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Advertising is not a good revenue model for big sites?

jesusphreakjesusphreak
edited December 2005 in Vanilla 1.0 Help
I've been hearing comments here and there about how advertising is a bad revenue model, especially for big sites. Can anyone comment/confirm this for me? I'm just interested in the whole thing.
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Comments

  • ADMADM
    I don't really think theres that much money in advertising as a whole. You'd probably make more money selling subscription packs for those larger sites.
  • jesusphreakjesusphreak
    edited November 2005
    I'm just wonder how a site like digg would make money, or how del.icio.us would make money if it tried.
  • 3stripe3stripe ✭✭
    Hmm, del.icio.us with google-style targeted text adverts :-(
  • jesusphreakjesusphreak
    Why the :-( ?
  • 3stripe3stripe ✭✭
    Just a wee frown... dunno, I find delicious confusing enuff without more links all over the shop!
  • jesusphreakjesusphreak
    Heh.
  • ADMADM
    How does del.icio.us make money?
  • nathannathan
    does it? I assume it would to cover running costs, but I can't see where they would. I don't use it often. As 3stripe said, the interface is a little confusing, and I don't like to have to concentrate really hard to gt where I am going. I'm just lazy.
  • ADMADM
    I use it alot.. but I agree with you that I don't see how they could make that much money off it. There's ALOT of potential there that I'm suprised that they haven't got any suscriber features or anything where they could get abit of cash out of it.
  • jesusphreakjesusphreak
    What features could they actually offer to subscribers? The whole idea of social bookmarking isn't terribly complicated nor difficult to setup. I just don't know what they could offer to subscribers...besides possibly allowing them to host and tag files there....but then you run into copyright/piracy issues.
  • ADMADM
    Hmm not too sure.. maybe have ads on the site then subscribers could have ads removed. Non-Subscribers could also have a limit on the amount of links they can have, or other limitations like that. Subscribe and all the limitations gets removed.
  • 3stripe3stripe ✭✭
    I just can't believe that del.icio.us is so poorly designed when it's clearly used by so many of the poeple who are building the web and are right at the fore of everything that's been kicking off recently. My grannie could design a better site! Heheh
  • KosmoKosmo
    Kudos to your grannie.
  • ADMADM
    Personally I really like the simplicity of del.icio.us. Also it's been updated a touch recently anyway.
  • KosmoKosmo
    I haven't used del.iciou.us al.most.at.all so I don't think that is is simple, it's way too confusing, they have all that information going on in their frontpage, they should either hide it somewhere so it isn't intimidating and bit cleaner and more spacious feel to it wouldn't hurt them at all.
  • jesusphreakjesusphreak
    edited November 2005
    del.icio.us I think is doomed to be relegated to being the geeky forerunner of a much better service.

    Even its very domain spells disaster when it comes to casual users. The layout, different aspects of it, none of it just makes sense, and Google proved that if you are simple and make sense, people will love you for it.

    Realistically, del.icio.us could be written in a single 24-hour period in Ruby on Rails, it just isn't that complicated. For all the VC funding del.icio.us got, it sure doesn't seem to be using it. I mean, really, how much time could it take to make a new layout?
  • gigingergiginger New
    The lack of a coherent layout really is a hinderance to delicious getting a wider acknowledgement/support. It's only certain circles of internet users that use it.

    It's a fantastic idea and I've given it a whirl but it's just not user friendly. It's as simple as that to me.
  • 3stripe3stripe ✭✭
    Yup yup yup... I've tried several times to explain several times to non-techy mates why delicious could be useful for them... none of them get it, or show any interest in what it does or how it could help them.....
  • jesusphreakjesusphreak
    Its probably because its mainly geeks that need to be able to save a bunch of different webpages and "tag" them. I think for the casual user, its always just easier to do a quick Google. That's why I think Yahoo's MyWeb approach is probably best - as it lets you save items you find while searching.
  • shad0w913shad0w913
    Many people use an ad/subscription model. They have ads, and if you subscribe, they get rid of the ads. That's how giant sites like IGN do it. Then again, there are also CNET sites that seem to make their profit purely from advertising. Try reading problogger, he talks a lot about making oodles of cash blogging.
This discussion has been closed.