
I took ads off my site and replaced with Bitcoin donations, it didn't work. - astrowilliam
http://www.ionthesky.com/i-took-ads-off-my-site-and-replaced-with-bitcoin-donations-week-4-its-not-going-to-work/
======
muppetman
I wanted to donate to my favourite private tracker recently. They only take
bitcoin. So I thought no worries, I'll sign up to coinbase. They were the
suggested easy-to-sign-up-to way to get bitcoins. (I don't know about wallets
or mining, I'm just your average Internet joe)

They wanted copies of my passport and drivers license.

I laughed and closed my newly created account.

Until the process of being able to get bitcoins is simple and easy, expecting
people to part with them for donations is unrealistic in my opinion.

(Please don't follow up with 20 "easy" ways I could have gotten bitcoins,
after that experience I really don't care)

~~~
ekianjo
> They wanted copies of my passport and drivers license.

If you go to a bank and try to create a bank account, do you laugh when they
ask you for your ID and proof of residence? :)

~~~
eropple
This isn't a good comparison. I have no reason to trust Coinbase and my
options for recourse are minimal if they end up being shitty. My bank is an
institution with capital assets in my city. I know where they _are_. They have
an address and it's local. I can talk to a manager, face to face, if there is
a problem. (And have.)

(And my bank has a better security record than Bitcoin companies have thus far
shown, besides.)

~~~
yukinon
How do you feel about online banks, like Ally?

~~~
eropple
I don't use them. I like having someone whose office I can sit in and very
politely refuse to leave until things work out to everyone's satisfaction.

------
chmod775
In the past month I have received roughly 100 € ($130) in donations.

I am running a much smaller site, Volafile.io, with maybe 200-500 daily users
(most stay over a period of a few hours). I decided against ads and instead
decided to support the site with donations.

One hundred euro cover my expenses for about two and a half month. (I also
give 10% to the EFF)

I assume that for most people the main reason to donate is because they feel
the site is providing value to them. Value they can actively experience. In
return for their generosity I don't impose any limits on them. You can upload
any amount of files without limits, download as much as you want, without
countdowns or the like and you don't even need to register. Reminding users of
the value you're providing is key to getting them to support your project.

And this is where he made the biggest mistakes:

 _\- He put donation button at the top of the articles_

If the user hasn't read your article, you didn't provide anything valuable to
him yet. Place it at the bottom.

 _\- He put the donation there without any explanation_

What do you need the donations for? Are you some cooperation trying to squeeze
a few extra-bucks or just some poor guy trying to keep his website afloat?

 _\- The donation button is just slapped on the page_

It not only looks like he didn't spend more than a few minutes integrating it
on the page, it almost looks sketchy. Guide users through an additional page
telling them what you'll do with their money in a few sentences. And I didn't
even see his bitcoin donation button at first because it's on the opposite to
the much more visibly placed paypal donation button. Even more so if you are
using NoScript.

Those are just my few cents. I don't know if they'll help him if he's going to
stop supporting his page with donations, but they should at least be of some
use to someone else.

------
windsurfer
I think the most interesting takeaway is that he was making $60 per 60,000
readers, or $0.001 CPV. Is that normal?

~~~
bsilvereagle
$6CPM (cost per thousand views) for an established niche site seems a little
on the high side but not unheard of.

Edit: Math eluded me, it's $1CPM which as others have said is pretty low.

~~~
sharkweek
He's only getting $1CPM here -- which is really low

The average on sites I run is around $5CPM -- during times of big budget
spends (normally toward the end of fiscal quarters) I see this go up quite a
bit.

~~~
patja
I wonder if all of this talk about his Adsense earnings and what he earns from
Adsense is going to see his Adsense account getting whacked. My understanding
is that the first rule of being a publisher monetizing with Adsense is: don't
talk about Adsense.

~~~
johnward
Where did you get that rule? Maybe you are thinking of not begging users to
click ads just to support the site.

------
boyter
I have to wonder how much of this is by not being genuine about asking for
donations. I didn't see the buttons on the page so not sure how this was done
but asking for donations can work if you are genuine about asking for them.

The best example I can think of is on the no agenda show. They literally have
a segment of the podcast where the hosts ask for money. Its not begging, but a
genuine "Provide money for value" proposition. You can hear about this
business model on this podcast (Techzing)
[http://techzinglive.com/page/235/techzing-50-the-real-
dvorak](http://techzinglive.com/page/235/techzing-50-the-real-dvorak)

Another lesser example I can think of is Cord Killers which uses a middleman
(patreon) [http://www.cordkillers.com/](http://www.cordkillers.com/) but is
essentially the same idea, where you ask for support and if you don't get it
you don't provide the service.

It's possible this only works for people with existing audiences though as
both the examples did.

------
IvyMike
I'm very curious how much bitcoin traffic "normal" businesses actually see.
(You know, non-bitcoin, non-privacy companies selling mundane products.)

I suspect very little since everyone I know who talks about bitcoin is holding
but maybe one of you out there has actual numbers.

~~~
dangrossman
I still run a few eCommerce stores in various niches that take 5-15 orders a
day. Not high volume, but still active. They mostly have the same checkout
flow, with a credit card payment form, alongside "Pay with PayPal" and "Check
out with Amazon" buttons on the side, which do get used frequently. I added a
"Pay with Bitcoin" button from Coinbase under those several months ago, and a
grand total of one person has ever used it, and that person spent about $2 on
the cheapest thing I sell.

------
downandout
The begging model definitely does not work, and it is a disservice to yourself
and any other stakeholders in your site. It annoys users and produces
minuscule revenue compared to advertising.

While some will disagree with me, a perfect example of this is Wikipedia. They
could implement ads without any of the nonsensical negative consequences they
claim to be afraid of and generate billions of dollars in the process. That
money could go to improving and supporting the site, and since they don't seem
to want profits, to massive donations to causes important to Wikipedia and its
users. Unfortunately, they have chosen to annoy users and deprive important
causes of billions of dollars.

Just say no to begging.

~~~
johnward
Wikipedia begging really annoys me

------
lenkendall
We should talk William. I run CentUp.org and we use standard currency versus
something like Butcoin. Half the battle is having people be able to pay you
easily (BTC is not an easy option for the average consumer) and the other half
is incentivizing your audience to give you donations. I'm Len at CentUp dot
org if you want to chat.

~~~
astrowilliam
I'll be in touch. I'm open to anything at this point. This whole bitcoin
donation thing was a great experiment and I would really like to pay for the
site without any ads. I hate ads.

------
LeoNatan25
Expecting an immediate return of investment is a little naive at best and
stupid at worst. Such a change has to be communicated properly to visitors.
They have to be accustomed to the donation option. Most probably are not aware
of BitCoin, or have heard bad things about it. Sounds like he didn't want it
to succeed.

~~~
astrowilliam
I truly did want it to succeed, but I'm a content guy, not a business guy.
Maybe that's my problem. I'm 1 guy trying to do the job of 5-10 people while
holding down a demanding day job.

------
astrowilliam
Woah, that was weird. This thread was #1 for around an hour and it jumped down
to #37 almost instantly. I wonder what happened. Can an admin explain? I'm
genuinely curious about the algorithm that would cause this.

------
diziet
How many monthly pageviews are you receiving? What percentage of your userbase
has bitcoin fund available?

------
largote
Of course it didn't work...

------
quadrangle
Bigger point: ads amount to not being paid for your work on your site but just
being paid to hock crap to suckers. By making a cool site, the sleazy ad biz
thinks you're cool enough to be one of their salesman. Despite the
intertwining, you are getting paid to be a sleazy salesperson and you are
making a cool website on the side. Making cool websites is hard to make pay
the bills. Putting ads in people's faces is just one of many bullshit things
you could do to otherwise pay your bills.

