn't selling anything.

I think it's not so much the fact you're new as the extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof suspicion. And making a consistent $300 per day on a $25 Adwords budget for an apparently trivially simple site off a domain registered in mid-November is extraordinary, especially when through filtering or otherwise it isn't showing much advertising at all to us US/UK viewers. If it's down to attention to detail and an ability to spot and gauge overseas advertising niches that others haven't then more power to you (and Zynga should hire you tomorrow). I certainly think there's a useful reminder that people outside the US click on Adwords there for us.

As for suggestions, you might want to find some better advertising for your non-key markets. Currently all Adwords shows me are Google's house ads...

Major sites do what I'm saying guys they just have a team and I don't! Only real major diffrence. I never said I spent 25 a day on adwords I actually don't advertise the site using adwrds. I used adwords for testing I user various (more than one source) and spread out my campaign. Knowing this data took hundreds of dollars in testing and weeks. Again I don't use adwords I use various other methouds of buying traffic.

Your confusing Adwords with Adsense buddy.

Also um what is karma: 54"?

its the number of points you get on comments or submission. Like, the submission you made has about 54 points or so, that is about 53 people upvoted it.

Anyway, I did not mean any offense. I think it was a fairly genuine question.

I think your point about testing and 'living' by the data is spot on, though, I have no idea how I would find out whether it was a male who clicked or a female and what age group they are.

I also think that what's cool and new about what you said is the custom tailoring to each country or age group or all of that combined, based on different times, etc.

Isn't that almost kind of tricking your customers into clicking though? I mean, what does your google friend/google publishing manager say of it?

And, 0.28 cent per click needs 1000 clicks to go to 280 which, with a click through rate of 3% translates to about 35 thousand visitors. You can get 35,000 visitors on $25?

I do actually like your site though. I managed to go right to the end at which point clicking on the button would not bring up any more sentences. I think at that point a lot of people would be tempted to click the ad or facebook like. I was ha.

But yeah, I like the site and thanks for sharing. As for your question as to how to get more people to visit it, I think one way may be to put up an e-mail this, and then give your visitors an easy way to enter loads of email addresses of their friends. Its sharable stuff, especially for teens.

Hm I like the idea of the email this to a friend feature and yes the site gets tens of thousands of visits and my ctr and traffic is changing as I'm analyzing data. Also majority of major publishing sites do what I'm saying they just have a team and I don't! Only real major difference.

thanks for the comments & suggestions :) greatly appreciated. It can be constructive but build upon data just don't say your a poopoo face your lying blabla I want my mommy be an adult thanks Andrew for doing that and your figures are not 100% accurate but they are in that ballpark.

couple of questions.

1) what are the 8 sources? and what is the criteria you use to display the ads that drive people to your site. for example, for Google adwords do you use keywords? if so what are they?

2) Can you give us an idea of the kind of users you get per day? I just checked your Alexa stats and it confuses me as my own website is ranked higher but I don't make ANY money from my Google adsense :-)

I can't give you my exact campaign that's wasn't what this was for :p and that will impact my company negatively if more people are knowledgeable of my exact methods of monetization via my data.

Stop worrying about my users mate...just do what I did looked at your data, worry about your userbase. Not going to elaborate on how insanely inaccurate alexa is but the site is very new so you can't look at my ranking at all I have sites getting 100,000 visits a day with a Alexa ranking of 120,000k and a site that gets 10,000 visits with an ranking of 50k. It's usually somewhat accurate after a few months and the ranking is below 10,000 other than that I don't look at Alexa at all.

Also what time of day are your users engaged on your site meaning clicking sharing links and ads, what users (age group & sex) are they...what colors do they prefer ads to be in and what day of the week should those changes be implemented.

If you can answer those questions in 5 minutes then I'm confused as to why your not making money even with 100 visits a day if you can't then...that's why my friend.

Beware showing different squeeze pages based on IP. Google could see that as cloaking.

But good work monetizing a simple site.

I wen't from 120 to 5 and going to narrow it down to 3.

One for a high cAnC (what I call my Contextual Ad Niche Countries) Another for users of those countries that have a high SNP And another for traffic/engagement (ranking)

Any way we can see some example pages?

As of right now no unfortunately but I might do a followup post showcasing some sketches/wireframes images.

Interesting.

Um Royce it's not click jacking it's A/B testing. I'm running text ads and all I'm doing it changing a gui based on certain variables, their are many companies in existence that manage this very task. Yieldbuild comes to mind.

Also I forgot to mention that I'm spending $25 a day on targeted traffic from various sources (8 sources) to make $300.

So $50 daily for $600 and $100 daily for $1,200! That's without counting on viral confetti's/increase in organic traffic.

Not to be brash, but just because you are spending $25 a day on ads and are making $300 a day, does not mean that formula is going to scale linearly upwards ($600 if you spend $50 a day, $1200 if you spend $100 a day).

That said congratulations! $300 a day is nothing to sneeze at, and I hope it's consistent for you.

We'll I didn't reveal my actual formula I'm using but I'm confident in my linear monetization scale for the simple fact that I've scaled several times already to get to $300 daily and it worked so far.

Started with $1, then $10, then $20 and now $25...going to test it out Wednesday-Thursday at $100 a day spent on advertising.

I was referring to the 1,200 new likes in 2 hours.

Thank you for mentioning Yieldbuild, I will check them out.

I hope it continues to scale for you with those returns. One suggestion would be to have an easy way for people to add/suggest their own reasons for rocking.

Yeah I was deeply inspired by Yieldbuilder and I'm now working on building a in house management platform for my ventures using these methods more algorithmically.

How many of you guys analyze your data daily? Ok 70 hands went up,now how many of you guys analysis it live and work on back end execution of the data analysis several times a day as it's happening toward specific goals 2 of you? Yeah I'm that guy...that's how you go from $1 a day with adsense to $100 a day. Stop worrying about getting more hardware & database resource sucking irrelevant traffic. Understand what you have now and tweak,analise,rinse and repeat.

Guys my reason for posting this (was in fact to be illuminated on a next step for bringing engagement to returned users) but more importantly to STRESS the valuable asset of persistence coinciding with patience and the need to fall in love with data and know her every ways.

Hans Rosling would be smiling..because you've just proved how important data is for your startup!

Indeed he would

this dude is completely full of shit.

Ha I like this guy :) you are the reason I get up in the morning! You let me know that I'm doing something right because you help balance the equation. Thanks mate...seriously thanks :D!

are u really trying to convince people that you're making $400 today with THIS site?? No freaking way dude. You only have 8 people that actually like your page on the facebook link, no Google PR, an Alexa over 2mil and you're breaking adsense rules all over the place (including calling gays out and mentioning the rape of the elderly).. and you're spelling sucks. You'd have to be getting millions of visits with that particular ad (lowest eCPM) and this isn't even php, as you claim. It's javascript. Anyone could copy this poorly coded source, download the referenced js and throw this site up in 5 minutes. Give us all a serious break and quit lying just to get page visits! You're pathetic. Looking forward to your adsense account being deleted.

Well that's your opinion and honestly it doesn't move me...you can scream holler around I'm still going to the bank. You sound like those little boys that keep saying justin bieber is a homosexual but he keeps selling cds it doesn't matter. I know I'm making what I'm making and I wanted advice on how to make the site more social and engaging to increase the revenue...haters like followers are abundant your a clone get off your couch and be a leader!

I also didn't say 400 and it's against googles tos to one post images of my account and state the exact revenue figures which I'm never going to do.

Really do fell bad for you but if I can leave you with anything my friend it's this. Listen to your data and really want to engage with it and test not just daily but in realtime and multiple times a day and tailor it to your needs...I challenge you to do so! Hoping your up to the challenge buddy just as I was.

Best of luck :)

Got to agree with the other. http://www.dnscoop.com/ shows your site is just over a month old and 0 popularity in every aspect. I just can't see any possible way of taking a site like this to $400 in adsense in just over a month. As many have said here, the site doesn't even seemingly have a point. You can spout "data analyzation" all day long, but there's simply no way you have the kind of traffic to generate a revenue stream like that. Not even close. I know data well. I make my living from adsense, not from nonsense.