

Duck Duck Go Traffic & Sponsorship - ugh
http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/05/duck-duck-go-traffic-sponsorship.html

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sachinag
That's a $4.23 CPM if my math is right, based on $5,000/1182204 qualified page
views in April. That's awfully high.

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epi0Bauqu
What do you think is appropriate?

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jacquesm
Try to get in to CPC right away, CPM is not very useful unless you are
targeting a specific niche.

$0.05 to $0.10 should get you some traction, evaluate at the end of the first
period with your advertiser if they got value for their money. It should be a
win-win if you expect it to become a steady money supply otherwise you'll just
be hopping from advertiser to advertiser. Ideally you want your first
advertiser to be jumping up and down to be allowed to sign up for all ads for
the rest of the year based on that first month :)

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ggruschow
This is just a stop-gap measure to get some income before you implement
context-sensitive ads, right? Most advertisers won't get any value from most
searches.

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epi0Bauqu
I think the traffic is still too low to offer a unique context-sensitive ads
approach. So this is an experiment for now. I believe this exclusive approach
offers a unique branding experience, but we'll see :)

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sachinag
If you don't want to run AdSense ads, Microsoft's AdCenter allows (I believe)
more customization with look and feel:
<https://advertising.microsoft.com/publisher>

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hcho
Only that, monetizing a search engine with other search engines' ad products
would be a bit funny.

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ErrantX
well he is, in part, driving his search engine with other search engines'
indexes so it would be entirely fitting! :)

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MikeCapone
What does that mean exactly. Are you talking about the no click stuff, or do
you mean that DDG isn't crawling the web and indexing it, but using results
from other search engines to build its own?

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ErrantX
> or do you mean that DDG isn't crawling the web and indexing it,

He does his own indexing - but also uses (IIRC) Yahoo BOSS and Bing API's.

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MikeCapone
I wasn't familiar with Yahoo BOSS.

<http://developer.yahoo.com/search/boss/>

So Yahoo is letting people use its search technology free of charge? Wow.

Edit: it looks like Gabriel answers my question here:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/bbqw7/i_am_the_founder...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/bbqw7/i_am_the_founder_of_a_search_engine_duck_duck_go/c0lyff9)

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epi0Bauqu
Note that Yahoo BOSS has an unclear future pending the final Microsoft/Yahoo
search integration.

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aantix
If the current CPM comes in too high for most advertisers (given your current
traffic), why not try auctioning off that exclusive ad space?

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MikeCapone
An auction would have the benefit of helping you figure out what kind of CPM
potential advertisers are ready to pay for.

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epi0Bauqu
I was just trying to keep it simple. I considered an auction, and might move
to it eventually though.

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sant0sk1
I've always liked the Daring Fireball approach to advertising (not sure if he
should get credit for it, but he was the first one I saw doing it), and I
really hope it works out well for you, Gabriel.

I love DDG.

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wallflower
Daring Fireball is a member of the invite-only advertising network called The
Deck. To be a member is to be in an elite group of influencers.

<http://decknetwork.net/>

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sant0sk1
I'm not referring to his sidebar. I'm referring to his weekly sponsorship by a
single company.

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wallflower
Sorry knee-jerk reply. Daring Fireball has multiple lucrative revenue streams.

I wonder what kind of metrics DDG will offer - I think it would be interesting
to know what the user was searching for when there is a click through on the
sole sponsor banner.

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epi0Bauqu
Here's the traffic link: <http://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html>

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apphacker
Hrm, you can't trust aws stats. In my opinion they are frequently over-
reporting traffic. I recommend using a JavaScript based logger such as Google
Analytics or Site Catalyst if you want better numbers.

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epi0Bauqu
I'm not using it straight up, but just for display purposes. I manually wrote
a script to ferret out the correct page views.

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quizbiz
good luck

