Advertising and Open Source

A blog about a sex toy business might be a funny place to talk about advertising, when I should be telling you about the latest vibrator or doll, but I have been thinking about it a lot lately.  And I will make it up to you today, with another guest review of a product.

I advertise on Google Adwords.  What happens is that you set a budget, and bid on adspace to climb the ads on Google on the right hand side of the screen, so your ads are targeted to certain key words.  When someone finds what they want, they click through and purchase, and you pay per click of advertising.

This sounds good, as the market then sets the rate of advertising, and those that are willing to pay the most get the most clicks, and therefore the most sales.  Except it favours the biggest players in a particular market, and it is open to fraud.  Also, the click to conversion ratio is notoriously low.  I would love it to be as high as a consistent 3%, but that is a very distant dream.  It is also prone to what is known as ‘click fraud’, where someone clicks through on your ad, to exhaust your advertising budget, as it is pre-paid.  Adwords is my biggest non-recoverable expense.  I am a small business, employing only me.  And on its own, I couldn’t live on what I make.  It is a supplementary income only.

The problem is, if I don’t use adwords, my traffic drops off significantly.  So what is the solution?

I don’t have the full answer, but I suspect that the solution will be open source.  Almost everything else on my computer is open source.  I like to use it, for a variety of reasons.  Let’s have a look at the advantages and disadvantages of open source before we go any further.

Open source is generally free.  I use Ubuntu as an OS.  I love it, it is free to own and use, and they encourage sharing (which others call theft or copyright violation).  It is highly configurable, I can make it look and feel how I want it to.  It is community supported, so if there is a problem I can get online and fix it.  It is secure and stable.  Malware is written for the majority of users, so it has a maximum impact for minimal effort, therefore I don’t run any security software at all.  Ubuntu has never crashed on me, unlike Windows.  I run XP on a laptop, and it has crashed four times in two years, necessitating a re-install.  I don’t miss the BSoD.  Distributors such as Dell now sell computers loaded with a version of Ubuntu as an OEM OS, and do provide support for it.

I use PrestaShop as a shopping cart, and it is brilliant.  I switched after the last shopping cart, which will remain nameless, crashed and took the site down for three weeks.  I tried to rebuild it but it was broken, and highly unstable.  I had noticed it’s instability since I bought it, but thought I would just have to work with it.  Then it decided it didn’t want to work with me anymore, and it was all over.  USD$2000 for a new version, plus USD$200 a month to have it supported, then if something did go wrong, a 1 900 number to ring in the US.  A great way to haemorrhage money.  Also, I was the second owner of the cart, and as such support was even more difficult.

Presta follows the same format as Ubuntu, in that it is highly configurable, community supported, and free.  You can also purchase additional modules if you need them.

Open Source is written by a passionate community, by people who use what they are writing.  There are no budget restraints or interdepartmental conflicts and secret agendas.  You write your own thing, and the community will adopt it or not.  Modules will get reviewed by those that use it, and also modified.  When you use it, you own it.  You don’t get a ridiculous and dodgy End User License Agreement (EULA) outlining your responsibilities and liabilities and stripping you of your rights.  (More on that at the end of this)

So what are the downsides to Open Source?  It is highly configurable.  so someone has to configure it, and that someone is most likely you.  So if you are not confident, or not willing to learn, you will struggle.  I struggled a bit to start with, but that was mainly with a mental block I had about mucking around with a computer.  Once I started it was simple.  Time consuming, but not difficult at all.

So, back to advertising.  What is the answer to my problem?  I don’t know.  Yet.  But I suspect, as I said, that the answer lies in the open source community.  I would like to see an advertising regime that is open and transparent, so I can see what I am getting.  I would like to pay a commission on products I sell, rather than on every click.  A percentage commission would suit me nicely, obviously on customers that have come from the advertising source, and not on every product, as I do market in different ways.  I find adwords difficult to use, and difficult to change.  It is arcane, and I suspect deliberately so.  Presta gives me a lot of statistics, so much so that I refer to it as statistics porn!  It tells me where all of my visitors come from, so it makes it easier for me to decide where I am going to spend my money on marketing.

I am not sure where this is going to lead me, but I am, as always, looking forward to the journey!  Let’s see if we can revolutionise advertising, and make it fair, rather than just another massive cash cow for another multinational.

Back to EULA’s.  I am not sure if he wrote it or not, but Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing uses the quintessential anti-EULA which seems to have the same legal status as those annoying agreements you have to click everywhere.  I think that the EULA’s that are ubiquitous are legally questionable due to coercion laws.  You need the programme for a business, so you have to click.  Just my thoughts, but I have no legal training at all.

Here is Cory’s anti-EULA:

READ CAREFULLY. By [accepting this material|accepting this payment|accepting this business-card|viewing this t-shirt|reading this sticker] you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies (“BOGUS AGREEMENTS”) that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

I like that.  A lot.

Love,

Chiquita

x

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