I’ve always struggled with selling advertising on this site. I have tried some things here and there but most resulted in not enough revenue for the value they detracted from my site. Selling my own ads made decent money but it has been hard to find advertisers. I’m not too fond of random Google ads that generally show unrelated products and items. Fortunately, I think I might have found a solution with YCombinator company Snaptalent.
Judging from comments on posts, a good chunk of the people that read this site are intelligent tech-savvy types. When Snaptalent approached me several weeks ago about testing out their service, I was rather skeptical and wanted to know how they were different than most ad services. I’ve been using Snaptalent for about two weeks and well, they’ve proven their worth to me. Being a startup advocate myself, most (all?) Snaptalent job ads are for interesting startups, befitting of this site’s demographic.
Snaptalent Widget Management Page
Snaptalent is the only ad service I can recall that I’m not ashamed of using on my site. Snaptalent ads can be presented in a variety of ways from the traditional text only to my preferred text and images view. Rather taking users away from the site, Snaptalent ads load within the page and show off rather interesting information about the job, not just the posting. There are images of the startups as well as a video.
Example Snaptalent Job Page
Job ads seem to be the “it” thing these days with the proliferation of jobs at new startups and the best way to fill those positions is to reach out to the blogs and websites they visit anyway. Snaptalent seems to be right on track noticing this trend and building their product to take advantage of it. Currently some other prominent tech-related blogs and websites are using Snaptalent: News.YC, Steve Yegge, Raganwald.
Thoughts? Is this better than other types of advertising services online now? I think so. It’s the only type of ad that I think adds value rather than detracting. When the Snaptalent crew asked me how they could improve it I said I loved it and wouldn’t mind seeing some higher revenue.
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{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice post, i ‘ll try it.
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Relevant, not very obtrusive, and supporting a startup…I’d say you’ve found a good solution.
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I saw it a few days back and was wondering what was up. Looks nice, but at the top it is a bit intrusive imo.
That being said, not many UK based jobs so useless for me :(
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They do sound pretty good. However, like stabani said, at the top their a little in the way and sort of annoying…
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@stabani, one of the founders of Snaptalent here. We’re going to be in the UK as soon as possible, stay tuned. If you have feedback about the ads themselves we would love to hear it at feedback@snaptalent.com
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Unfortunately, I still think an ad is an ad. While I’ve learnt to ignore most, I have to say these have intrigued me slightly.
As stabani said, as soon as there are UK jobs up I’d be much more interested.
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Aussie jobs also!
I like the google ads- unobtrusive- but yeah, they can be a bit random. I dunno if I like the ads at the top of the article though.
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I’ve accidentally clicked on the ads twice because they load after the blog entries show up. So my brain says “click on the first blog entry title!” and in the time between that and my hand actually clicking it, the SnapTalent ad pops up.
This is an eye opener. Me being relatively new to the blogging scene I was wondering whether people actually click those ads on your site. And yours being one of the popular sites and still ads not contributing much revenue is surprising.
Nitin @ My 2 dimes
http://www.my2dimes.com/
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I’m a bit on the fence. The one at the top is rather annoying and I think they could be tweaked design wise. For example the padding/spacing is off in them and it might be worthwhile adding a 1px border to the whole box, both of these changes would make the ads seem more professional and less ‘ad like’.
Also they’re pretty useless to people in New Zealand! But apart from that I prefer them over most ads but they still distract and annoy me.
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Too bad snaptalent does not work in Sweden either.
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Hey Stammy, I was hoping you would post something ads on your site.
Well honestly, I hate the ads on this blog. I know hate is a strong word, but I am talking abotu the google ad on the right side and the one at the bottom of blog post(adpinion) and above that(google again i think. It is mainly because of the reason you already mentioned, they are irrelevant to the the content in this blog. I love the minimalist design of this blog and integrating ads can be tough.
Although I am not discouraged by the ads because I know you are mainly doing it to understand advertising on this blog. Since I can see you have been playing around with different ads and positioning. Hopefully we will see a post about this later on ;), about what you have learned in terms of what works and what doesn’t.
At first when I saw the job posting ads on top, It felt like it you had designed them and integrated them really well. I was really suppressed to be honest. After reading about Snaptalent on HNYC, it was clear that you were trying out their ads. I think it is great, the site doe not loose focus and its is not distracting. It is mostly related to the website content and the interaction is pleasant(lightbox).
To sum it up, I think they are on to something big :)
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*correction*
I was hoping you would BLOG ABOUT advertising on your site.
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Since the ads are irrelevant to everyone that’s not living in the US, would it be possible to use a type of geoblocking thing and only make them show up if the person has a US IP?
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I’ve been looking for a new ad network. I’m going to give this a shot right now.
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Is this pay per click or via impressions? Something else?
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@Dave – It’s a mixture of eCPM and CTR. eCPM seems to change based on CTR. But don’t quote me on that.
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I am senior student who is looking for a job.
Now, I don’t have to go to Dice.monster.careerbuilder, I can just hit refresh!
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I honestly didn’t see the ad until I specifically looked for it, but I guess that’s banner blindness for you.
I do like how it doesn’t move you away from the page.
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I think the company is interesting but I also find the box at the top a little in the way.
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I too have had problems finding worthwhile advertising…I’ve been trying Adpinion for a while, and while I love the concept, the CTRs at least for me are extremely low. TLA is nice to a point, and google ads are, well, google ads.
These, on the other hand, seem to actually povide some value to visitors and don’t quite give off that “look at me I’m an ad” feel. I’ll have to try it out.
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So, what’s the payout like?
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I don’t mind the ads. They don’t flash, and don’t tell me I’ve won anything, so they don’t bother me.
I’m pretty open to ads though, having tried to make a secondary income online for years now. Google ads are great for a more fixed-content site. Blogs, especially one like this one, don’t have enough of a ‘keywordable’ theme to get the targeting spot-on.
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with the amount of traffic you get, you can earn a lot of money using cpm ads. I’m pretty happy so far earning around $1700 per month combining CPC and CPM ads.
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This looks interesting, I might have to try it on my site. I like the ads themselves, but I don’t like how they pop over when you click them. They made it look nice, but I’d rather be taken to another page.
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