The HN title is misleading. From the site:<p><i>What you’re watching above is the first few sections of the course.</i><p>You have to be a paid member to get access to the FULL course.
I didn't have enough time to cover everything, so I would be happy to answer questions or expand on anything in the comments here.<p>The main theme is that buying display ads isn't just for brands any more- any small startup can do it profitably and get massive ROI from a budget of just a few hundred dollars.
This was the reason why I bought Mixergy membership. We already pursue this strategy for our products and so it was great to see some tips how to improve what we are doing. Definitely one of the best courses on how to get traffic to your site. Well done Ilya!
If it sounds too good to be true it probably is.
First thing you should ask yourself, do you really need ads for your startup ? If your startup is not compelling enough to get the tech media attention, is it really a good idea to invest in ads ?
Good ads that work like ads on thedeck are expensive and typically not a good idea for small startups here are some suggestions:<p><a href="http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch13_Ride_the_Blog_Wave.php" rel="nofollow">http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch13_Ride_the_Blog_Wave.php</a><p><a href="http://37signals.com/svn/posts/741-ask-37signals-10-ways-to-get-ink" rel="nofollow">http://37signals.com/svn/posts/741-ask-37signals-10-ways-to-...</a>
@il: Thank you, this is really insightful content.<p>I might be digressing here, but since you've offered to answer a few questions, here goes - I'd love to know what categories / sites I want to be looking at if my product's a small business CRM (like Highrise). To be more specific, it's a CRM tool that integrates deeply with Google Apps.<p>Maybe it's just me, but identifying a list of target categories that fits your audience well seems just as hard as optimizing the spend, especially when the audience isn't exactly niche.
General comment on display advertising -- it can be surprisingly effective for <i>consumer</i> brands in particular (b2b can be really tough). It sounds like Mixrank is talking about a specific technique (direct site buys), which can work great. There are additional techniques you can use (retargeting, audience buying, automated optimization) which include transparency (to varying degrees) and direct ROI, which you can get started on really quickly.