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Damn that was good. Very similar to my own experiences. I especially liked the point of not blowing money on ads and such. Getting ads right is hard, and most

Damn that was good. Very similar to my own experiences. I especially liked the point of not blowing money on ads and such. Getting ads right is hard, and most times you will waste your ad money. Feel free to dabble, but realize that your ROI will probably be dismal. Make sure to track your ROI somehow, or you won't even know how badly you're doing.

leftnode 16y ago
Yup, when you have very little to spend on ads, they're mostly a waste of money I've found, especially if you're in a competitive industry with big name players already established. Build a good name by word of mouth: you spend nothing and it resonates much better with potential customers.
barmstrong 16y ago
Has anyone on HN had Adwords convert for their business yet (in real measurable ROI)? The best I've seen so far was like a 2 year payback period. Not very good. It's gotten competitive enough that I'm rarely seeing Adwords be useful anymore to a startup.
- mkramlich 16y ago
  A personal experience of mine: game A: spent $100's on Google ads ... made $0 revenue game B: spent $0 on Google ads ... made $100's revenue (disclaimer about other variables, YMMV, take with grain of salt, etc.)
- MicahWedemeyer 16y ago
  We've had a little success. It's fairly easy to track the conversion rate from AdWords campaigns if you're also using Google Analytics. Our ads convert to signups at about a 10% rate. At $0.16 CPC, that means we pay $1.60 for each signup via Adwords. That's still too low for us to get a reasonable return. I've tried various things in order to bring up the conversion rate, since I think 10% is low, but this is an area where I'm lost. I've tried making a landing page, A/B testing the landing page, and some other tricks, but I'm out of my area of expertise here. That's what I meant when I said that doing ads is pretty damn hard. But if I could just hit 20% conversion and stay there...then we'd be golden!
  - ryanwaggoner 16y ago
    Dude, a 10% conversion rate is pretty damn good. What startup are you talking about? I'm guessing that a signup != paying customer, correct? I think ads for free users is a very tough model. Now ads for software you're selling? That's definitely not impossible (ask patio11).
    - MicahWedemeyer 16y ago
      We have a freemium model, and yes I'm saying 10% conversion to the free plan. From there we try and convert them to premium.
blizkreeg 16y ago
Has anyone seen good RoI on Facebook ads?

leftnode 16y ago

Yup, when you have very little to spend on ads, they're mostly a waste of money I've found, especially if you're in a competitive industry with big name players already established. Build a good name by word of mouth: you spend nothing and it resonates much better with potential customers.

barmstrong 16y ago

Has anyone on HN had Adwords convert for their business yet (in real measurable ROI)? The best I've seen so far was like a 2 year payback period. Not very good. It's gotten competitive enough that I'm rarely seeing Adwords be useful anymore to a startup.

mkramlich 16y ago
A personal experience of mine: game A: spent $100's on Google ads ... made $0 revenue game B: spent $0 on Google ads ... made $100's revenue (disclaimer about other variables, YMMV, take with grain of salt, etc.)
MicahWedemeyer 16y ago
We've had a little success. It's fairly easy to track the conversion rate from AdWords campaigns if you're also using Google Analytics. Our ads convert to signups at about a 10% rate. At $0.16 CPC, that means we pay $1.60 for each signup via Adwords. That's still too low for us to get a reasonable return. I've tried various things in order to bring up the conversion rate, since I think 10% is low, but this is an area where I'm lost. I've tried making a landing page, A/B testing the landing page, and some other tricks, but I'm out of my area of expertise here. That's what I meant when I said that doing ads is pretty damn hard. But if I could just hit 20% conversion and stay there...then we'd be golden!
- ryanwaggoner 16y ago
  Dude, a 10% conversion rate is pretty damn good. What startup are you talking about? I'm guessing that a signup != paying customer, correct? I think ads for free users is a very tough model. Now ads for software you're selling? That's definitely not impossible (ask patio11).
  - MicahWedemeyer 16y ago
    We have a freemium model, and yes I'm saying 10% conversion to the free plan. From there we try and convert them to premium.

blizkreeg 16y ago

Has anyone seen good RoI on Facebook ads?