CodeFund Ads
Ethical ad platform that helps fund open source projects
After having spent the past year building software that helps fund the open source economy, I wanted to share some lessons that I had learned.
Be unapologetically focused on the mission
By staying focused on the mission of funding open source, it provided a clear path to decision making.
Be ethical
Since day 1, we decided to follow the Ethical Advertising principles established by ReadTheDocs. We are developers. We do not want to abuse our community.
You can read more about it on our blog.
When I entered the advertising industry last year, I was determined to follow a simple rule: be honest. The ad industry has always carried a stigma of being dirty and dishonest. Part of this to me meant that the advertisers only pay for clicks that not from bots, duplicate clicks and fraudulent attempts.
CPC (cost per click) has been the cornerstone of our business since day 1. Since the beginning, we have been only charging on a CPC basis. I had always considered this as a competitive advantage.
We started hearing from our advertisers that their Google Analytics data did not match our internal data. As a test, we ran an ad campaign through a 3rd party that verified our data was correct.
We decided to switch our pricing model to CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions). The irony of it all is that ever since we switched, advertisers have been happier.
Lessons learned.
Read more about it on our blog at https://blog.codefund.app/the-cpc-illusion/
In July of 2017, Nate and I launched a small side project called Code Sponsor. The idea was to provide a way to fund open source projects on GitHub using a small, unobtrusive ethical ad that appears on the GitHub README. You can read about the launch and purpose here.
Over the span of 6 months, this little side projected started to take traction. In November 2017, we had over 1,000 open source projects being funded with CodeFund.
I learned two lessons from my experience with Code Sponsor:
- Do not build a business on top of another company's product.
They can pull it out from under you in a heartbeat.
- Learn to pivot
We needed to pivot in order to keep Code Sponsor alive. Instead of shutting the doors, I ended up bringing back Code Sponsor as CodeFund by providing ethical ads for open source websites (such as redux-form.org and devhints.io).
Here's a blog post that shares the frustrations at the time. I hope it helps others.
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