Should You Monetize Your Site With Ads On Launch Day? | Hacker News Reader

Should You Monetize Your Site With Ads On Launch Day?

marksonland.com

15 pointstrs9016 comments

I used to be on the fence, but I think things have changed for me within the last year. I don't think there's anything wrong with ads starting on launch day. I think it's easier for users to accept it when they first come to the site, rather than a few months down the line when they appear out of no where. It's just less jarring. Note: I have no data to back this up, it's just my feeling.

Given that the people who are pathologically allergic to ads (if you think I am talking about you, dear reader, I am) disproportionately are early adopters and control the blogs et al which you'll want to get links from, I would say leave it off for the first while (to get the maximum love from the linkerati) and then integrate them later.

As for not jarring people when you introduce them later: 99.999% of your visitors will not arrive on launch day, or in any short window from the opening of your service. From the perspective of the guy who signs up on your SNS twelve weeks from now after reading about it on Bob's SNS Addict Blog, the site had ads from launch day. But if you actually put ads on it on Launch Day, you might not get that link from Bob in the first place.

P.S. On the other hand, if you charge money, charge money from day one. Even if you're not actually charging anyone because you mailed Bob a free invite code because you dig his blog especially that series on MySpace monetization and thought your new site would interest him. Free stuff = meh, the Internet is full of it. I am getting for free what other people are paying money for = proves my status as an expert on this field (validating my self-worth) and makes me like you enough to want to write a review in which I will (strike)brag(/strike) disclose that you thought I was an expert worthy of a freebie.

Edited to add: SNS means "social networking service". Apparently its a Japan thing. Sorry!

(Quick question: is SNS actually English? I'm having one of those "Have I been in Japan too long?" moments -- had another one the other day when I couldn't tell someone how Americans pronounce SaaS because I have never heard one say it.)

I don't think it is.

But it should be...

Maybe there is a way to get the best of both worlds : Not having ads on day one AND getting users ready to expect them.

Why not reserve some space for ads here and there from day one, but fill them with ad-looking text (à la google ads) about this or that feature of your own app? Then, a month later, replace those ads with real ones.

The content for these placeholder ads would need to be very carefully chosen to avoid misleading users when you switch over to actual ads (so they don't still think that's data about your service)

I agree, I don't think we should mislead or trap users, but rather accustom them to boxes of information which are there for curiosity, "related" stuff (graphically different : smaller grayish text?), or at least some kind of placeholder (a grey box will do).

Those should definitely not be involved in any workflow of the service.

My point is just to soften the transition, by preparing some ads areas so that they don't appear one day, stealing space from the app.

I agree with rscott on the appearance for users, but one thing to be careful of with services like Adsense is your click-through ratio (CTR). If your hits on a big launch day skyrocket, but the traffic isn't the ad-clicking type, you could find your ads devalued due to a poor CTR. If it happens enough, you could be losing money.

I had this happen on a site that was hosting some popular files that were being accessed way more than other pages, and the result was that no one coming for that specific file would click on an ad and my CTR would drop to 1/10th of its original mark. I went from making about $200/month on Adsense with about 1,000 users to making $200/month on Adsense with 10,000+ users. If I'd known at the time and managed my CTR more successfully, I could presumably have turned that into something more like $2,000.

Just one other thing to consider :)

When you say that your ads get devalued, do you really mean that each click is worth less simply because it is less likely for a click to happen? This sounds silly to me, and I think you meant that impressions (i.e., your server costs) get devalued, because clicks are where the money comes from.

do you really mean that each click is worth less simply because it is less likely for a click to happen?

He's not wrong. Welcome to Smart Pricing!

Imagine I have a graph of CTR on the x axis, spanning 0 to 1, and traffic quality (on any scale you want -- conversion rate if you need to think of a real number) on the y axis. On this graph I plot every site or page on AdSense.

You're going to see the same behavior at both asymptotes: when clicks are super high or super low, traffic quality (generally) sucks. If it is super high, then it is highly likely that the page is doing click arbitrage by having the ad be the only interesting content. In most circumstances, this sucks for the advertiser, because users will click the one blue thing just to proceed without ever having transactional intent with the advertiser. (This is not universally true, but work with me.)

On the other hand, absurdly low CTR usually means a very engaging page with lots of repeat visitors. Like, say, a forum. In this case, any clicks happening are likely to be mistakes -- oh, effity, I was trying to comment on pg's reply, now I've clicked off to greatVPSproviders.com, back button and they're out money.

So if you're not in the sweet spot that Google thinks is a "normal" CTR, either by being too high or being too low, expect to get Smart Priced. (Google if you don't get the term. Short version: CPC and CPM rapidly approach zero.)

smart pricing also factors in conversion rate for the end business. a lot of the businesses which use Google Adwords also use Google Analytics for conversion tracking. and when Analytics has data on a particular domain sending traffic from Adsense blocks, it will regulate pricing based on that.

Ads are so commonplace on the internet today, that when I see a site with no ads, I sometimes wonder what is up with it, is it new? Possibly unreliable or unstable? Am I the only person who has felt this way?

Now, annoying ads are a different story, especially those word-highlighting ads that float so you can't close them, and that usually have a cpu-sucking flash app running inside them. THOSE I notice and LEAVE IMMEDIATELY!

Personally I think you should keep your site clean on day one. I mean seriously, the first few months your adsense revenue will be a few bucks tops, is it really worth it to alienate people over such pittance?

Once you start getting high traffic, you can "sell out" and claim that you need to add ads to support your hosting bills

I respectfully disagree. It's not about the money; it's about setting expectations.

If you plan on monetizing by ads, have them there from day one, so your users won't cause a small riot when you add them in later.

Run a split test and see if there's any cost to doing it.

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