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

2 points by darxius 12 years ago | 2 comments

I'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).

I'm not a fan or flashy ads or crap like that. I feel it breaks the "feel" 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've never seen a startup website that had ads at all.

Is this a good idea? The ads aren't meant to be a major revenue stream, they would pretty much only be introduced to "sweeten" the paid plan.

anderspetersson 12 years ago |

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.

samsheen 12 years ago |

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.