

Ask HN: How do B2C "free-tilities" like evite make money? - bakhlawa

I'm building a B2C utility which addresses a frequent consumer pain point, should be fun to use, but at the end of the day is just that...a fun utility but not something you would pay a monthly / one time fee to use.<p>I'm curious what the business model for companies like evite is. Is it just "build it and they will come...and click on ads"? Is it direct-sale of ads?<p>I expect the traffic and interactions on the utility to result in very targeted ads, but the idea of relying on adwords alone doesn't appeal to me very much. I could white-label the utility or underlying algorthm and sell it that way, but that's quite a departure from the current approach and would take me straight into B2B territory.<p>Thoughts? Advice?
======
bigohms
Much of their advertising is very much larger CPMs as part of agency buys
across IAC's entire network. Certain "party" brands such as Bacardi target
Evite on a regular basis given their obvious alignment with the audience. The
direct sales team there takes them to task on the rates in comparo with a
Adwords. Big G pays out only 25% of ad revenue to content partners (and that
is weighted more towards their higher converting brands than lower
publishers). Direct sell + high CPM works relatively well with a large
network, affinity group of sites or a niche vertical master brand.

Advice (roughly 10 yrs in media/content) would be to completely own a niche or
vertical with a strong brand and loyal spend-oriented audience. This can be
through traditional media, aggregation, gaming or utility. Adwords will never
truly support a product of this scale of effort, which is probably why its
utility, benefit and opinion for publishers ranges near the bottom of the
toilet. Push relationships...with your product...with your users...with your
customers.

------
18pfsmt
In the case of evite, yes they rely on advertising, but remember they are
owned by IAC (also ASK.com) which allows them to cross-sell, and they do have
their own ad sales team.

In your case, I don't think I'd follow their path. They suck, and there are
other better products, but evite has momentum from '98. It would help if you'd
be more specific about your utility, where you are located, and where your
target market is located because these factors are major when considering
monetization strategies.

