[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Who runs a small/medium website supported by...
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Ask HN: Who runs a small/medium website supported by ads?
Facebook, Twitter, TikTok are all ad-supported and that is viable
because they have huge userbases. How viable is it for
small/medium websites to be supported by ads? I'm interested in any
examples people have and even more interested by any HN'ers doing
this.
Author : gardenhedge
Score : 17 points
Date : 2022-11-14 21:12 UTC (1 hours ago)
| armchairhacker wrote:
| It may be viable to run a small/medium website on ad revenue,
| because a small/medium website doesn't cost much at all.
|
| Hacker News is famously run on 2 boxes. And that is without
| Cloudflare + CDNs to cache static requests: static websites are
| practically free. Domains are cheap as well, even a .com domain
| costs $20/yr and domains like .xyz cost <$5/yr. The cheapest
| linode cloud server costs $5/month. Idk how much ad revenue pays
| out but I imagine it can recover those costs.
|
| However, you probably won't _profit_ from ad revenue, and it
| definitely won 't sustain a full income.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I've known someone who did this, they created a website (niche
| industry, offering docs, and tools), took years for it to gain
| anything meaningful in terms of ad revenue then one day out of
| the blue Google just killed their ad account and kept the money
| still in it. All they got was a "You violated the terms of
| service" without specifying how, what part, or giving the
| opportunity to appeal it. It was a boring website, in a boring
| field, and nobody took an interest until the revenue was even a
| little high (I believe it was the low 1,000s when it was killed).
|
| Luckily the revenue wasn't enough for them to quit their job and
| do it full time, but it was still a financial blow.
|
| I guess my point is: Ad supported is a nice idea, but it makes
| you very vulnerable to the big ad network(s). Even if you do
| everything right, if some automated system decides you did
| something wrong, click, you're gone. I've read stories about
| competitors hiring click-bots to click on ads until you get
| banned, and while I don't think that is what happened in the
| above case, it is another thing to be paranoid about.
| cbeach wrote:
| Same happened to me. I ran Adsense and one day received an
| email from Google saying I was permanently suspended.
|
| I knew I'd done nothing wrong, but there was nothing I could do
| to prove it to Google. Nor did they provide any useful info on
| what I'd done wrong.
|
| This was the first experience I had of the perils of Big Tech
| monopolies holding the keys to entire sectors. Once they shut
| you out it's game over.
|
| Since then I've not found another decent ad provider. There are
| loads of awful ones that hit your users with deceptive and
| obtrusive ads. I just want banner ads, like Adsense served.
|
| Any suggestions appreciated.
| bwb wrote:
| Buysellads is great, knoen the owner since the start and we
| use them for downforeveryoneorjustme.com
| permanent wrote:
| The internet says one can make $5-20 / 1000 views from adsense.
|
| I'd like to hear specific cases if anyone wants to share
| noodle wrote:
| I run a small-to-medium (based on your definition) website that
| is entirely ad-supported. It occasionally peaks into the large
| territory.
|
| It's not really "viable". This may be because of the industry
| it's in, which doesn't really purchase online advertising, and
| therefore cuts into the overall earnings potential.
|
| I run it for fun and for certain incidental benefits, not for the
| $$$
| guld wrote:
| That depends on various factors, such as how many users one can
| attract with their small/medium websites, what kind of content is
| provided by your website, and so on. If for example the content
| on your website is compatible with an ad-network such as Google
| Adsense or Amazon Partnernet and you have like 500 users a day,
| you may earn enough money to pay the server/domain cost of a
| simple project.
|
| At around 3-5k users a day things start to get interesting.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| What happens at 3-5k users?
|
| At what point is it worth creating a self-serve platform for
| advertisers? Or is that not useful at all?
| iceburgcrm wrote:
| When you can't manually handle the updates.
|
| Put a link to advertise here and manually manage it until you
| have too many ads to manage yourself.
| meetingthrower wrote:
| Go on Quiet Light and you will see lots of small ad supported
| businesses. Some are very shaky but some have been pumping out
| cash for years and years!
| bwb wrote:
| Me partly, shepherd.com, working to lower the number now as just
| added them in August and figuring them out.
|
| Shepherd is a book discovery platform, still in baby stages and
| adding genres this winter!
|
| I want to drop display ads eventually and replace it with in
| house book ads... but that is a big project, hopefully 2024.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| Wow, that's a really cool site. I browsed around and didn't see
| any ads.
|
| Side note: I had to laugh when it recommended "The Little
| Engine That Could" because I looked up "The Hobbit"
| RaulOnRails wrote:
| I think Unsplash was kind of like this until they were bought by
| Getty Images. Really loved they're way of presenting ads.
|
| On a personal note, I tried getting into ads for one of my
| personal projects (a map of recycling points for my hometown),
| but Google declined my application because it doesn't have much
| content on it -- though it's kind of absurd because people use my
| web app, to find locations on the map, not read content. I ended
| up not doing ads for now, and keep receiving "buy me a coffee"
| donations.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| > and keep receiving "buy me a coffee" donations
|
| Is that enough to support the site? How does that work with
| tax? Are those people considered paying users or is it like
| tips. Do you pay tax on tips?
| RaulOnRails wrote:
| In a way it is, but I haven't done anything in the past few
| months, so it kinda faded. Made $250 from "buy me a coffee"
| this year, and yeah, I paid taxes on them.
|
| I basically send an invoice for each tip I receive. Talked a
| lot to my accountant about this, and she said that if I don't
| invoice the people sending me these tips, I'm doing fraud,
| and can pay huge fines once I get caught. I think only as an
| NGO you're allowed to receive tips w/o paying taxes on the
| amount. I have an LLC, so I have to invoice every income.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| It sounds like you're in Europe? They require invoices for
| everything there.
|
| If you're in the U.S. though...you need to find a new
| accountant. You don't need to invoice every transaction. It
| certainly is _advisable_ , for accounting/auditing purposes
| (much easier to track and verify income), but it's not
| mandated.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| Interesting - thanks!
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| Do you consider a news website with 150k impressions a month
| small or medium?
| gardenhedge wrote:
| I hadn't thought of scale really.
|
| I guess something like this:
|
| Personal - tens of views a month
|
| Micro - hundreds of views a month
|
| Small - thousands of views a month
|
| Medium - hundreds of thousands of views a month
|
| Large - millions of views a month
|
| X-Large - 10s of millions of views a month
|
| XX-large - .. you get the idea
|
| Huge - Twitter, Facebook, etc
| mattjenner wrote:
| I had no idea if my website was small or pico. Thanks! I
| qualify as 'small' in this list and I'm proud of that (10k
| viewers / mo).
|
| My website is aimed at older children (education), it's no-
| code Bubble.io and I use google adsense to drive revenue. It
| _just about_ balances as cost neutral to operate. I do not
| update any content any more often than once every 3-5 years.
| permanent wrote:
| I'm curious about exact numbers, if you don't mind sharing!
|
| Just because the cost neutral could mean a few dollars
| (static) to a few hundreds.
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