I debated for awhile about when one should start monetizing a website. When should one attempt to have the website generate revenue? I originally thought I should have tens of thousands of reviews and that the site should be hoppin’ in order to start monetizing. I’m not really sure what led me to this line of reasoning. Right now, it just doesn’t seem logical. Why not become cash flow positive on the business earlier? I can’t see any downsides of monetizing early, especially if the method of monetizing your site provides value to the users of the site.
Therefore, I added some Google Ad Sense and I connected to the Amazon Associates program. I didn’t really know too much about them before starting on the task. All in all, it’s taken me about 8 hours to learn about the 2 programs and incorporate them into Soapbox.
What’s interesting is that before today, the site had zero chance of generating revenue. Now it suddenly has potential to generate revenue every day. I wonder how it will go.
I think Soapbox is a perfect site for Google Ad Sense and a perfect site for the Amazon program. Both programs provide value to the user of the site. I’ve been amazed how relevant AND useful the Google ads are. I think they’re a good fit for the site and they’re not just ‘noise’ like they are on many sites. In some ways, Soapbox could become a broker that sits between potential customers learning about products and the providers of those products who are purchasing the ads. It’s the same way with Amazon. If I’m reading a review that a friend wrote for a book, it’s pretty nice to have the Amazon link there to make it easier for me to buy it.
Why not monetize early?
I’ve made some improvements to Soapbox based on additional user feedback.
I also added some Google Ad Sense advertisements and I hooked into the Amazon Associates program. So now the site has the chance to start paying for itself.
Since originally releasing Soapbox, I’ve received a ton of feedback from users about how the site could be improved. I’m so thankful that many folks were willing to give of their time to help. I could never have anticipated many of the requests that were made. This is one of the advantages of releasing a simple site as early in the development process as possible because then I’m getting real feedback from real customers rather than guessing what customers might want someday. My guesses are so often wrong.
Here are some of the enhancements you might notice:
Some of the enhancements I made don’t look that pretty. Rich is currently working on fixing that.
Now that some friends have been writing reviews on Soapbox, I’ve recognized a few unexpected things.
The site doesn’t have to be an enormous hit in order to provide a ton of value to the people in “my” network. So even if it doesn’t have 4,000,000 reviews out there, I can still benefit if “my network” is relatively filled out and a number of friends start writing reviews. I have learned a ton of things from the reviews that have been posted so far and it’s only been 2 days. I thought I knew my brother Russ pretty well. He’s posted a ton of reviews of things I never realized he’s used. They’ve prompted many conversations between us and I think we’ve learned more about each other through Soapbox. I’m not sure whether other networks of people will use Soapbox enough to experience this benefit.
I have found that there’s value in having my opinions of things in digital form. I’ve found myself emailing the links of reviews to people. For example, many have been asking about the designer of Soapbox. Rather than me crafting an email about Richard Powell, I can just point them to my review of his work. Someone asked about how I’m liking the switch to using a Mac. I just point them to the review. It seems quite efficient.
Russ has made me realize that we have used thousands of products and services. There are countless things to review.
My mom has recently made me realize that we naturally exchange reviews all the time with friends and loved ones. We’re constantly comparing notes, sharing experiences, and learning from each other. Soapbox enables this communication to happen very efficiently with a ton of people.
Soapbox could start to connect friends of friends in real life because of the reviews that were written online. That would be pretty excellent. We’ve already had a case hinting at this when my wife Kelly went to a playgroup with a few other moms with their kids. One of the moms there was talking about Jen’s Tilapia Review! This mom has never met Jen and has never tried Tilapia. But if and when they do meet, they’ll have some context for conversation. It’s just exciting to me that a digital process on the web hasn’t replaced human interaction. It seems to have encouraged it and fostered it.
It’s been about 2 days since I started actively marketing Soapbox. I thought I’d share some of the things that have been happening in the hope that you can benefit from these experiences in your own business. It’s been pretty interesting so far.
I sent out announcement emails to approximately 500 people who were in my address book. I know about 200 of these people pretty well, at least well enough to send a semi-personal email. As for the other 300 people, they’re either acquaintances who I don’t know very well or they’re people I don’t remember. I figured I’d send the announcement to all of them. I haven’t spoken to many of the people I emailed in a long time so the announcement has triggered a large number of catch up emails.
So far, 88 people have signed up on Soapbox and they’ve written 154 reviews. I’m pretty excited about the progress and I’m in no real hurry. I’m perfectly fine with gradually spreading the word about the site and gradually improving it over time. Don’t get me wrong, I’d be excited if it went viral but I’m OK with gradual. I’ve never done any marketing so I’m excited to learn more about it by actually doing it.
The internet is pretty wild. One friend submitted Soapbox to a blog site with thousands of subscribers and it was accepted. Thanks Craig! Soapbox also showed up on another blog I’ve never heard of. It was submitted there by someone I don’t know. Here are the references on the two sites:
http://www.emilychang.com/go/ehub/
It was surprising to see references to Soapbox out on the internet so soon after starting to yap about it.
I’ve also got a few interesting statistics. Before the marketing blitz, Soapbox was getting about 700 hits per day. Since the marketing campaign started, it’s getting about 22,000 hits per day. So, there are certainly folks taking a peek at it at this point.
It remains to be seen whether the site goes from “something a little interesting that Duff’s been working on” to “this is a useful site that provides me value.” It remains to be seen whether it goes from a site that a few people use to a site that’s remarkable enough that people feel compelled to tell their friends about it. Seth Godin has taught me that customers can do a way better job of marketing a product than I can.
The questions remain, what can I do to make the site that remarkable? What can I do to make it very easy to spread this idea virus? I’m going to be working on answering those questions in the coming weeks.
Just a quick post on a thought I’ve been having. After starting to market Soapbox 2 days ago, people have started using the site. People started signing up. Reviews were being written. I started getting some constructive feedback and some compliments.
And then I started thinking things like, “Maybe this site could be useful to folks. Maybe it could be a hit. Maybe I’m good at this. Maybe I’m just talented and the things that are happening are all because of me. I’m great.” It’s amazing to me how easy it is to have issues with pride. It’s amazing to me how easily I can start to take all the credit for the things that go well in my life. It’s amazing how quickly I can forget how many parts of my life have been COMPLETELY out of my control.
I thought I’d list just a few. I didn’t give myself life. I didn’t give myself a brain. I didn’t give myself the particular aptitudes that I have. I wasn’t responsible for the series of events causing me to live at this time and in this place in North Carolina. I’m unable to add one day to my life through my own will. I cannot begin to count all of the events and circumstances in my life that just seemed to work out in an incredible way. Some would call these events lucky breaks. They all add up to where I’m at right now. And they were outside my control.
I pray that I never forget the gifts God has given me. Yes, I’ve sometimes worked hard at stuff to accomplish some goals. I pray that I’ll never forget that the goals would not be possible were it not for God’s help. I would not be the person I am today were it not for the most amazing gift I’ve ever received, God’s gift of His Son Jesus.
It’s a big day. Soapbox is now officially released. I’m hoping that people find it useful.
The folks at 37 Signals recently published a book called Getting Real which has had a pretty significant impact on how I develop software. 37 Signals has been quite successful in creating simple, useful web applications. I’m trying to imitate many of things they’ve done because what they’ve done works. Why try to create my own system from scratch when I can imitate something that’s been shown to work?
This is the heart of mentoring. Many of the books I’ve read about successful people talk about the advantages of mentoring. When you find a mentor, you can typically save yourself years of time because the mentor can help you determine which parts of your study are important and which don’t matter. I’ve seen this in my own life in learning how to trade the stock market. I’ve been learning how to trade for 3 years. If I didn’t have a mentor, it probably would have taken me a decade to reach the point that I’m already at. It’s ridiculously efficient to learn from the successes and failures of a mentor.
Learning from published material is certainly not as great as having a personal relationship with a mentor. Even so, you can learn a ton from folks you don’t know personally. This is what I’m doing with the 37 Signals guys. I don’t know them personally but they have affected most of the decisions I make when developing a web site. I’ve already started to see some benefits of their approach as I’ve developed Soapbox. Rather than trying to guess what my customers want, I’ve been focused on releasing something that provides people some value and letting them drive the features they find necessary. It’s been interesting to see that a feature I didn’t think would be useful has been suggested by an enormous percentage of the people who have used the site. Person after person made the same suggestion. I can now see the advantages of having that feature.
If I wasn’t imitating 37 Signals, it would have taken me many more months to release Soapbox and the site would have been much more complicated and harder to use. Getting Real is an excellent book that could help your business even if you’re doing something other than software development.
Rich cleaned up Soapbox such that it now looks pretty good in IE. He’s also started making progress on cleaning up the individual pages of the site. We’re shooting for this Friday for me to start the all out marketing campaign.