I am sure everyone but the comatose have noticed that we are playing with the placement of ads on the site during the last couple of weeks. We hate pushy ads as much as the next guy. We hate cluttered design. We hate paying for something (with our attention, our money, or anything else) that doesn’t provide a GREAT value. A great site should give you more than you give it. A great site will strike the right balance between clean design, revenue and features. As we have written before, the only truly sustainable businesses are ones that can pay their bills by providing products and services that people value. So here we are trying to figure out with our members the right balance to strike which will enable us to grow and continue to provide great service to the community. The ad trials we have been running (different placements, different sizes, etc.) are one way to keep the cost in $ down to every member.
Here are a couple of guiding principles helping guide us here
- Keep a small, lean team. Small expense means small revenue required.
- Don’t spend marketing money like a drunken sailor (or like most tech start-ups)
- Clean, usable design
- Don’t depend only on advertising (means there will be less of it)
- Keep most things free, price as low as possible only for really valuable things (sorta like Craig’s list)
- Allow Kashless to expand everywhere it makes sense, reach as many people as possible.
In part based on these guidelines, here are a couple of things we have decided to NOT DO.
- Have more than three ads units on a page
- Have ads interlaced with the item listings (That REALLY offends me on other sites)
- Require a sign-on to search or browse listings.
Thanks for following our progress. We will keep at it. Comments welcome.
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