Monetization strategy for new website

When should you start to monetize

[NickMNS]

I've been working on a new website for a few weeks now. I'm still not ready to launch but I'm at a stage where I need to decide on a monetization strategy.

My big question is do I launch with ads from day 1, or do I launch and then add the ads once I gained a certain amount of traffic?

Alternately there maybe an opportunity to provide a subscription service where user's can pay to have more control over the app. But in this case I have no idea if the subscription model will be popular enough to make it profitable. Showing ads to non-paying users would then provide the ability to not show adds to paying customers, which increases their perceived value.

Advertising will likely be AdSense, through Ad-Manager as the site is going to be a SPA(ish) web-app [SPA == Single Page App]. And since this is AdSense there is the site approval issue to deal with as well.

[iamlost]

Personally I always waited until I had a level of human :) traffic that would pay out each month.

Besides encouraging visits by not shoving ads in front of those first few visitors it provides time to analyze both click tracks through site and how many go how far down each page. Time to remedy problems without worrying about effect on ads et al.

Plus I hate to loan Google or whoever ‘my’ money interest free while accumulating payout threshold.

[NickMNS]

Iamlost, that is what I was thinking. But do you then at some future point risk loosing users if ads suddenly appear?

[iamlost]

Yes. No. Maybe. It depends. :)

I tried to inoculate visitors (and test ad size, position) in new sites by running ‘in-site ads’ where I had initially had in-site links to another relevant page. Basically replace a link with an ad call to action.

Just one at first in various positions then fix that one and trial a second. Tracking not just clicks but views against page visitor total, etc.

Then phase in ‘real’ ads in place of site ads over time as traffic volume dictated. Learning and optimising all the way.

[tangor]

Get the audience first. Build a repeat audience. Discover the frequency v new material/content. Develop metrics that show steady growth. Use some of iamlost's suggestions.

When you have a solid audience you can pull a g and make bits and pieces of the site paywall, advertising supported, or whatever revenue option desired.

Once you have the audience you can later change the rules. :)

On the other hand, if you start with ad supported from the get go it's quite possible growth will be slower than expected and, with the increasing prevalence of ad blockers (not talking about g's chrome blockers), the uptake could take quite a bit of time.

YMMV

[NickMNS]

Once you have the audience you can later change the rules.

I agree to a certain extent, but at the same time I'm not convinced. Can you really take a website that has no ads and then from one day to the next start showing ads or throw up a paywall. Users or not, some people are not going to accept the change, and the result may well be that after the switch the revenue will not be sufficient to sustain the investment. But instead of finding this out up-front (ie: fail quickly), in addition to the development, you would have lost precious time.

I just listen to a podcast from NPR's Planet Money addressing exactly this issue and it is making me question the approach.

What are the alternatives?
I was thinking of showing the ad slots from the start, but instead of showing "3rd party" ads, I would show my own ads. These would state that "ads" will be shown at some future point, but to avoid any ads and to get access to premium features sign up for a paid account. This would "prime" the users with the notion that ads will be part of the site, and allow me to test whether it would be feasible to sustain the site on a subscription basis.

What about KickStater?
A variation on the above would be to launch a KickStarter campaign, and set a goal amount at which point I could offer an ad free service to everyone, contributors to the campaign could pay for an annual subscription but in turn receive lifetime access. The ads mentioned above could be used to promote the campaign.

[tangor]

Boiling frog still works a treat.

Sadly does take time and many webmasters are not that patient (or have the bucks to ride it far enough).

Worked for g. It will work for you as well.

One ad at a time, one page at a time.

[iamlost]

When most webdevs think about ads they are thinking about the ubiquitous intrusive banner/blocks of third party commodity advertisements. Many treat affiliate links similarly.

And a growing number of visitors detest them on sight, if not unseen due to adblocking, because of usage abuse by many sites. An option is to go native; of which there are several variations.

Perhaps the most common is the web page version of the YouTube ‘review’ (although the webpage variety came first) in which the content, while (best) written by the site is paid for by the organisation written about. Some are puff pieces but the best and the type accepted as genuinely useful are real and personal, warts and all.

A less common (my type of direct ad sale) is a page or pages of native advertising kept strictly private from SEs via robots.txt exclusion, meta noindex, etc. with only a contextually relevant implicit call to action link on one or more SE open content pages.

Native advertising, even the crap SE indexed garden variety hype, pays multiples of typical third party ads. In part because the SE blocked variety is site filtered higher quality traffic such can be multiples above even that. 10-20 times AdSense is not uncommon. Such also allow both CPM and CPR rates to exist in tandem on on ad page; adding an affiliate third is rare but possible.
Note: and no ad blocking!
Note: and content is ad free!
Note: and ads are actually ‘private’ content!

Do try to raise your eyes up from the AdSense plain to the mountains full of gold...

[NickMNS]

@Tangor

Sadly does take time and many webmasters are not that patient (or have the bucks to ride it far enough).

I'm patient, that is not the issue, but I don't have the time waste. I'm at the point where if something is going to fail I need to know sooner rather than later. This project does not have the potential of becoming anything remotely close to Google.

@Iamlost

When most webdevs think about ads they are thinking about the ubiquitous intrusive banner/blocks of third party commodity advertisements.

Exactly, I would very much like to avoid that.Hence the reason for this thread.

An option is to go native; of which there are several variations.

Something like that would be ideal, but unfortunately in this case it's not a good fit. The site in question, is an online tool, a SPA with very little written content, only the supporting explanations and instructions.

Come to think of it an affiliate approach may be a good fit. I see affiliate type ads showing up on the Youtube videos regarding the topic, so there is a demand for the topic. The product sold is the logical next step after using my tool, in other words, users uses the tool, is captivated, wants more, go to affiliate product.