Ask HN: Should I move away from Ad Revenue in favour of Subscriptions? - adzeds
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jordansmith
I do not know your exact situation, but I think you should do a mix of both.

I make a large amount of my money from affiliate/ad revenue, and it is way too
easy for things to go bad.

If you sell subscriptions you own everything. If you rely on affiliate/ad
network you always need someone else to pay you, and if something goes wrong
you are just out of your money.

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dhogan
I like the idea of a mix too. Diversification usually reduces risk.

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adzeds
Seems like a multi-tier approach is the way to go!!

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adzeds
I currently have a site that is generating upwards of £4,000 a month in
ad/affiliate revenue...

Should I consider moving to a subscription based modal and charging for my
service as a way of managing the risk and fluctuations from the ad/affiliate
model?

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rathish_g
What category of site is it?

Have you tried removing advts for paid customers? How many signed up?

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adzeds
I did a trial for signups for a 'Premium' model and I got about 150 signups in
week 1.

The site is in sports data/betting data/tips

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saluki
Keep your free tier so you maintain your ad revenue for users that won't pay.

Offer an ad free paid level for users that don't like ads.

And a premium level ad free with extras/more data/tips for users that want
more.

If your site happens to be developed on Laravel checkout
[https://spark.laravel.com/](https://spark.laravel.com/) for a head start on
your SaaS development (if you use stripe or braintree).

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adzeds
The site is currently built using Wordpress...

I like the ability of having a tiered approach for pricing... I don't think I
would ever completely remove the free tier, as my data is incredibly helpful
to a lot of people so want to still offer a value resource to all.

Just some better/more advanced stuff for the others that would like more...

Removing ads as a tier is a good idea as well.

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jordansmith
Free tier is good to have to easily build your list of people to advertise to.
Use these emails to push your paid tiers, push affiliate links/one off offers,
etc.

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adzeds
Yeah, think that makes sense.

I like using the auto-responder emails to push the subscriptions and affiliate
links...

Seems to work pretty well.

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sharemywin
do a test for new traffic

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adzeds
A test for new traffic?

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sharemywin
post a pay screen but only for new users.

