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Ask HN: Will this site make $500 per month?

11 points by augustflanagan ↗ HN
SITE: http://33banners.com

IDEA: Sell banner ad templates to individuals and small businesses who don't want to pay a designer to develop their online advertising material. This includes banners for advertising on both ad networks (like Google AdWords), and affiliate sites.

I just launched what I think is a minimum viable product yesterday, and really want to get lots of feedback. Do you think it is a good idea? What would you do differently? What features would you add to the site to make it better. AND, most importantly, will this mvp make $500 a month? This is my goal for a passive revenue stream. All comments, suggestions, criticisms, etc. are appreciated.

I recognize that it is a pretty "unsexy" idea, and there are a lot of people doing cutting edge stuff with HTML5 ads etc. But I think there is a market for people looking to spend under $50.

17 comments

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inerte
You're far from your stated goals but I like what you have there. You need more templates tough.

And explicitly say somewhere how do I order custom designs. If I didn't like the 8 or so that you have there what options do I have?

Otherwise what you have there is an e-commerce site sellings a few pre-defined image sets. It's like you said the minimum viable product, which is cool.

And yes, you can make more than US$ 500 per month, if you execute properly :)

augustflanagan
Thanks for the feedback. You're definitely right about needing more templates. I am adding three more this week, and then want to see if any of them sell before I add even more.

Currently there are no options for custom designs. I like the idea of being able to offer custom designs but that involves a lot more work and a lot more time. ;)

What next steps would you take to grow the site?

pmjoyce
Agreed - it's a neat product that's attractively priced. I'd say whether you make any money on this depends on two things: 1) As already stated, increasing your range to appeal to a broad cross-section of customers and repeat customers. 2) A good marketing strategy. At this stage I'd say (1) should be your focus but you might want to start thinking about (2) quite soon. Kudos for releasing with a well executed minimum viable product.
Slumberthud
I would use something like this, but, as inerte says, you need a heck of a lot more selection. Maybe you could team up with designers and resell their work, giving them a cut?
augustflanagan
You're right. That's one option I have thought of. In which case I would like to make it easy for designers to upload their own work to the site and display it. I don't mind being a middle man, as long as I can play that role passively.

I think this would be similar to the logo store on 99designs right?

inerte
> I think this would be similar to the logo store on 99designs right?

99designs for banners was the first thing I thought when I read your post. I thought that was the direction you are headed to (I think the idea is fine), but like you said, you tried to launch a minimal viable product, which is the right think to do, because now you have a clientele to answer for.

augustflanagan
Yup, that is one of the two possible directions I would like to go in.

The other would be building a set of tools so that customers could come to the site, choose a template they like (hopefully from a lot more than 6), and then dynamically ad their logo and ad text to the template, see what it looks like, make changes, then buy it all ready to go (without me ever having to do any work).

Or, combining those two together.

_pius
Very smart, nice idea.
augustflanagan
> 1) As already stated, increasing your range to appeal to a broad cross-section of customers and repeat customers. 2) A good marketing strategy. At this stage I'd say (1) should be your focus but you might want to start thinking about (2) quite soon.

Any one have any good suggestions on number (2)??? I have a few basic ideas, but haven't hit upon anything solid yet.

newobj
So, have you sold any yet?
augustflanagan
I suppose that's the million dollar question ;)

No, I haven't. I launched last night, and turned on a $5 dollar a day AdWords campaign this morning (though I'm not getting any traffic from it yet). Basically all my traffic is coming from my personal blog and HN right now.

Anyone have any ideas on how to increase traffic and make a few initial sales?

I'm setting up an affiliate program, so that will be available shortly.

newobj
One point of feedback, first glance at your page does not give my brain an initial impression that you're selling anything. I think at least a shopping cart icon on the checkout "tab" would be a normal indicator of "ecommerce". In fact the tabs in general make the whole thing just look like a blog for some reason.
augustflanagan
Thanks for that! A couple of other people have told me more or less the same thing today. I'll make some layout changes.
newobj
I'd love to know where/how you found suitable quality design freelancers for $10/hr in the Philippines?
apsurd
I'm curious if you did any google search term research? How many people are searching for things like "ad banner templates" etc. Once you find those you can more directly provide a solution for what people want.

For example if there are lot of "ad banner builder" , "free banner themes", "how to run ads" etc, it more directly hints at what your customers needs are.

You could also try throwing a couple of your templates on http://graphicriver.net and see if anyone is interested.

My main advice is to figure out what type of people want your service. On one hand it seems like you are targeting people that don't know or don't want to deal with banner ads but they feel like they should. I think thats problematic because the people that are prepared to get started with a banner ad campaign arguably know the basics of photoshop. Or if they don't they are going to need something a little more robust than what you currently offer. Then there's the case where a person is 100% happy with a basic banner theme, I'd argue such a person would also need a little more help in actually gaining a return on his campaign. In other words the people interested in an easy, simple, quick and dirty banner design, are not necessarily going to be the people thinking scientifically enough to gain any long term benefits from banner advertising.

This is all just theory though. Hope this helps.

augustflanagan
I did do a bit of search term research before I got started. There is not insignificant amount of traffic for terms like (banner ads, banner ad templates, custom banner ads, etc.)

The idea for the site came about from a personal need. I had recently published an ebook, and had set up an affiliate program for people to promote the book on their sites. I didn't want to give them really crappy banners to use, and hiring a designer (which is what I ended up doing) seemed like a big expense for an ebook which only makes a few hundred dollars a month. Based on my experiences I thought there would be a market for people in the same situation as myself.

Thanks for the feedback!