Ask IH: Monetize a web app through ads
Hi,
Saturday thoughts. What do you think about monetizing a web app through ads? I know that having pricing plans would work better, but what if people find value to use the product, but not to pay a lot for it? I have a web app where I invested some money, but it is not making much and was thinking to try and go this way.
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What are your number of daily users? What is the app about? Some areas have high paying ads others don't.
Maybe try an experiment - run Google AdSense for a two week period and see if you get any meaningful income.
Perfect answer. Why not try it? B2B? If so, traffic may not need to be as high as mentioned by others.
As somebody that's made over $320k from AdSense, I'd recommend against it, unless you have an absurd amount of traffic.
No shame in cutting your losses on a project and pulling the plug.
By the way, what do you mean by an "absurd amount of traffic" ?
Yes, but it's hard to lose 20k when I can recover some with ads if possible.
Maybe not an "absurd" amount, but If you're going to go the self-serve route with something like AdSense, you're going to need tens of thousands of impressions a day to even recoup a few hundred bucks a month.
Even at $200 monthly ad revenue, it would take ~8 years to recoup what you invested.
If you were to do ad-supported free + pricing plans, you very well may be able to move the needle from free to paid just due to folks not wanting ads.
it's something that people might use just one time. I can't actually see how they can pay and use it without the ads.
This comment was deleted 4 years ago.
Could you get sponsorships? You can usehighlight.com widget to display them prominently?