The Autopian just finished its biggest month ever, soaring to over 2.6 million pageviews and 1.1 million unique visitors (all of you visitors are unique and special in your own way) in its 10th month of existence. It will begin its 11th month with excitement and an optimistic view toward the future, as advertisements finally show up to help bring this great automotive community one step closer to sustainability. Here’s what you can expect, and an explanation of why we’re doing this.
Since day one, our goal with The Autopian has been to create a sustainable media business built to last for many, many years to come, and firewalled from the ups and downs this industry regularly endures. That means building diverse revenue sources so that we don’t have all our eggs in one basket—a common reason for failure in this world.
So far, we’ve been delighted to count more than 550 readers as paying Autopian members (seriously, thank you!) since just December. We plan on working hard to grow that number this year and to keep doing right by the people who are part of this car club (cult, if we’re being honest). But we want to grow other pieces of this revenue pie too so that we can continue to do what we do, and not rely on any one income stream for it.
This means strategically-placed ads will soon join membership as a key pillar for bringing in the revenue The Autopian needs to become sustainable.
We know where other sites have gotten this wrong, and we think we can do better. Starting a media company from scratch is a marathon, not a sprint (though there is obviously some level of urgency, too), so we’re taking this step by step, and always staying focused on The Main Thing: the user experience. We’re always keen to have your feedback on the site, whether in the comments section or via an email sent to tips@theautopian.com.
Before I hand it off to Matt to show you what to expect ad-wise, I want to again thank all of you for reading. Just 10 months ago, this website was just a dream in the heads of me, Jason Torchinsky, and Beau Boeckmann. Now it’s a real thing — an incredible car community that’s growing stronger by the day (heck, I have probably 100+ readers coming to my house party on Saturday!)
I cannot express just how grateful I am to all of you for supporting this car website; just know that we here at The Autopian will reciprocate that support by giving you the site you deserve. We’ll be figuring out this whole ad experience thing as time goes on, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a hiccup here and there, but like all relationships, communication will be key. Let us know what you like and what needs improvements, and we’ll keep working our butts off to thank you for giving us this chance to build something great.
Take it away, Matt!
How Ads Are (Hopefully) Going To Work
If anyone wants to sit down at a party over beer and go over my plans for making this website sustainable I’m happy to talk to you about it, but my main belief is: If you want things to stay the same, you have to be willing to constantly change. Ergo, if we want to continue writing about the things we love without interference on a website that’s easy for people to read, we have to be flexible.
The success of membership thus far has given us a little pad, and we hope we can double or triple the number of members we have by the end of this year (sign up here!), which would cover at least a third of our costs. We’re going to do this by writing awesome stories that you love. The rest of what we need I plan to pull in from a mix of advertising, partnerships (car builds, et cetera), events, merch, and maybe some commerce posts. One of my goals is to not be over-reliant on any one source of revenue other than membership.
When ads launch, almost all of them will be purchased on an open market through something called programmatic advertising (you can read more about it here). I like to think of it as robots selling ads to robots. We can always turn off specific advertisers if there’s something offensive (email me matt@theautopian.com if you see something), but mostly it’s something that just happens in the background. Depending on where you browse, most of the advertising you see is sold this way.
In a generic sense, the most valuable types of ads are auto-play videos and big pop-up banners, which is why you see a lot of those ads on the sites of most of our competitors.
We don’t want to do that. The ads you’ll see on the site won’t completely cover our costs, but assuming we can continue to grow our readership, grow our membership, and be creative, I don’t think we’ll ever have to go down the road of slimy pop-up ads. What we will have are ads in the following spaces:
FRONT PAGE/CATEGORY PAGES
You’ve already seen this type of ad on our current page, but now it’ll be dynamic so it can be either this big size pictured here (from major sponsor Taillight Ruiners) or the current size you see on the website. It’ll also appear on category pages and on search pages.
ARTICLE PAGE ADS ON DESKTOP
Great news! We’re finally tweaking the article pages on desktop so you can see more recent articles on the right rail, and you don’t have to always go to the front page to navigate around. We’re keeping the banner advertisement below the image, as we have now, and we’re adding one on the sidebar and an in-content one (in the article) approximately every 5-7 paragraphs/images/blocks. Depending on screen size and zoom level, you should never see more than a couple of ads on your screen at one time.
ARTICLE PAGE ON MOBILE
This will remain much like what we have now (with the little ad banner below the image) plus an in-content ad every 5-7 paragraphs/images/blocks like mentioned above. This will probably be the area of advertising we’ll have to tweak the most since articles are not the same length and use a different mix of images, quotes, embeds, et cetera.
That’s it. We assume it’ll take about a month for the robots who buy the ads on our site to get to know the robots who sell the ads so it may be a little random what you see until then. Sometimes you might not see ads at all.
Once this is working, our next step is to finally deploy the commenting updates you’ve all been yearning for.
The only one that’s going to rightly piss people off is the in-content ad. Especially on mobile.
As long as they are sized to allow scrolling and not too frequent in once article I don’t mind them. The ones that appear every paragraph, or are huge. The really criminal ones are the kind that don’t scroll with the page, but you have to scroll an invisible window!
Ummm I can’t find the wrigleys anti-freeze. My breath stinks and I really need to do something about it. Any tips?
So hey, if we click on ads, do you guys get coins from Jasonia delivered to HQ? How many ads should we click per week to sate your hunger?
Very reasonable and reassuring. My fear was that the whole thing would be put behind a paywall.
Thanks for the openness.
Long time follower of moat here from the old site, will happily be a member once out of education and back into the real world.
But until then my main contribution just agrees with what you have stated. Nobody wants a wall of ads that are both blocking the content you’re here to read and difficult or confusing to click out of.
I imagine that’s fairly on par for your readers and advertisers will hopefully understand this, that there’s a line when crossed does not let you see that company in a good light, there must be a pint where even when offered the space and money they must get that it becomes a negative association.
Good! This is my favorite place on the internet, and it’s got bills to pay! A big reason why it’s my favorite place is that you guys are really dialed in when it comes to the user experience, and it really shows. I think you can be trusted with the ads.
The transparency here is laudable. Thank you for pulling back the curtain, letting us know what to expect, and giving us a way to reach out if some weird or non-comfy ad messes with our experience.
So long as every 4th one is one of the made up hilarious ads along the lines of these two examples, I’ll buy everything.
I’m wondering how much revenue potential there is in those “I work from home and make $125/hr” posts? Maybe you could monetize that somehow?
This is excellent and well-thought-out. What’s the catch?!
Something about oysters and scab-keys.
We haven’t quite figured it out yet. But there will be one. I mean, we’re providing you a service. One day, and that day may never come, but we will call on you for a service.
Its a well thought out and reasonable plan…but Im a little sad we got ads before we got comment notifications.
I’m very pro: Let’s just launch stuff and see what happens. Some “worrywarts” keep pointing out that launching multiple projects at once is a “bad idea” and we should “test things to make sure they work” and then my brain turns off.
Matt: “Send it!”
Autopian Staff: “Are you sure? We haven’t even…”
Matt : “SEND IT!!!”
Autopian Staff: “But it’s on fire and…”
Matt: “DID I STUTTER?!?”
Actual transcript from the Slack.
You missed your calling in defense procurement.
You’re not doing this for free, nor should you be. Based on this post, it sounds like you’re really working hard on balancing paying the bills with user experience. Which only makes sense: A great user experience will mean more eyes on each page which *should* mean higher ad rates.
The real reason I don’t head over to the German Lighting Site anymore is not because you guys left (although that’s certainly part of it… but others left before you). It’s because I don’t have the time or patience to click through slideshows. And it seemed like 80% of articles were slideshows. So heading over there eventually fell out of habit.
And I can picture the “very important people” sitting around the “very important conference table” making these “very important decisions:” “If we make it a slide show, we can get 15 page views for one article!!!!!”
I’m sure in some sense, the math DOES work because you need just a fraction of your audience sticking around clicking through those 15 pages to keep a steady state of total page views. But when that fraction of the audience is all you’ve got left visiting your site, then what’s the point?
Anyway… There is absolutely nothing wrong with ads. It’s all how its presented. And I’m confident you’ll get it right.
Sounds like you guys have put a lot of thought into this and are doing it the right way. I don’t mind ads as long as they aren’t blaring, coving stuff up, auto-playing video or moving around on the screen. You guys need to eat too (and David especially seems to need some decent food based on what he’s told us he’s eating!).
What’s wrong with shower spaghetti?
My homebrew under-desk chewing gum mixed with sweet, sweet Dexcool is far superior to commercial product, but I’ll allow their pixels to interfere with work procrastination. Because I’m a man of the people.
As long as reader produced slideshows, or constantly being asked to sign up for a newsletter, aren’t part of the equation I think we can all handle some ads.
Top 5 updates Autopian readers would HATE to see…
“You won’t believe how easy it is to drive away readers with this one simple trick!!”
So…you’re saying I bought ALL those Optima batteries for nothing?!
You didn’t have to replace every brick in your house with one!
“I don’t always renovate my house with automotive batteries, but when I do, I choose Optima. Better stability, insulation, and sound deadening than the competing lead acid battery. Absorbed Glass Mat, there’s nothing better than that.”
You really should have made this clear to us ten months ago.
But it’s less expensive than using actual building supplies.
Well, I hope you live near an ocean?
Will the Macy Performance front coilover Signature Series be personally turned on the wood lathe by Bill Macy?
https://d4c5gb8slvq7w.cloudfront.net/eyJlZGl0cyI6eyJyZXNpemUiOnsid2lkdGgiOjUwMH19LCJidWNrZXQiOiJmaW5ld29vZHdvcmtpbmcuczMudGF1bnRvbmNsb3VkLmNvbSIsImtleSI6ImFwcFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAxNlwvMDlcLzA1MTUyNjU0XC8wMTcwMDctbWFpbi5qcGcifQ==
It really should have been the Bill Macy Autobody Protectant Coatings. “You’re gonna want that Tru-Coat!”
Driving my tan Ciera over rough, snow-covered roads was like riding through a wood chipper until I bought Macy Coilovers. Thanks, Bill Macy!
I’m a robot. I never made it in ad sales, though, so I’ve stooped to prowling car websites and placing sketchy links. I don’t know why I do it, but it just makes me feel a rush. It’s a rush I miss after the supercharger in my 240SX went out; I want that feeling back, but that blower is toast. Alas, here I am, on this blog, pasting links.
good bot
GOOD
I’m one of the subscribers (Wife: WTF is Auto Peeing and why are we paying for it?) and I know ads are a part of the way to be sustainable, but I’m really glad everyone here is looking to the user experience. Do I hate ads? No, some are interesting/funny, but most are just there. What I hate are the obnoxious ads so thanks for never doing that.
Now can I get Bill Macy coilovers for my Wrangler? Yeah, I’m shameless.
Sorry, they’re only available for select Oldsmobile models.
If you get the Macy coilovers, they’ll knock a hundred bucks off the cost of the Tru-Coat.
Auto Peeing: now there’s a blog I’d read
Good. I feel like I’m stealing as it is right now.
“Once this is working, our next step is to finally deploy the commenting updates you’ve all been yearning for.”
Woohoo! Images and an edti button.
That “edti” button can’t come soon enough.
This was an excellent spot for a typo. I don’t know if it was intentional, but I applaud you regardless.
I think you have a tpyo there.
… DAMNIT!
What you did there. I see it!
I, for one, welcome our new robot marketing overlords.
I, for one, welcome our new ad-buying-and-selling robot overlords if it keeps the site afloat, as it seems like you plan to keep them from completely drowning out the actual articles and community we come here for
You beat me to it
If I can’t get my taillights ruined while I chew antifreeze gum and wait for my Bill Macy coilovers to arrive, I’m going to be pretty disappointed.
Until I can get a set of 5 Bill Macy coilovers (rears and the spare), I’m not ordering.
Christoph Waltz brake pads maybe? “The odd sound means they’re working!”