
Does Sponsoring Daring Fireball Work? - saddington
http://blog.desk.pm/df/
======
wlesieutre
A previous amusing note from Gruber[1] on his sponsorship system and a sales
email from Taboola, purveyor of the obnoxious click-bait grids that you're
starting to see all over:

> Speaking of revenue and pageviews, true story: I got an email yesterday from
> a sales rep at Taboola, pitching me on running their ads on DF. It included
> this line: “I see your site is not monetized at present, and I think there
> is room to do so in a non-intrusive manner that can still make you money.”

> I don’t know what I love most about that. I think it’s that from the eyes of
> someone who sees Taboola ads as “non-intrusive”, what I’m doing at Daring
> Fireball doesn’t look like “monetization” at all. Needless to say, I find
> Taboola ads to be highly intrusive. (You may not be familiar with the
> “Taboola” name, but you’ve seen their ads. They look like this[2].)

I really like what he does, and it makes the rest of the web remind me of the
bloatware loaded Windows installs on every PC that isn't sold directly by MS.
Short term money at the cost of a slower and more annoying experience that
users hate in the long term.

[1] [http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/10/09/more-df-rss-
feed...](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/10/09/more-df-rss-feed-
sponsorship-openings)

[2] [http://daringfireball.net/misc/2014/10/not-intrusive-at-
all....](http://daringfireball.net/misc/2014/10/not-intrusive-at-all.jpg)

~~~
bkmartin
I try to boycott as many sites that use Taboola as possible... this can leave
very few sites left to visit without hating myself... Them and Outbrain have
to be the absolute worst that I see on "reputable" sites. You begin to truly
understand a site's revenue integrity when you see these in their "Sponsored
Content" sections.

~~~
po
This is why I personally don't like using an ad-blocker.

If I have ads blocked, then I'm blind to the problems that the average
internet user faces. I end up viewing, reading, tweeting, talking about sites
that are flat out reader-abusive in their advertising. As a web developer, my
sense of the state of the internet is warped.

With ads turned on, I end up avoiding those sites and seeking quieter places.
I have a better understanding of what normal people see.

~~~
collyw
I noticed the same problem when I sent a link to a friend. All this flashing
blinking crap all over the page.

------
cmyr
Really interesting to see these numbers. I've been reading DF for years and
years, and its is the only advertising model I've encountered that doesn't
grate. His advertising is considerate, audience appropriate, and vetted. I
feel good supporting his advertisers, because I feel good supporting him, and
because they're just consistently things I'm happy to hear about.

I would really love to see more independent journalists follow his model,
although obviously his market is more suited to this model than some others
are. Still, I think there's a lot to learn, here.

~~~
jonas21
I'd rather not. It introduces a pretty big conflict of interest (for example,
Gruber would probably think twice before writing something negative about a
former sponsor when he's on the record endorsing them) and blurs the line
between advertising and editorial content. As mentioned in the article:

> the cost today ranges between $8,000 – $10,000 dollars per placement and you
> get to write your own post, essentially

Maybe this isn't a big deal for DF, but I can imagine this would lead to a
total lack of trust for other independent journalists.

~~~
cmyr
John has been sponsored by Google(1) and by Microsoft(2) both of which he has
written some decidedly negative things about. I think he takes conflict of
interest seriously, and has a strong division between his editorial and his
advertising content.

1: [http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/08/10/ios-at-
google](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/08/10/ios-at-google)

2: [http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/04/20/windows-azure-
mo...](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/04/20/windows-azure-mobile-
services)

~~~
Kylekramer
Azure itself is pretty safe from Gruber's crosshairs. Google was less
successful, but there is a common trend of companies paying their way into the
good graces of Apple bloggers' inner circle (Squarespace, Backblaze, Everpix).

~~~
alexqgb
I'm sorry, but what you're implying is that these companies have sub-par
products that unscrupulous writers have been willing to treat as well-made in
exchange for cash payment. As someone who (very happily) uses both Backblaze
and Squarespace I can safely say this is not the case, and that they're not
just "buying their way into" bloggers' good graces.

I'm pretty sure that if they're in anyone else's good graces, it's because
they provide a great product with solid service at a decent price. It's
absolutely not because they had to bribe people to overlook the fact that they
weren't really any good.

In essence, DF is an endorsement-based model. This is one where a justifiably
trusted source uses their hard-won credibility to promote products that
reinforce their credibility. It's pretty much the opposite of a model that
allows people to "buy their way in". Indeed, that's the whole point. You _can
't_ buy your way in. If you don't have a decent product, you're not getting
listed.

~~~
Kylekramer
No, I don't think they are sub par. But I do think their exalted place in the
Apple blog world is not earned by quality, but ad money. You don't see many of
these bloggers actively using Squaresquare for anything but side projects, but
they all push it as the go to platform to use even outside of ads. I would
also contend that you can certainly buy your way in. See ads for stuff like
Clean My Mac, which I am positive Gruber would never use himself.

I don't think there is anything extremely unscrupulous going on, just that
there isn't much of a wall between editorial and advertisement with Gruber's
model as some people claim.

~~~
cmyr
This is actually a great example of something I wanted to dig up earlier,
which is a DF sponsor that john clearly doesn't give a shit about. The tone of
the 'thank you note' for that can be generously described as "professional".
You can _almost_ hear him gritting his teeth.

[1]
[http://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2014/01/cleanmymac_...](http://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2014/01/cleanmymac_2_by_macpaw)

[2]
[http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/03/22/cleanmymac](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/03/22/cleanmymac)

------
atYevP
Yev with Backblaze here -> I'm a bit late to this party, but I can tell you
that advertising with John has worked for Backblaze from a monetary
perspective. It's a mutually beneficial sponsorship. John's used us in the
past, Marco uses us on occasion, and due to that, the ads are read with a
certain knowledge of the product and ring more "true" than a lot of things
that I hear on various podcasts and websites. The majority of the ads we've
done with John are sponsorships of "The Talk Show", but those have been quite
successful.

------
wodenokoto
Congratulations to the author and a succesful campaign.

My favourite part of his post reminded me of a quote my marketing professor
once told me "The most important thing in a marketing campaign is a great
product"

Had desk been a poor product, I doubt the Halo-effect would have happened.

~~~
jonstokes
I dunno dude, I bought it, tried to use it, and quickly discovered that it's a
pretty poor product. I won't go into it here, because it's off-topic and I
left a two-star review in the App Store anyway. But my impression of the app
is that its success is mainly due to marketing savvy and the current
infatuation with "minimalist" writing apps that use Markdown. So I would say
yes, DF advertising clearly worked here, and props to the author for also
getting extra mileage out of it with this post + HN hit.

Not only is his promotion on DF and followup blog post a model of How It's
Done, but his entire blog is really well-done from a marketing and SEO
standpoint. Lots of relevant internal links, good photography, great design,
and posts that are devoid of keyword spam and are just the right length and
reading level.

Anyway, great design, very savvy marketing and SEO, wrapped around a buggy app
that ticks a lot of the currently trendy boxes and contains some shocking
deficiencies. And if I sound irritated for being taken, it's because it cost
me $30, which is what a mature, quality, premium app like Pixelmator costs.

~~~
saddington
You can always get a refund for the app... and I'm really sorry it didn't work
for you.

It's honestly really tough being an indie developer... I have to do EVERYTHING
related to not just building the DAMN THING but all of the business,
marketing, Q/A, financials/accounting, blogging... the list is eternally-long.

v1.0 was lucky... in a lot of ways. v1.1 addressed a shit-ton of issues...
v1.2, out in a week (hopefully) will add a major user-requested feature...

it... just... takes... time... when... doing... it... alone...

thanks Jon for the comments. I'm doing my best.

~~~
jonstokes
Believe me, I understand how hard it is. I've been working alone on a project
for the past 2.5 years now (not quite ready for prime-time, but soon), so I
know exactly what you mean. However, two things are just inexcusable to me:

1) this is a writing app /with no support for paragraph breaks/. That is
unbelievable to me. Nobody who writes for a living can use an app that shows
all of your text to you as a really large single block with no horizontal
breaks between paragraphs. How? Why? Not only am I stupified by this, but I
also am dumbfounded at all of these 5-star reviews that don't mention it or
any of the other show-stoppper flaws I pointed out within the first 20 mins of
use. Are people reviewing an app that they've not actually used?

2) The price. $30 is a lot of money, and yeah you can try to convince Apple's
customer support to give you a refund, but we both know nobody does that.

The combo of high price, glaring product problems, and a masterful marketing
effort just doesn't sit well with me. I'm not saying you're a scam artist --
the site and even the app reflect a lot of passion and creativity. But I do
question your priorities. More coding and user testing, and less SEO and
blogging and convincing everyone in your network to give the app 5 stars,
maybe.

~~~
saddington
I won't win this argument (and I won't try), but, I appreciate the time you
took to write me a response!

1\. I'm working on this and the feature was an attempt to combine both WYSIWYG
and Markdown into one formatting experience. This ended up being a gamble and
one that I lost and the newest updates will address this. It sucks, i failed,
i got it wrong.

2\. A lot? sure. i guess. there are tons of great alternatives, for sure!

"More coding"...? #facepalm ...

really?

~~~
je42
Re.: 2. Don't worry about the price point atm. He might be right that it is
not worth currently for him, but it looks like that a lot of other people
value it.

If you continue adding features and continue making the product as a whole
better and more valuable for a larger and larger audience.

So eventually he should be happy as well.

That requires obviously, that you mostly add features. i.e. you don't re-
invent features or redesign features without adding value (just to make
prettier), I have seen a lot of teams/people doing that kind of mistake.

~~~
saddington
a great reminder. i'm keen on keeping it simple... and focused. i don't need
to be the next microsoft word... i'd rather not actually.

i think one of the most important things any developer or business does is
decide who their customer is... and who their customer isn't.

------
vondur
If you have a Mac App or iOS app, Daring Fireball would be a great place to
advertise. I'd like to here from some of the web apps that are promoted, do
they have a same uptick in subscribers?

~~~
zerohm
Azure Mobile has been a sponsor. I guess at that point it becomes difficult to
even extrapolate the impact of the sponsorship...

~~~
petercooper
Yeah. The acceptable cost for acquiring a customer for something like Azure,
AWS, Heroku, New Relic, et al. dwarfs the cost of most advertising that
reaches the ideal audience (so, yeah, ROS banner ads on Yahoo might not cut
it). I'm in the email newsletter space and had the cloud division of a very
major three letter company send me an IO to buy >$100k of advertising _without
us ever having communicated before_ \- I couldn't fill the order as we don't
have that sort of capacity, but it blew my mind and certainly got me thinking
about where to take the business.

------
bglazer
> I went on to grab a net-revenue (profit) of just north of $32,000 for the
> month of December, 2014

That's pretty darn impressive. Congratulations! Excellent copy writing on your
desk.pm landing page as well.

~~~
atourgates
I like the feel of the landing page, but I have a hard time figuring out what
desk is.

I don't know how it compares to other markup editors or distraction-free
writing environments (I currently use and love Ulysses, and have tried several
other similar apps), I don't know the details of its blogging platform
integrations, or how it manages media.

Without that info, I'd be happy to try a demo, but not risk $30 to figure out
if it's an app I can use.

It's obviously working well for conversions, and other people feel like
they're getting enough info to risk $30, but I'd need quite a bit more
information than the app's website currently gives to know if it's a purchase
worth making.

~~~
saddington
This is great feedback and something I can do better. I had actually done a
retrospective on the change of the landing page but you're right... it still
needs improvement.

At some point I'll probably hire a "real" designer to help me... since i'm not
a designer by any stretch of the imagination.

~~~
atourgates
I wouldn't even say it's a design issue. More of an information issue.

If there's no demo available, I need (as a potential purchaser) quite a bit of
information to know if it's worth risking my $$'s. I'd say some combination of
screenshots/gifs or screencasts going through the program would be great. Or
maybe more of a focus on the workflow, or maybe just expanding your features
section to be illustrated with screenshots form the app showing how features
are used.

Honestly, some of the best descriptions of the program are in App store
reviews where it's compared to other distraction-free/markup writing
environments.

Also, congratulations and good luck!

~~~
girvo
I'd argue that design and information are (or, should be) inextricably linked.
Your advice is sound however!

------
jtheory
This section confused me -- can anyone explain?

> I was so unprepared for this deluge that it stunted what was already going
> to be a banner month as _I simply did not have enough review copies and
> tokens to go around_. I ended up having to wait-list over 30 prominent blogs
> which hurt my momentum severely.

He's selling _software_ , right? It sounds here like he hit problems that
simply shouldn't exist for a digital product.

Is this an AppStore-specific problem? If so, why in the world should it work
that way?

~~~
saddington
I'm given 100 "tokens" or "review copies" to give away for free per every
single release via the MAS.

Essentially, I ran out and couldn't give free copies for review for big name
blogs and news sites and thus lost a lot of opportunities for free press.

~~~
jtheory
Congratulations, first -- that's a good thing to run out of!

But it's a bit infuriating that the problem seems to be completely fake; that
is, of course Apple has no limitations to how many review copies and/or tokens
they can generate; they could trivially give you a button to request more.

In cases like yours, that would have been the more profitable choice for
them... but they're operating at immense scale, which generally means removing
choice as much as possible -- and there must be some loophole they're closing
(though I admit I don't see it yet). They can't pay someone to check _every_
possibly dodgy request for more copies/tokens, and so they can't check any.

/rant -- this is certainly a tangent to the article! I just found it
startling. I've sold my own software and online subscriptions for more than a
decade (though nothing ever likely to become big) and naturally if I feel like
giving away copies, they're mine to give.

~~~
thought_alarm
Well, it is a fake problem. There's nothing preventing a developer from
hosting a binary on a server and sending the download link to a potential
reviewer or user, other than the simple matter of implementing license checks
and demo timeouts. It's the same now as it was 20 years ago.

It's telling that many App Store developers, even very successful ones, no
longer bother with that crap. It's just so much easier for both the developer
and user to send out a promo code in an email.

~~~
saddington
well, what might be considered "simple" is not entirely simple. sure, i could
send out the packages to anyone, provisioned locally. sure.

but... doing a demo with license checks really, really, really well...? that
takes time, care, and impact user-experience.

i decided that i didn't have time (yet) to implement a really kick-ass demo /
trial version... but in the future i'd like to take a serious look at it.

context is important: as an indie developer i only have so much (so little)
time to invest... i have to really carefully choose my battles of where i
spend that time... and that's really the hardest part of it all.

------
jusben1369
This was very helpful and thanks for publishing. Right near the end you just
touched upon what i think is an important topic (perhaps its own post) If you
could chart it your first exposure to John's (or anyones) audience is probably
80% of the bang for the buck. Sponsoring again 4 to 6 months later really only
exposes you to net new readers since your first exposure or those that missed
your first exposure and/or weren't a good target then but are now. If John is
charging the same amount for each sponsorship the pricing model is broken for
both of you. It sounds like you're underpaying for the 1st one and overpaying
for additional and vice a versa for John. In general it's just something worth
noting for anyone who advertises via such distinct channels (Imagine if HN let
you do the same thing how your traffic and sales would be impacted by the 1st
time you were on the homepage for 8 hours vs if you did it again 3 months
later)

~~~
saddington
This is a great point and something that I thought was going to "pay off" but
didn't. The results were significantly different but still beneficial... what
I should have done is waited a few more months to dive in.

Will I do this again? Probably... but not until a major release, like a 2.0...

------
ChuckMcM
I suspect this is a lot more informative about the future of journalism. The
'old school' magazine/newspaper group was all about getting 'readership' and
then 'blasting their eyeballs'. And there was a tremendous amount of loss to
their madness. 6 months after a magazine was published it was entirely
unlikely that someone would pick up that issue, see an advertising message,
and act on it.

But on the web the long tail is the long tail. Search engines can pull an
article out of the mists of time and that advertising is still intact. So
you're exposure is very different.

Combining that with the curating effects of a trusted source, and you get a
solid advertising value for the right brands.

I expect it will be "successes" like DF which inspire additional people to
create this sort of content and that seems to be a good thing for everyone
(advertisers and readers).

~~~
MCRed
Sponsored posts might come up in long tail searches, but most of the pages on
the DF site, at least, are monetized with a display ad on the left. This will
show the current ad at the time of the page view, not the ad at the time the
article was written.

~~~
ChuckMcM
> This will show the current ad at the time of the page view, not the ad at
> the time the article was written.

Which is _awesome_. When I thumb through old BYTE magazines they have ads for
companies that don't even exist any more. :-)

------
Multiplayer
Great post. Thank you for sharing all of this - really great information and
I'm thrilled for you that you took a risk and it really paid off. Cheers to
that!

That said, your site has so few images on it of the actual product, that for a
price of $30, I feel like you are holding back for a reason. I buy anything
and everything, but this doesn't feel right. When someone displays their
admittedly very nice logo far more than the product I get a flashing warning
sign. My 2 cents.

When I can either get a demo or see more of the product I will probably buy.

Again, congratulations on your successful launch!

~~~
saddington
I appreciate that a lot!

To answer your question, i had actually was trying to explicitly move people
to the app store to "view" the images there... but i could do a better job of
providing those screens... thanks for that!

------
livestyle
What's often under appraciated about sponsored content is that it does seem to
be catching on as valuable channel to acquire customers not just branding
exposure.

Here is a case study from Dash as well.

[https://syndicateads.net/casestudy/dash.pdf](https://syndicateads.net/casestudy/dash.pdf)

(Full disclosure I'm on the team at SyndicateAds)

------
programminggeek
I think his model works well for his blog. Not all blogs work well with this
model and it doesn't necessarily scale well to a large news org.

For what he does and how he does it, this is a cool model for both him, his
audience, and apparently the advertisers.

~~~
dazne
Yes. Couldn't agree more. There're other bloggers in the tech/culture space
like Jason Kottke of kottke.org, and Jim Dalrymple of The Loop, who make far
less from advertising/sponsorships than Daring Fireball.

------
saddington
I've done a quick RETROSPECTIVE on how this "viral event" impacted sales:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8959967](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8959967)

:)

Thanks everyone! That was fun.

------
sgustard
TLDR: "Yes, DaringFireball worked for me."

~~~
saddington
HAHA. I should add that...

