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I'm all for this, but just to give you an example: I know someone who read a web forum. People wanted an ad free paid version for years, so he eventually added
by Gunax 4y ago
I'm all for this, but just to give you an example:
I know someone who read a web forum. People wanted an ad free paid version for years, so he eventually added it at a cost of $15 per year. Most users balked at the price. 'Why did you add this if it was so expensive'?
Well it turns out he actually earned more revenue from advertising to frequent users. He was actually losing money on each person who paid, and it was still too expensive!
My point being: I think we might underestimate how much our attention is worth. Most people are not willing to pay as much to avoid an ad as an advertise would pay for you to view it.
- frans 4y agoThat's interesting. Do you have an idea at what price offering a sponsored free search engine would become profitable? $15 per year seems very low and I would be happy to pay considerably more than that.
- selectodude 4y agoFacebook makes about $200/yr per USA/Canadian user. So probably start there.
- PeterisP 4y agoA relevant factor is market segmentation - the average ad revenue is a bad target for such a price, since the people who are willing to pay $x/month for an ad-free version are the ones who are much more valuable to advertisers than the average.
- tayo42 4y agoFreakonomics did an episode about Google and it made the same point. Ad space is worth to much
- frans 4y agoFrom Kagi.com's pricing page [1]: "Kagi has no ads and is fully supported only by its users." At $10/month. (disclaimer: I haven't used it myself yet). Does anyone have experience with Kagi or some background how they pull this off? The founder was here about a year ago. [2] [1]: https://kagi.com/pricing https://kagi.com/pricing [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29835756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29835756