

Ask HN: What's your take on using ads for non-paying users? - darxius

I&#x27;m working with a startup on rolling out a sweet product. In our last meeting we spoke about differentiators for premium accounts and what we could offer to make it worth the money. Obviously, the notion of ads came up for free accounts (which would be disabled if you had a paid account).<p>I&#x27;m not a fan or flashy ads or crap like that. I feel it breaks the &quot;feel&quot; of the simple and clean website we have. I was thinking about using a service which allowed me to use text-only ads and style them in such a way that they fit into the website a lot more. Then I realized I&#x27;ve never seen a startup website that had ads at all.<p>Is this a good idea? The ads aren&#x27;t meant to be a major revenue stream, they would pretty much only be introduced to &quot;sweeten&quot; the paid plan.
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anderspetersson
No, thats a bad idea if the only reason you're adding ads is to make the free
plan worse.

If you're developing a SaaS there should be plenty of ways to introduce new
features for paid users, otherwise, drop the free plan and let users try out
your service 30 days for free.

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samsheen
If you can tell us about your customer segment, we would be better able to
give you suggestions.

As an example, ads do not work very well for a highly technical crowd, like
the ones using HN, but might work wonderfully for others.

