Staying ad free, and free to use - how about you?
I was not sure what to say with this, but looking at all the Apple News recently around ads, the move to sell more ads in general everywhere I go online I feel like going back to the early days of the internet. When I recently created Hey.Café I was thinking from the start the best low cost way to build it so I don't need to resort to advertisements or collecting user data.
Let's wind back a bit.
I have always been against ads in general and early on was a huge user of Adblock. I don't use it anymore due to the privacy problems but at the same note I end up paying for things like YT so I don't need to see the 10 ads in a row before the video starts.
So every project I have built I have made sure it was never designed around the need to have ads. I also really find I like giving everyone access to services even if they cant afford it. I know this may not fit in with a group of SaSS users as most income is based on a products that costs money to use.
So I wanted to ask you all...
If you are building a service, project, or something because it is your passion. If you are planning on having a free plan or make it free. How are you planning, or have you planned to monetize?
My project, TutHub.io, is completely free and monetized via affiliate links. I considered display ads but I don't want to ruin the aesthetics of the website.
One remark that I have to make, as an advertiser - People hate ads, but they sit through stories.
Back on topic, building the economy inside the platform itself, if possible, is an idea I had 🤔
I share the same disdain for ads with a burning passion, and I'm planning not to have them in my projects; and that includes free services.
My current idea consists of two main product types:
There is also potential for mobile or VR applications among others, with some of them being paid apps.
As I'm currently in the stage of developing a basic web application and infrastructure (both are also acting as an MVP), I'm at the stage where I will need to personally finance this project, until I can get the ball rolling on potential clients for the API products. This means that I will need to start small with that web application (in terms of data, complexity and scale) to reduce costs while guaranteeing that it stays free.
I'm also considering charging for my API products at the beginning until I get to a state where the revenue can finance the whole project, then I can go with freemium.
I am building a free product and capping the monthly cost around 20$, which is something I am comfortable with. I also use free stuff whenever I can like (AWS lambda, Vercel).
I don't have a clear goal of monetization. I am solely focusing on building something useful at this moment. I could put some ads but I am not entirely happy with such route.
In the worst-case scenario, the whole tech stack and everything could be reused to power my next thing.
This is a valid dilemma with no easy answers. Long term, services like google ads work only in scale as the unit realization is very low. Sponsorship works out slightly better, but again is worth the effort only when you have scale. On the other side, if you want to scale a free product, then costs will zoom out of control.
That brings us to the classical question "Who will pay whom for doing this?" If you can find the answer to this, with the whom being you, you have cracked it
I guess more than anything is project to project dependent. But I find myself more and more hating anything that has ads.
We have a freemium mobile app and had ads in from day 1. When we added paid memberships, one of the features was hiding ads. Seemed like a no-brained because that’s what everyone does, right?
It was really hard to support the Google ads. At one point we were getting 1 star reviews on Android because the app was freezing. It took a month to track down the root cause and it turned out to be Googles own ad SDK. Other times we’d get temporarily pulled off the App Store for some obscure TOS violation involving their ads.
Eventually we decided to take the hit and just remove all ads for all users because the development effort was too high. Ads was about 10% of our revenue, plus whatever additional paid upgraded we got for the ‘remove ads’ feature.
The result: an immediate 20% jump in paid upgrades. Turns out the ads were preventing paid upgraded, not encouraging them. It’s hard not to think about all the money we lost having ads in addition to how many weeks of development to support them.
Obviously DYOR, but that’s an anecdote for you.
Wow thats a big difference, I bet also there was a mix of people who see ads and just uninstalled also.
Yes, that’s what we concluded, but had no idea that was a thing. We’d just assumed since it’s free, it would have ads. I guess that’s not a built in assumption for some people
Hi, I've got a free Lite plan with my https://website-toolkit.co.uk service, but also do two paid plans that offer extras and human advice.
For me I was lucky to be accepted to the MS startup founders hub which has azure credits. Being a .net person this was perfect for me and I can host for a while with the sponsored usage while getting off the ground and growing exposure.
To also free up some more money I managed to get sponsorship from a UK hosting provider, which I am also a reseller for. Their non annoying banner is in a few places on my site and their tag line is in the summary email, with affiliate links on both. So yes this might class as an advert, but I control the image and host it so I have full control.
As an unknown service having the visible sponsor message for me is a good form of social proof. If a big business thinks it's a good idea then hopefully that will help build trust.
To help monetize the lite plan I'm planning to have suitable affiliate links in for associated services to wordpress which is my target audience.
In the same way to you I'd rather people can use my service and get value, plus cover my low platform costs. Making a profit from that part would be nice but I'm glad to have the hosting side line above break even to reinvest that cash.
Good luck with your project as well!
Dave
It's always a balance from offsetting costs with payed users to allow free users but so valuable for me. I think in your case after taking a look the free option is needed also to understand what it's all about so it's good to not put that behind a paywall before the person knows what they can get with your service.
Good luck!