Ask HN: Anyone monetizing their sideproject with direct ads / sponsorships?

Yes! My side project turned into my day job several years ago but to this day one of the largest source of income it brings in is from ads. I now use more of a niche ad network provider to serve our ads but at the beginning everything was google adsense. While its true that day 1 ads didn&#x27;t generate enough to cover costs but since I self hosted and worked hard to optimize everything I didn&#x27;t have huge AWS bills to pay and costs were really low anyway. It was only six month ago that we finally made the jump to the cloud.<p>Anyway the point is, at least if you&#x27;re not targeting an user base that has ad block enabled, ads, and I&#x27;m not talking about annoying ads, still can work just fine. What we do is offer our users a fairly cheap subscription option to disable the ads too along with getting some extra features so a lot of people jumped on that too... but I love being able to offer most of our services to everyone without any cost so thank you advertisers!

While I charge for some sideprojects, I can&#x27;t really do that for the blog I run. Since it is semi-popular, it runs ads and I charge for text ads, about $5 a month. Before it was popular, I was only charging $2 a month, but when I began to see a demand to be on certain pages, I increased the price just slightly. I don&#x27;t get too many, but I&#x27;ve had a few buyers. I don&#x27;t personally keep the money, it usually just goes right back into the hosting costs. So I still have to go to my day job to make up for the mortgage, credit card, gas, etc.<p>The money makers on the website are the banner ads, though lately, it seems like the more visitors I get, the less money I make. When I was getting far less, I was making more. Go figure that one out.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;confessionsoftheprofessions.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;confessionsoftheprofessions.com&#x2F;</a>

I am unable to answer your questions for you, but I wanted to talk on the topic because it is something I&#x27;ve been thinking a lot about lately<p>There recently was a lot of talk and reporting surrounding YouTube &#x27;changing their algorithm&#x27; and hurting a lot of YouTubers I watch frequently<p>One of my thoughts was that unfortunately the best solution would probably mean content creators would need to seek their own advertising&#x27;sponsorships<p>I can tell you the only ads I have clicked on in any recent memory are all, every single ad, of the ones that 3blue1brown places at the end of thaer videos(o)<p>Considerate effort like this really made me think how inconsiderate and detrimental the current hands off one size fits all ad networks are<p>Some content creators will surely protest &#x27;im a creator stead a salesman&#x27; which is a fair complaint but I&#x27;d argue 3blue1brown really brings an artistry to the personal ad network the channel is creating.. self curated ads has the potential to be another medium of self expression<p>(o) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;mvmuCPvRoWQ?t=22m41s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;mvmuCPvRoWQ?t=22m41s</a><p>.. an aside: the ad that YouTube ran in front of the video I linked when I first clicked on it was offensive and jarring, it depicted an animated Albert Einstein literally scribbling on a black board while a student looked on in dread and three words came in the screen, two of which I can remember &#x27;math ___ sucks&#x27; the middle was either: teachers, lessons, or tutors; this ad actually upset me.. contrast that with this great 3blue1brown ad(i) and I am more confident in my conviction that a new collective effort in this direction would be both beneficial to all parties and is seemingly compelled by the momentum of inevitably<p>(i) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;gB9n2gHsHN4?t=19m52s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;gB9n2gHsHN4?t=19m52s</a>

Just starting this process on a side project. Currently reaching out to advertisers I think would be a good fit. Too bad there&#x27;s not a more premium google ad sense for niche verticals.

* How are you doing it? * How much do you know how to charge? * Do you recommend it as a way of monetising your (side)project?