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Generating Revenue with On-Line Ads?
ratajik asks: "In my continuing quest to generate revenue from my open source project,
I've been attempting to use on-line ads. What are other Slashdot users' experiences with on-line ads? Which are the best methods (presentation,
click-through, purchase, etc.), and which are the best companies that you've deal with?"
"I've tried several at this point, and have had the best result from Google's AdSense - but even that hasn't been great. I've gone the user-most-purchase route with
Connection Junction, but with 498,000 impressions in 1 month, have had zero sales. AdSense has worked a lot better (as users just need to click through), but I'd like to see a higher Clickthrough
rate. What other companies have you dealt with and what has your experience been? What have you found to be the best type of Ad and Ad placement on your
site? What management and tracking tools have you found that work best? If you've rolled your own web ads (e.g., not using an aggregator), what did you use to do it and how did you find advertisers?I've personally tried staying away from ads on my web sites, but some of the AdSense-type ads are minimally annoying, and seem like a good way to generate a bit of revenue off of free software, especially considering Internet
advertising revenue was at a
record 2.3 billion in the first quarter of 2004."
I've actually considered embedding Ads in the main StationRipper window... but don't' know if that would be overly annoying. And showing something like Google ads may be against the rules...
What I would really like to find is an aggregator that pays per impression... but DOESN'T do pop-ups, unders, animated ads with sound, etc. While most people use pop-up blockers these days, I refuse to do something that annoying.
Is there some OTHER way other open source developers are making money off of smaller products like this, besides donations and ads? I doubt the pay-for-support route will work for something like this. While I wouldn't ever expect to make a lot, it would be nice to cover costs + have a bit left over to invest in the next development machine.
I'm actually a bit of a cross-roads with the software. I've got some ideas to expanding it a lot, fix a lot of things users want fixed and add a lot of new function - but is it worth continuing down that path, or start working on something else that may be a bit more sales-oriented? So far I've done it 'cause I love programming and it was something interesting and useful to work on - but it's mostly been (lots) of support, and very little code as of late.
-Greg
Put a donate button on your web page and in the about box of the program (if it has one). Braham Cohen, author of BitTorrent, was very successful going one step further and giving users a one time popup reminder to donate. Something like "Have you made a donation yet?" and it sends you to a donation page if you click no.
trust me. you can not generate revenue from online ADs. Take Eric Raymond advice and sell mugs, t-shirts etc with your logo. That is better way to generate to revenue then to put AD banners. I used cafepress.com to create a online store to sell mugs and tshirts and it was pretty easy and effective.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
I don't pay too much attention to the ads since it kinda runs by itself, and my experience is that Google does a pretty darn good job targetting 'em ... but I sometimes get a bit of a chuckle out of what shows up - for instance, I have some Lunar Eclipse Pictures and one of the Adsense ads was some place selling real estate on the moon! ;-)
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
I use Google Adsense on my site.
I tried a couple of others in the past with some other sites and made a big fat zero. But google is actually decent. I get one or two clickthroughs a day, and depending on the ad, I get anywhere from $1 to $7 PER clickthrough. I know this seems a bit high, but given the content, the advertisers stand to make a lot of money off a sale.
In any case, it comes close to paying my hosting costs each month, but not enough to actually buy me a new server or turn a profit of any kind.
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Uhmm, I think you're misunderstanding. He doesn't want to advertise his product / service - he wants to put other people's ads on his web site.
-Enfors-
Conjunction junction doesn't pay by impression, they pay, depending on the ad, by clickthrough or by number of "actions", which is usually either an actual sale or the viewer filling out a form. A company I just interviewed with uses them and they only pay per sale.
As it was explained to me, it's not entirely as assholish as it sounds, the sale doesn't have to come by clickthrough, it just has to be within a certain time of the impression. Well, unless all your site's viewers block the cookie, then you're screwed.