An online business, with or without ads ?

@svengau - I have both types of businesses

1. Selling product only - use marketing/ads to drive traffic & sales
2. Making money from advertising revenue only - 100% organic traffic

The upside to #2, is that it can be a high-margin business, since the overhead is low (no cost of goods sold, no shipping, easy operations).

The downside is that you normally have to rely on organic traffic only, and that can not only be hard to come by, but if/when Google makes an algorithm change, it can easily hurt (or help) your income stream.

Also, most notable ad networks pay 60 days after close of the month, so your current month's revenue is usually determined based on prior month's traffic. This is not always the case, but it's something to consider.

Lastly, the economics of using paid traffic to drive traffic to a site where you're only making advertising revenue does not usually work out.

More concretely, typical advertising will pay out by a CPM/RPM basis (cost per thousand / revenue per thousand page impressions). Let's say the average RPM is $10 (which is high in certain categories), that means you get only $10 for ever 1,000 pageviews.

If you can find a way to spend $10 to get 1,000 pageviews on your site (which is showing ads), then the economics can work out. But, it's not as easy to do that as you may think.

Of course you can have direct advertising partners, where they pay a flat monthly rate to show some form of advertising on your site, but those click-thrus will need to convert enough on their end, or the direct advertiser will stop advertising with you -- they need to see an ROI on their ad spend.

That said, instead of making money only from some form of advertising, maybe you can make money as a lead-gen source. Right now it looks like you deploy your solutions on Netlify.

Why not ask them for some commission for every new account you send their way, regardless if it's free or paid?

Maybe you can find other platforms like that where you can get a lead-gen commission.

You may also be able to make some money by creating an eBook, that takes a bunch of your specialized knowledge (how to deploy certain stacks, and where), and encapsulates it into a eProduct (PDF) that people will find value in and purchase.

Or, you can create that eBook, and use it as a lead gen option. You collect the email addresses, give the eBook for free, and get paid by a platform like Netlify for every email lead you provide to them.

If you can get $5 or $10 for every email lead, then you may be able to find places to do paid marketing where the economics will work.

Hope that helps. LMK if you have any other questions.

I heard that Facebook Ads that too for developer products is very bad combo. In my experience we got very few clicks with facebook ads.

Go where your audience is and spend time there. "Promote" by talking to potential users/customers about their problems. I'm assuming you solved a problem you yourself were having, so this should come easy and natural to you.

It all really depends.

As @andreboso said ,ads work well if you have product market fit and a solid funnel, I'd only add that it helps in having a solid understanding of your target market and how they look for solutions first before jumping into advertising.

SEO is a fantastic way to build organic traffic... but it takes time and requires a lot of content which isn't as helpful in validating a business/building product market fit.

You mentioned Facebook, but are your target customers A) On facebook or B) Likely to stop scrolling if they see your ad on Facebook?

I'd give Google ads a go, depending on the keywords you could get a fair amount of traffic and validation for a $100 ad spend. The key here will be when you can assess what it costs to acquire a user via an ad so you can start budgeting appropriately and factor it into your growth.

Facebook Ads can work really well:

• If you have product/market fit
• If you have a solid funnel
• If you have a great creative

Lack one of these and you‘ll burn money.