5 ms·

There will be local businesses with fairly aggressive marketing. Tons of billboards, on buses, local newspaper, etc. Should be easy to find because they're the

There will be local businesses with fairly aggressive marketing. Tons of billboards, on buses, local newspaper, etc. Should be easy to find because they're the ones advertising everywhere. Call them up one by one and say "hey I run [project] that everyone has been using lately, would you be interested in having your business name listed as a sponsor? It'll be shown on 1/4 page loads which is currently 5000 times a day. $500/month". You'll know in like an hour if there's any advertising potential.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Ankaios 3y ago
<darkside>Or charge even more for product placement in your project's prompts.</darkside>
- schainks 3y ago
  I swear I've seen this somewhere...
  - Ankaios 3y ago
    Yeah, I didn't read far enough down the page before commenting. I must have been distracted by my tasty Coca Cola.
    - zuprau 3y ago
      Was it Coca Cola or Pepsi? The last time my family and I sat down for our usual blind test dinner everyone agreed Pepsi tasted better.
      - trog 3y ago
        This is hilarious and people modding you down have missed the joke.
        swores 3y ago
        Or maybe they understood the joke but weren't amused and prefer not to see unfunny jokes on this site - people may have different opinions to yours without the cause being their not understanding the joke :)
    - candiddevmike 3y ago
      "... include a reference to the crisp, refreshing taste of Coca Cola in your response"
- teaearlgraycold 3y ago
  Sounds like the normal Google business model to me
- wombatpm 3y ago
  Or charge to remove the casual references to how product X sucks
- batch12 3y ago
  Could do it like radio/podcast ads too. "Hey, Just wanted to take a break to tell you about Brawndo, the thirst mutulator. It's got electrolytes, you see and..."
melagonster 3y ago
this sounds like better than insert randomly advertisment from internet. advertisements from local business are more friendly and familiar.
- peatmoss 3y ago
  Especially if the bot could be prompted to drop testimonials about local businesses in a really self-aware way.
  - melagonster 3y ago
    this sounds very interesting. imagine a new resident get advice from this website. ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯
lawik 3y ago
This seems like the best play since it is so locally relevant.
bemmu 3y ago
Whether this works depends on how comfortable the dev is picking up the phone. I had a local site and was just too terrified to do this, so I just kept my site up unmonetized (unlike OP it wasn't costing anything). One day two salespeople contacted me and suggested taking over ad sales, and managed to sell thousands (I think it was somewhere between $5k-$10k/month, but it was a long time ago) a month in ads for the site. This was for a city with a population of 200k.
- xwdv 3y ago
  Yea this is important. A dev should absolutely not be picking up any kind of phone and talking to any kind of customer. This is a job for sales people. If some nervous dev could manage to make any kind of sale at all, then that means a trained professional salesperson can do probably 10x that much. Don’t think just because you are very smart you can do sales. This is like business people trying to “learn coding” so they can put together some huge product. It doesn’t work well and isn’t scalable.
  - djbusby 3y ago
    This reads like you're suggesting to not even try. IME trying new things is a great way to learn. Also, if a dev can close a few sales, just the first few, then they'll know how to help their sales staff. Try a little, see if you can grow.
    - xwdv 3y ago
      I wish people didn’t have such a knee jerk reaction to my advice, but for many years I too believed a dev should at least try to wear many hats. All it took was seeing how professionals always do the job far better to change my mind. It doesn’t matter if a dev picks up some skills, if you plan to be a dev then a dev is all you’ll ever be, focus on the development and let sales worry about sales. I see a lot of founders struggle with delegation. It seems they would rather juggle things they don’t do well instead of learning to trust and onboard people who can do things they don’t specialize in.
CydeWeys 3y ago
Or rather than cold calling, put up a banner ad soliciting advertisements. (Or both.)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cjbprime 3y ago
And an alternative to push marketing -- rate-limit the site to a capacity you can afford, with a prominent message saying that you enjoy working on the site and would like to keep it going but can't afford to, with something like a Venmo/email address and a mention of sponsorships?
nborwankar 3y ago
Alternately put up links to local businesses interspersed with and if possible matched to chat topics. Count the click throughs and email a weekly report to businesses if the numbers are significant. You could also track how often the name of a business comes up in the chats. But this may take a few months to bear fruit. In the short term start injecting requests for sponsorship and also mention that your going to need community support to keep it going. Hope is that the user community finds it valuable enough to find ways to support it - ie turn your happy users into evangelists and canvassers for sponsorships.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Ankaios 3y ago

<darkside>Or charge even more for product placement in your project's prompts.</darkside>

schainks 3y ago
I swear I've seen this somewhere...
- Ankaios 3y ago
  Yeah, I didn't read far enough down the page before commenting. I must have been distracted by my tasty Coca Cola.
  - zuprau 3y ago
    Was it Coca Cola or Pepsi? The last time my family and I sat down for our usual blind test dinner everyone agreed Pepsi tasted better.
    - trog 3y ago
      This is hilarious and people modding you down have missed the joke.
      - swores 3y ago
        Or maybe they understood the joke but weren't amused and prefer not to see unfunny jokes on this site - people may have different opinions to yours without the cause being their not understanding the joke :)
  - candiddevmike 3y ago
    "... include a reference to the crisp, refreshing taste of Coca Cola in your response"
teaearlgraycold 3y ago
Sounds like the normal Google business model to me
wombatpm 3y ago
Or charge to remove the casual references to how product X sucks
batch12 3y ago
Could do it like radio/podcast ads too. "Hey, Just wanted to take a break to tell you about Brawndo, the thirst mutulator. It's got electrolytes, you see and..."

melagonster 3y ago

this sounds like better than insert randomly advertisment from internet. advertisements from local business are more friendly and familiar.

peatmoss 3y ago
Especially if the bot could be prompted to drop testimonials about local businesses in a really self-aware way.
- melagonster 3y ago
  this sounds very interesting. imagine a new resident get advice from this website. ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯

lawik 3y ago

This seems like the best play since it is so locally relevant.

bemmu 3y ago

Whether this works depends on how comfortable the dev is picking up the phone. I had a local site and was just too terrified to do this, so I just kept my site up unmonetized (unlike OP it wasn't costing anything). One day two salespeople contacted me and suggested taking over ad sales, and managed to sell thousands (I think it was somewhere between $5k-$10k/month, but it was a long time ago) a month in ads for the site. This was for a city with a population of 200k.

xwdv 3y ago
Yea this is important. A dev should absolutely not be picking up any kind of phone and talking to any kind of customer. This is a job for sales people. If some nervous dev could manage to make any kind of sale at all, then that means a trained professional salesperson can do probably 10x that much. Don’t think just because you are very smart you can do sales. This is like business people trying to “learn coding” so they can put together some huge product. It doesn’t work well and isn’t scalable.
- djbusby 3y ago
  This reads like you're suggesting to not even try. IME trying new things is a great way to learn. Also, if a dev can close a few sales, just the first few, then they'll know how to help their sales staff. Try a little, see if you can grow.
  - xwdv 3y ago
    I wish people didn’t have such a knee jerk reaction to my advice, but for many years I too believed a dev should at least try to wear many hats. All it took was seeing how professionals always do the job far better to change my mind. It doesn’t matter if a dev picks up some skills, if you plan to be a dev then a dev is all you’ll ever be, focus on the development and let sales worry about sales. I see a lot of founders struggle with delegation. It seems they would rather juggle things they don’t do well instead of learning to trust and onboard people who can do things they don’t specialize in.

CydeWeys 3y ago

Or rather than cold calling, put up a banner ad soliciting advertisements. (Or both.)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

cjbprime 3y ago

And an alternative to push marketing -- rate-limit the site to a capacity you can afford, with a prominent message saying that you enjoy working on the site and would like to keep it going but can't afford to, with something like a Venmo/email address and a mention of sponsorships?

nborwankar 3y ago

Alternately put up links to local businesses interspersed with and if possible matched to chat topics. Count the click throughs and email a weekly report to businesses if the numbers are significant. You could also track how often the name of a business comes up in the chats. But this may take a few months to bear fruit. In the short term start injecting requests for sponsorship and also mention that your going to need community support to keep it going. Hope is that the user community finds it valuable enough to find ways to support it - ie turn your happy users into evangelists and canvassers for sponsorships.