
Ask HN: How to monetize 5 million+ pageview Twitter widget? - tweetwidget
A couple years ago I created a Twitter-related widget in javascript that people could embed on their websites. I did it for fun, just to see what would happen.<p>Now, the widget is installed on thousands of websites and gets over 5 million pageviews (from over 1 million visitors) per month. It is not monetized at all, and it is just leaking bandwidth from my server. I can't afford to just let this run out of my pocket for much longer.<p>So, how could I make some money with this? The widget is part of a larger Twitter-related site (which gets a tiny bit of ad revenue), but most of the traffic/cost comes through the widget.<p>Any ideas would be most welcome. (posted from throwaway account)
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gyardley
If it's a typical sidebar widget ignore the 'talk to an ad network'
suggestions. If standard IAB banner sizes aren't right for your widget (and I
really don't see how you'd cram one into a widget), then ad networks have
nothing for you.

Don't price this by the impression. If your advertisers are thinking CPM
they'll rapidly start evaluating what this untargeted, run-of-network
inventory is worth, which is likely close to zero. You won't get a $1.00 CPM
if you price it by the impression. You'll be lucky to get a $0.20 CPM.

Instead, I'd try and sell a few sponsorships, Deck Network style, each
sponsorship granting a share of the traffic for at least a month and for at
least a four-figure sum each. The audience is looking at a Twitter widget, so
your natural audience is Twitter-related businesses. Develop an unobtrusive
text-based ad unit, something like the promos for Twitter clients that Twitter
itself runs on twitter.com, and then pitch it to every Twitter-related
business you can find.

Remember, high prices for a big share of a really relevant audience and do
whatever you can to keep them from thinking about the inventory in terms of
CPM, because five million ad impressions is not a hell of a lot when
rationally priced. You need to do a lot of hand waving and sprinkle a lot of
fairy dust ('reaching key influencers', etc.) to sell such a small amount of
inventory for a meaningful amount.

~~~
ggrot
One kind of ad you could run that wouldn't have trouble with cramming into a
widget is popups.

Don't downvote me because you hate popups, so do I. It's a legitimate
possibility that you might consider looking into. If it's a question of
shutting down the service because of bleeding costs or running popups on 5% of
pageviews, its an interesting question.

~~~
joshsharp
This is a great idea if you want to get rid of all your users. Nobody likes
popups, and the people whose sites contain the widget would consider it a dick
move and uninstall it immediately, I suspect.

~~~
iuguy
I agree, but this also solves his paying for bandwidth problem.

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nostromo
This might be slightly deceptive... but you could try adding affiliate codes
to all links to product websites (Amazon, NewEgg, etc.)

edit: URL shorteners might make this difficult, but still possible if you can
keep the widget responsive enough while following links server-side.

~~~
tweetwidget
I've actually tried this on the main site, but it was not so successful.
Mostly because the links are shortened, and I don't have the capacity to
unshorten every link (most computation is done client-side anyway), and
programs like VigLink don't look at short links either.

~~~
toolate
Have link HTML printed out as per normal, attach JS that routes every clicked
link through your servers. E.g.

    
    
        This is a twitter <a href="http://bit.ly/blah"
        onclick="document.location='http://yourservers.com/follow?url=' +
        escape(this.href);return false">link</a>.
    

That way you can look up the Twitter links only if they are clicked and any
slow down happens after the click, not before display.

As a bonus you get to see what links everyone is clicking as well.

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RBr
Here's how I'd do it... I'd massage this a bit with some closed alpha testing,
etc... but this is the gist:

Sell ads and kickback a percentage to the siteowners while working in charity
donations to remind folks that you're not evil.

Create a script to categorize your install base. Eg: Gadgets, Tech, Food,
Personal, etc. In version 2, plan to categorize in real-time contextually. A
good ad network partnership (see below) will help you with this technology.

Change your TOS. Send an e-mail to everyone asking them to verify that your
script categorized them properly, to check out the new TOS and the new ad
feature. Clearly and honestly tell them why you're making this change - the
project will die if you don't.

Test some "run of network" ads. Input a few different variations, measure
clicks (volume and geo are important).

After a couple of weeks, approach a few different ad networks at the same
time. An Adtech conference is coming up in NY in November... use their
exhibitor list as a hit list.

Negotiate with the ad networks. Depending on the demographics and CTR's, I bet
with a 5m install base, you'll have some good offers. Reliability is key here
- ad networks start and stop all of the time. In contrast, remember that big
networks come with more constraints.

Here's the part that's going to keep this from being evil: Allow your
siteowners to sign up and insert their own affiliate / user codes. Give them a
percentage of the ads. If someone does not sign up, give that same portion to
a charity such as Kiva.

As an alternative to selling ads - start looking to sell the whole thing.
There are a few funded startups I can think of that would keep your beer
fridge full for a couple of years in exchange for what you have built.

As a final (tacked on edit) idea: Survey your siteowners. With such a large
install base, if you ask what advanced features people would like, you may be
able to get some people to upgrade to a paid subscription model. You might be
able to use this in conjunction with the adrev model above. In your survey,
don't give the siteowners any ideas - you don't want to sway them.

~~~
eli
That sounds like a _huge_ amount of work to set up.

~~~
pavs
You wanna make money but don't wanna work for it?

~~~
eli
Setting up an ad network that charges advertisers, targets ads and then
compensates site owners is not a fun way to monetize a widget. It's recreating
AdSense from scratch. Think of the tax issues alone!

If you could build that ad system, coming up with 5 million impressions would
be the easy part.

~~~
RBr
You would not need to build an ad network. There are a few hungry ad networks
out there already that offer text ads and have systems similar to this already
in place.

The only challenge really is in categorizing the sites where the widget
appears (to target the ads so that the CPM ratio doesn't make it worthless).
Past that, it's really just seeing who has a good base of customers buying
text ads and letting them handle all of the dirty work.

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jordan-graf
Ask your users if they'd mind you including VigLink or something like it in
your widget. It monetizes outbound hyperlinks that are already on the page by
rewriting them to be affiliate links when there's a relevant program. It
doesn't change the behavior of the site and doesn't overwrite any that are
already affiliated. If your users value what you're doing they shouldn't mind
you harnessing a little potential that they're leaving on the table. I'd
definitely recommend disclosing it though - people will get pissed if you do
it silently. Upside is it's totally fire and forget.

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jusob
Maybe you should also look into reducing the bandwidth cost: check your
expiration headers, smaller html/images/css/Javascript, etc. Use Google App
engine to get some free traffic, etc.

~~~
sushi
I'd also suggest looking at Google App Engine. I am moving all my low traffic
sites (less than 500 visits a day) to Google App Engine and it's such a great
service I wonder why not many people use this.

It has drawbacks but the OP can definitely offload some bandwidth by using App
Engine for some parts.

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japherwocky
It would help to know what your widget actually did, but here's a freemium
pitch: make your widget free for the first X views / mo., and then show ads,
unless your user subscribes for $Y / mo.

By show ads, I mean, after some domain has gotten X views, break the widget
and show the biggest ad you can.

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DrJosiah
<http://ad.ly/> has been testing an ad network for stream-based applications
(those that interact with timeline-based media like Twitter, Facebook, and
Myspace's new interface). Ad.ly presented at <http://appnationconference.com/>
yesterday, both as part of a panel for monetizing the app-based stream, and a
break-out panel showing a sample application that includes monetization.

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fliph
The OneRiot RiotWise Ad API might be right for you:

<http://oneriotdevelopernetwork.com/riotwise-api/>

You have the option of text ads (typically trending news stories, so they're
less spammy than typical ads), small display ads, or full ad units.
Additionally, OneRiot's whole approach is real-time/trending information, so
it's well within the Twitter-ish sphere.

I have some friends who have used it and reported good CTR and positive (or
non-negative) user reactions to the ads.

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joeld42
You could stick "sponsored" tweets into the twitter feed.

~~~
abiczo
That's forbidden by the Twitter API TOS. See
<http://dev.twitter.com/pages/api_terms> Section IV.2.

~~~
spokey
I had always assumed this just meant that you couldn't inject paid ads into
the actual Twitter feed, but reading this in detail you are right, you can't
simply mix paid and Twitter content within the display of your app.

Moreover the Twitter API TOS seem to forbid the notion of other sponsorship
and advertising for this widget unless Twitter also gets a cut:

> "In cases where Twitter content is the primary basis of the advertising
> sale, we require you to compensate us [...]"

It sure sounds like this widget is all about Twitter content.

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areavic
My company runs a contextual advertising network that could be plugged in with
your widget on your publishers pages.

(Can also do non-obtrusive text links which should be more acceptable to your
publisher base than banners)

We could really help with the entire monetize using advertising strategy but
our service is currently not public.

Contact me offline for details (see profile). (Sorry can't reveal corporate
info at this point, apropos of not being public)

------
DotSauce
Place a text ad for a quality Twitter related affiliate product. Start making
commissions. A few I know of...

\- <http://socialoomph.com>

\- <http://sponsoredtweets.com>

\- <http://tweetadder.com>

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patryn20
What space restrictions (banner sizes) are you looking at? I run
FeaturedUsers.com and this sounds like something that would be interesting to
look at. Not sure how the insertion would work since we do JS insertion based
on domains ourselves, but definitely worth looking at.

My contact info is on the site.

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paulsingh
Could you add a link on the bottom of the widget to get people to click
through to your ad-driven site?

~~~
tweetwidget
I am already doing that :)

~~~
paulsingh
Time to split test the call to action on the widget to see how you can improve
the CTR? :)

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ezrider4428
Off the top of my head, the value is in the data and analysis that the widget
can capture and provide.

Can you track which sites embed the widget? What else can tracked?

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geuis
It would be helpful to know what the widget is to better come up with useful
ideas. But its perfectly understandable that you don't want to share that.

~~~
tweetwidget
Trying to be vague-ish, but its a customizable widget that displays tweets on
a webpage based upon settings the site owner can set in javascript.

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petervandijck
Evil way: sell links that you add to the widget to advertisers.

Hard way: upsell "enterprise" versions of the widget to just a few (very
expensive) customers.

Good luck!

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niccolop
To add to the idea of enterprise, perhaps you could offer some paid moderation
service.

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bosky101
partner with a re-targeting company or a behavioural-targeting network that
lets them place a cookie.

this way no ad needs to be shown, you can work on some annual deal with the
partner for the first year, and your audiences see more relevant content/ads
as they leave your widget since the network knows a little bit more about what
the visitors interests are courtesy of your widget. also since this is not
personally non identifiable data - there's no harm to users also.

i could give you more gyan, if you could contact me personally @bosky101

~B

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entelarust
does the widget show a user account's recent tweets? or just the last tweet?

or is it a general/search/trending list?

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simon_
Any chance you can find a buyer?

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hasenj
perhaps put a flattr link on it?

<https://flattr.com/>

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ggrot
I'd be very interested in knowing what your site was. My email can be
retrieved via my profile/blog. Maybe my similar experience can help you.

In a previous life, I ran tag-board.com, which placed a little javascript
widget on your website that let your users interact with each other much like
an irc channel. This was before ajax was even coined a term. The site still
exists, but it's run down and I don't have anything to do with it anymore.

When I first started it, I never thought more than 100 people would ever use
it. At it's peak, there were 600k accounts and tons of traffic that went along
with that. At first I didn't care to make money, I was just happy that people
used something I created, but when I realized I would need more than a
$5/month hosting account, I started looking into options.

The first plan was actually a premium model - hack up a bunch of new features
that would only be available to paying users and sell accounts for $20/year.
It worked, and might for you as well. At some point, I had over 1,000 paying
users.

After awhile, the problem was that hosting costs of the free accounts were
eating a good part of the profits on the paid accounts AND I was spending a
ton of time on maintainance. I felt responsible for pretty decent
uptime/performance/bug-freeness since I had people paying money. A friend of
mine pointed out that the amount of time/stress I was putting into this wasn't
worth the money. This made a ton of sense to me. At that point, I strongly
considered just keeping paying users alive until their year ran out, and then
axing the whole thing. I then realized that if I was willing to get rid of all
my free users anyway, I might as well try something aggressive - I found an ad
network and ran popups on the non-premium accounts. This was ~2002. To my
surprise, I got fairly minimal grief, more premium signups, no noticeable drop
in usage, and enough income to make it worth my while to keep going. This
lasted awhile, but popup revenue slowly dried up - firefox and other browsers
started killing the popups. I had handed the whole thing off to someone else
well before that happened though.

If I were to do it again, I think I'd do the obvious thing that nobody
recommended and just charge everyone for the service, although a much smaller
fee (maybe $5/yr). I'd let people sign up for free, use the account for a
month, and then switch it over to showing an "ad" of sorts on _the owner's_
website where the widget otherwise would be. Clicking through would let the
user interact with the widget, but on the "ad" would also be an option for a
user of the website to buy the site owner a subscription to this widget. This
would dramatically increase the number of potential customers and would
essentially be like a tip jar for the website owner. Users could buy the
widget as a gift for a website they like to use. At the same time, I wouldn't
try to stop people from just creating a new account and getting another month
of free usage, but I'd annoy them forcing them to do this every month.

I don't actually know if this would work, but I think it would. I suspect
there would be fewer users. However, as a side benefit, you would know what
this is worth to those users, which is a nice feeling. The negative here that
scares many people from going this route is that if you suddenly start
charging, you really do have to provide a service. You can't go down for 2
weeks. And you have to do a little bit of customer service (emails, refunds,
fix bugs) or find someone to do it for you.

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zackattack
$5000 ... you could make some decent money at just a $1 cpm. talk to some ad
networks or just sell directly. what kind of sites generate the most
pageviews? holy shit, 5 million is a lot of page views. i guess widgets are a
great distribution model.

or you could just sell it to websites looking to SEO ^_^ reminds me of the
dating site or whatever that had those surveys that people embedded
everywhere, that's how they got to #2 or something for "free online dating"

~~~
webwright
It's not a pageview, it's a widget view. Only the lowest-quality advertisers
will pay for that quality and it won't be $1 CPMs. The OP could try putting a
(non-compensated) ad on there and measure CTR and how many times the ad even
is in the viewable pane (a lot of widgets are below the fold and are never
even seen).

The SEO angle won't work-- JavaScript widgets aren't seen by spiders nowadays.
The SEO hackers who did what you're referring to added links below the
javascript in the code they provided. Downside of this is that if the OP wants
to go this route, he can't retroactively add a link to these current users.
Unless the link/anchor text relates to widget, Google will ban your ass. The
guy who did the online dating thing did in fact get slapped HARD by Google.
You can read about it here: <http://www.seomoz.org/blog/widgetbait-gone-wild>

~~~
ggrot
Agreed, don't go the SEO route - it's not a long-term play.

~~~
bobds
You got your javascript widget and your noscript tag. You could even stick
some regular HTML with a link (possibly an image instead of text) below those.
Your users will copy-paste the widget along with your link.

This is a pretty strong SEO technique. You should be doing that already. You
don't need to stick unrelated links there, just link back to your Twitter-
themed site.

~~~
webwright
... Which gets him more unmonetized traffic. But yeah, of course he should be
doing that.

Note: I wouldn't use the noscript tag. I'd either have a div that was replaced
via javascript or a small/light chunk of html below the javascript. Pretty
good chance of noscript tags getting dinged by Google given how they are being
used.

