Alp on Nostr: Okay, time for a report on my Nostr advertising experiment. Two days ago, I started ...
Okay, time for a report on my Nostr advertising experiment.
Two days ago, I started another advertising test with zapadd.com. My second test. I had done the first one last year. It brought me the following results: no conversions, but about 60 new followers.
This time, I prepared the test better and tracked the click path more effectively. Because it's anything but optimal. For Primal users, the zap appears directly under the note (regardless of whether it's a main post or a reply, whichever is the latest). When you click on it, a pop-up appears with all the zappers of the post. If you're lucky, you're the only zapper; if not, the user has to dig you out from a list and then click on your profile.
Yakihonne users (and other clients) only see the zapper in the notifications and can either click on the post that was zapped or go straight to the profile.
In both cases, if things go well, the first goal is the profile.
So I had to optimize my profile accordingly to catch the users. This means adding a new profile header with text that describes what it's about. Plus a visible note(!) that the link to the offer, in most cases a landing page, is located in the profile.
The URL in my case was quite long: https://mslmdvlpmnt.com/get-your-website-tested/
No one can pronounce my domain name anyway, so I at least shortened the part after that. I quickly set up a redirect from https://mslmdvlpmnt.com/test and the preparation was done.
Honestly, this is quite cumbersome and sub-optimal this way, but I tried to make the best of it. With all these intermediate steps—clicking the zap note, selecting the zapper again from the list, landing on their profile, reading the text from the header image, then moving the gaze a few centimeters down to discover and click the link—there's a lot of friction lost.
As for the zap amount, I selected 50 Sats to 1000 random users. You have to spend a bit; with the usual 1-2 Sats zaps, you won't get far.
That experiment was two days ago, and there have been no conversions yet. But over 100 new followers. So it still holds true:
As a marketing measure, this whole thing cannot yet be monetized. Maybe my offer is just too niche; I should try to advertise something more popular. But you can still gain a few followers this way. That wasn't the purpose, but I'm still grateful for it.
Sure, we all don't want to see everything plastered with ads here. But it could be handled a bit smarter. For example, some settings could be integrated into the Nostr client to decide whether one wants to see such Zapadd ads at all. There aren't many providers at the moment, so they can be easily blocked. One could also set a threshold for how many Sats an ad should have to pass through. Then everyone could decide whether they want to make their notes available as ad space. Just a suggestion.
Nostr client developers are certainly encouraged to think about this and at least eliminate the friction in the click path. mikerama (npub1kje…4x4r) also started experimenting on it, but he has been a bit quiet lately. And now I've tried it a second time. Nostr client developers could either pick up this idea or continue to ignore it. But one thing is clear to me: Nostr needs to move more towards business. Otherwise, someone else will release a client or even a completely new network where this works better.
Two days ago, I started another advertising test with zapadd.com. My second test. I had done the first one last year. It brought me the following results: no conversions, but about 60 new followers.
This time, I prepared the test better and tracked the click path more effectively. Because it's anything but optimal. For Primal users, the zap appears directly under the note (regardless of whether it's a main post or a reply, whichever is the latest). When you click on it, a pop-up appears with all the zappers of the post. If you're lucky, you're the only zapper; if not, the user has to dig you out from a list and then click on your profile.
Yakihonne users (and other clients) only see the zapper in the notifications and can either click on the post that was zapped or go straight to the profile.
In both cases, if things go well, the first goal is the profile.
So I had to optimize my profile accordingly to catch the users. This means adding a new profile header with text that describes what it's about. Plus a visible note(!) that the link to the offer, in most cases a landing page, is located in the profile.
The URL in my case was quite long: https://mslmdvlpmnt.com/get-your-website-tested/
No one can pronounce my domain name anyway, so I at least shortened the part after that. I quickly set up a redirect from https://mslmdvlpmnt.com/test and the preparation was done.
Honestly, this is quite cumbersome and sub-optimal this way, but I tried to make the best of it. With all these intermediate steps—clicking the zap note, selecting the zapper again from the list, landing on their profile, reading the text from the header image, then moving the gaze a few centimeters down to discover and click the link—there's a lot of friction lost.
As for the zap amount, I selected 50 Sats to 1000 random users. You have to spend a bit; with the usual 1-2 Sats zaps, you won't get far.
That experiment was two days ago, and there have been no conversions yet. But over 100 new followers. So it still holds true:
As a marketing measure, this whole thing cannot yet be monetized. Maybe my offer is just too niche; I should try to advertise something more popular. But you can still gain a few followers this way. That wasn't the purpose, but I'm still grateful for it.
Sure, we all don't want to see everything plastered with ads here. But it could be handled a bit smarter. For example, some settings could be integrated into the Nostr client to decide whether one wants to see such Zapadd ads at all. There aren't many providers at the moment, so they can be easily blocked. One could also set a threshold for how many Sats an ad should have to pass through. Then everyone could decide whether they want to make their notes available as ad space. Just a suggestion.
Nostr client developers are certainly encouraged to think about this and at least eliminate the friction in the click path. mikerama (npub1kje…4x4r) also started experimenting on it, but he has been a bit quiet lately. And now I've tried it a second time. Nostr client developers could either pick up this idea or continue to ignore it. But one thing is clear to me: Nostr needs to move more towards business. Otherwise, someone else will release a client or even a completely new network where this works better.