Experimenting-With-Banner-Ads-Again - Blog - billQ - The easiest way to keep track of your bills.

Experimenting With Banner Ads Again

Backstory: Even though we planned on having the Free version of billQ be ad-supported, we've been struggling with a good way to handle the ads. We tried Google Ads for a little while, but eventually just scrapped third-party ads all together and instead just ran an ad promoting the coupon code for billQ Free users who wanted to upgrade to billQ Plus.

Part of the problem is finding ads we approve of. We don't want to throw garbage out there, and we'd rather not have to sell our souls and put up ads for things we don't believe in. Plus, we have an app that is designed around saving you money by helping you keep track of your bills and ultimately reduce expenses you don't need. So how do we reconcile throwing ads out there that encourage you to buy more crap? It's a dilemma.

But all that being said, we're still going to try to find something that works and allows us to generate some revenue to invest back into billQ. Starting today, we are again going to try to experiment with some banner ads within billQ and on the billQ blog. (The in-app ad will only show up for billQ Free users of course, and it will be small and static. No animations.)

The system we have in place allows us to approve ads before they run, so we plan on doing so with a heavy hand. We want to only show ads that are more endorsements than anything else. Products or services we think would be actually useful for all of you.

If not, we won't approve them. This means that you may see a blank "Advertise Here" slot 99.9% of the time. If this ends up being the case after the first few months, we'll probably just scrap the ads again. At least until we can dedicate the time to sell the ad inventory ourselves and secure some ads for useful products and services.

So we just wanted to give everyone (mostly users of billQ Free) a heads up that they may start seeing a small banner ad in billQ. If anyone has any questions or concerns about this, please let us know at support@mybillq.com.

And if you happen to be the owner of a useful, well-designed product or service that would match up nicely with the responsible, value-conscious people who use billQ, then please feel free to purchase some ad space.

Comments for "Experimenting With Banner Ads Again"

coxy

commented on Jun. 18th, 2009 at 1:23 pm

Finding a way to monetize your site is always a tough one to get right; and I don't think the advertising is going to be very profitable, to be honest. Personally, although I use the BillQ service to manage my bills; I never visit the website or the blog - the blog I read through my RSS feed and the bills are managed via email responses. Fortunately, I realise that a site costs money to run and so purchased a pro account (even though I don't actually need one). I hope the advertising works out for you, but I wouldn't be so hopeful. Maybe, instead of showing the 'advertise here' line, and until you get some 'real' ads, you could show some BillQ ads encouraging people to sign up to the Pro version of your product.
Nick Adams

commented on Jun. 27th, 2009 at 1:57 am

@coxy - First, thanks for the support with the Pro account. We're glad you think it's something worth paying for even if you don't need every last one of the extra features. Second, you make a bunch of good points about the advertising. It's something we've wrestled with, and have no delusions about the potential success. It may fall off the shelf pretty quickly. And we're definitely going to use the spots to promote billQ Plus (and eventually our next app) as well, and we also have some other ideas on that front. We also get that the advertising model kind of runs counter to how billQ is set up. I also rarely log into billQ. Once I initially set up my bills, I just interact with billQ through the widget or the email reminders. So pageviews have never been our goal, and as a result, our strong suit. I guess the point of this long comment is that we're definitely trying to feel our way through it. So we appreciate the thoughts and the feedback. It helps us get some perspective. Thanks for supporting billQ!

Experimenting With Banner Ads Again

Comments for "Experimenting With Banner Ads Again"

coxy

commented on Jun. 18th, 2009 at 1:23 pm

Nick Adams

commented on Jun. 27th, 2009 at 1:57 am

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