Chris Shipley makes a good point about the current Web 2.0 revenue state:
The software industry, however, in large measure has become afraid to ask people to pay. Ultimately, this devalues not only the application, but also the industry.
He goes on to say:
I believe consumers will pay for value and that it is fundamentally wrong not to ask to be compensated for the value you deliver to the market.
We are afraid but maybe we shouldn’t be. I think what many of us are afraid of is launching and not getting a tidal wave of sign-ups (and blogosphere attention.) When we launch we want to be on TechCrunch, Slashdot, Digg and Reditt. Don’t we?
Which is better; a site launches, asks for a fiver a month and “only” gets a few thousand sign-ups vs. a site that launches, asks for nothing and gets ten thousand sign-ups (along with an attention-storm that leaves you as quickly as it hit and with nothing more than wrecked servers and a few stragglers.)
Before you answer that consider what else Chris said:
In the context of Google, when we are actually looking for something, a paid ad link in context might be very useful. But when we are doing any of a number of things that fee sites enable, the ads are much less valuable…
Back to the question; if you have a site that can naturally incorporate contextual ads then go for the attention-storm. Get those eyeballs, get those clicks (though clicks depend on your targeted user-base too. Don’t expect tech-savvy users to click through, they generally don’t. Try and get the moms and pops for click-throughs.) and reap the numbers.
But if you have a web-app then fitting ads into it probably won’t work. As Chris points out you are using up screen real estate, diluting your functions and the user is not in the ad-click-through frame of mind. They want to pay a bill, upload a photo or store a link, not click on an advert. They aren’t looking for products, they have a task to do.
In that case ask for a fiver and don’t be hassled if you are not the coolest Web 2.0 site of the moment. If your product is good you should get more through a hundred fivers than you will get through a thousand click-throughs.
