

My first bootstrapped startup has launched (iPhone ads). Prayers/Advice please  - msencenb

After spending about 5 months on this and a little over 1k (I'm a student... every bit hurts haha) I have a little piece of expensive paper that states I own a company and a working non-traditional advertising site specifically targeted just for the iPhone (at least for now).
Any moral support, advice, or just general questions would be awesome! Thanks HN<p>www.adsreloaded.com
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sabj
Neat idea! I think it would help if you had some more answers to FAQs; maybe
if there was a walkthrough with some photos showing just how easy it is? For
instance, it is not evident to me from looking HOW it would payout, or when,
etc.

Also, the contact link is a dead-end at present. Other idea that could be
helpful: including easy ways to spread the word about your site, since it's
the kind of thing that people would want to share. (At the same time, be sure
to work hard to avoid the appearance of scammy-ness, as that can happen too
easily with 'make money quickly online' schemes.)

But it looks like a cool start, I'd try it out if I had an iPhone. Good luck!

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msencenb
Thanks for the feedback! I have an FAQ in the forum but its not great at the
moment. From a users perspective a walkthrough makes a lot of sense.

Forgot about that... put up a temporary page with my e-mail address in it.
I'll throw up the "have a blog" page soon too.

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DannydeWit
Interesting idea. But if you pay the user for installing, what does that do
for the business model of the developer? When will he make money?

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msencenb
This is an interesting point that has been brought up several times. Often
times I hear from developers that they think their app is good but there are
just too few people that know about it. By paying for install you are
essentially trying to capture that "word of mouth" marketing and hopefully
send your app on an upward spin of sales.

That being said I can see the concern. My question for other app developers is
whether they make money on current mobile advertising platforms such as adMob,
Quattro, Google etc? It seems to me that if you get 5 downloads for a $50
dollar campaign that it would be more worth your while to spend that $50
dollars on a campaign that guarantees downloads and puts your app into users
hands. One of my original motivations behind the idea for adsReloaded was all
the stories behind the terrible conversion rate for iPhone advertising so I am
very interested in developer feedback on this particular point.

