

Are “Shameless Plugs” Worth It? Some data - europestup
http://danmaz74.me/2012/11/08/are-shameless-plugs-worth-it-some-data/

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Camillo
You make a library for A/B testing. Why didn't you use A/B testing here?

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danmaz74
I agree that that would have been the best way to measure the effect of the
plug. But that wasn't an experiment, I just wanted to get as many readers as
possible; the idea to measure the effect of the plug only came later
(actually, it was suggested in a comment here on HN).

~~~
huhtenberg
Test it now :)

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ashray
So your conclusion is that advertising works ? Well, I can see why you'd be
concerned about pissing people on HN off.

However, if there were no advertising anywhere, how would we know what
products to buy ? Mainstream advertising channels make users extremely
susceptible to 'banner blindness', 'channel flipping', etc.

Of course, the more sensitive users on HN would question your motivations.
It's because advertising is becoming so insidious these days that you can
never be sure whether an 'expert' is just talking out of his hat or actually
giving 'expert advice'.

In this case, since your product is yourself, I'd still give you the benefit
of the doubt. Anyone getting annoyed at that needs to think about what's being
sold and why :)

I don't know how it's elsewhere but in India lawyers and chartered accountants
aren't allowed to advertise their services. They can have only a small board
(very discreet) outside their workplace saying who they are and what they do.
I wonder if programmers are ever going to go the same way :O

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zalew
I guess the desired conversion from promoting yourself is getting a client,
not click and tweet count. So: did you get any gigs thanks to that?

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danmaz74
Author here: the desired end result is to get clients, but the first step is
to get your readers to know what your "offer" is. The objective of the plug
was this first step; then you should measure the conversion of the offer
itself, but that's probably quite independent from the plug itself.

Anyway, for your curiosity, the end result was only one little gig for now -
vs 0 from the first post, for what this is worth. I'll have to work on my
portfolio etc I guess.

~~~
zalew
Frankly I was surprised so little of people viewed the 'about' section, I've
read it's common to check who's the author, and I do it myself. Until I tried
to find yours and it took me a moment. You should expose the menu bar better
and maybe get rid of the highly distracting binary crap. It may be one of the
reasons why the plug generated more views of the 'about' and 'consulting'
section - nobody sees those links without it.

~~~
danmaz74
The placement of the menu was very conventional and I didn't think it could be
a problem, but, now that you made me think about it, I'll consider this.

On the other hand, I don't think that the "binary crap" can be so much more
distracting than any other picture I could put there. And I happen to like it
:)

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zalew
my point was the pic takes enough attention I didn't notice there is a menu
below. the important elements for you are under-exposed. you added the plug
but didn't fix the main problem that made it necessary in the first place :)

~~~
danmaz74
Ok, I'll look for a solution. Thanks!

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huhtenberg
The other way to look at it - 97% didn't react to your shameless plug, and
probably a good chunk of these were annoyed by it. An ad is an ad, regardless
of how you call it.

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gabemart
>97% didn't react to your shameless plug, and probably a good chunk of these
were annoyed by it

I think that's a pretty bold claim. I can't remember ever being annoyed by a
blog post which included a brief "This is me and what I do" plug.

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benologist
It's not the "This is me and what I do" plug that's annoying, it's the endless
advertisements its attached to.

Right now we have on or just falling off the front page

\- 37signals writing about Siri

\- Thumbtack writing about ab testing

\- weddinglovely on why a startup has a print product

These are advertisements disguised as random bla bla written for HN.

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pestaa
Not all random bla blas are created equal.

There are a few authors I wish they advertise themselves more on HN.

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ckluis
Shameless Plug < C2A

Why reinvent marketing best practices? At least be aware of them before you
test something.

Design - 3-4 C2A at the bottom pointing to your consulting page (or about
page) and then A/B test those C2A. Readers are probably more annoyed by a
shameless plug then a well designed C2A.

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gabemart
What is a C2A please? Google was no help without more context.

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asanwal
Call to Action

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gabemart
Ah, of course. Thanks.

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goldfeld
Regarding shameless plugs, how about using your own app embedded midway
through the article to exemplify the concepts being talked about? Is that
done, and how is it perceived?

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danmaz74
I'm sorry but I don't understand which app you're talking about. The Hacker
News plugin can't be embedded...

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goldfeld
I'm talking about any given app which the developer embeds into his own
article to create a seamless promotion.

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danmaz74
Ok - when that's possible, it makes a lot of sense.

