evie

@ewie

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gay plural trans lesbian disaster. i've done some cursed programming stuff but i'm hoping that if i can just get better and hotter then maybe i can make something even worse

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evie @ewie5/4/2024, 3:44 AM

Jama @Jama

brellom @brellom5/4/2024, 1:09 AM

My Artist Alley Experience - Not Great

Finished with my first week on Cohost's Artist Alley. I don't expect I'll make much use of it. I had pretty bad performance; but maybe that was my fault. Perhaps I provided something that did not appeal to cohost's audience of users. Either way, I barely managed to break even - and on the final day too. The rest of the week was incredibly silent.

How was your experience?

As a creator: did you earn back what you spent? In money or otherwise.
As a consumer: did you spend money? Did you follow any new creators / projects? Did you intentionally spend ample time actively browsing the list of ads?

#talk

evie @ewie5/4/2024, 3:44 AM

responding to this comment here

i think it’s incredibly funny that we’ve run the artist alley experiment and we all walked away with, “welp, turns out opt in ads sucks. the people that want to see them don’t check it (this includes me), and the ads only slightly pay for themselves. turns out inline ads are the standard for a reason.” cohost plus already exists as a mechanism to remove ads from the feed, artist alley ads already look visually distinct from regular posts so its not confusing, people already want the ads inline, you can add filters and stuff idk. turns out people want the ads.

#cohost meta #artist alley

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in reply to @brellom's post:

SnepShark @SnepShark5/4/2024, 1:56 AM

I didn't buy an ad personally, but that lines up pretty closely with what I've seen from others who did, and I'm not really convinced that even those numbers will continue to be seen as the novelty wears off and people stop checking the Artist Alley tab (unless they installed the userscript that replaces the Cohost Corner on desktop with Artist Alley, that's the only reason I've seen most of the ads past, like, day 3 of it being available).

Summary of what I've seen:

@Idadeerz reported an extra $24 in Bandcamp sales compared to the week before the ad went up, with view count remaining the same between both weeks.
@zandravandra saw ~90 additional Itch visitors, resulting in at least four $5+ purchases.
@kyatt got at least $10 in donations on a free Itch game, along with what looks like around 170 additional views.
Mixed results from people who answered @hthrflwrs' question along these lines, ranging from "my Bandcamp page got 15 views" to "incredible for [my tea business]"

Modstin @Modstin5/4/2024, 2:20 AM

This is the problem. I dont think Opt-in ads work after people get bored of looking.

SnepShark @SnepShark5/4/2024, 2:31 AM

yeah, they need to be something that the viewer doesn't have to continuously put effort into seeing. If there were a settings toggle to enable equivalent functionality to the userscript I mentioned, or one that added an Artist Alley ad to, like, every other page of the timeline, I think it could become more worthwhile.

As it stands, the traffic I'm seeing people report doesn't seem super inspiring unless Artist Alley is primarily thought of as a donation to the site, but Cohost Plus already exists for that :eggbug-pensive:

evie @ewie5/4/2024, 3:04 AM

is it okay if i make a share with a screenshot of your comment attached?

SnepShark @SnepShark5/4/2024, 3:11 AM

Sure, I might omit the paragraph comparing it to the traffic my Itch collections direct to people if it's not essential for arguing your share's point though, looking back on this comment a bit later I'm not sure if it's a fair comparison on my part since my Itch lists are extremely targeted to a specific audience

evie @ewie5/4/2024, 3:45 AM

okay! i posted it https://cohost.org/ewie/post/5830118-responding-to-this-c

Modstin @Modstin5/4/2024, 3:22 AM

I'm going to be trying to use it myself come June, so I'll see how it affects my overall traffic.
You also have to consider Cohost's limited userbase too, I mean, out of the number of people using the site, how many are tuning into the Artist Alley?
I think some way of knowing when new ads are posted would be good, the whole thing seems a jumbled mess you have to scroll through. I don't know what's new, what's not, and of course stuff will be buried.
I think there's a lot of work to be done on it, and the concept, if its going to remain a part of this website's actual ecosystem.

sharks + planes as formerly seen on Twitter @sharksonaplane5/4/2024, 4:44 AM

I don't know if AA launched with this option, but the "newest first" filter is definitely helpful and I don't remember noticing when it first went live (though that could be because there was a lot of "oooh, shiny" to look through).

🔞🖌️Botions Binted @PotionSale5/4/2024, 10:47 AM

As a creator I plan on trying it twice a month for a couple months once I launch my website, though my intention is not really looking for direct sales, just eyes on some free/pwyw projects, commissions, free tier on my substar etc, for context. Steam wishlist type strat.

As a consumer, I did follow a couple folks, check out a couple projects, and bookmarked some stuff to possibly buy later, but haven't committed yet. I have been checking every day or so, my main complaint being I wish I could hide/collapse ads I was definitely not interested in (at least for the current week cycle they're running) if only to avoid clicking on the same ones again just to realize I already checked it out lol. I personally would like at least being able to opt-in to integrated ads or banners. Will be leaving a note for devs once I apply.

brellom @brellom5/5/2024, 9:05 PM

As long as you're getting value out of it - it doesn't necessarily need to be strictly money. That level of consistency could be a good idea, as long as you've got the disposable income for it.

I think they're planning to add more to the system, so I wouldn't be surprised if we see additional tagging features to better curate the viewing experience.

in reply to @ewie's post:

SnepShark @SnepShark5/4/2024, 4:17 AM

Personally, I'll push back on the "cohost plus already exists as a mechanism to remove ads from the feed" bit. That would re-frame the ads as something you don't want to see, rather than something you might even want to keep up to date on, which I don't think is the right direction to go with Artist Alley. Making sure that it feels like it's adding something to the site for both the advertisers and the users is pretty important, IMO.

I'm a bit torn on whether it should be opt-in or opt-out, but I feel pretty strongly that the toggle should be available to all users, and should not be any harder to turn on/off than other options in the settings menu (i.e., the userscript is nice for now, but it isn't enough.).

evie @ewie5/4/2024, 4:50 AM

i was thinking about it. i guess my concern is that new users would turn off the ads by default and we’d still have the same problem. i think it should be opt-out tho.

brellom @brellom5/4/2024, 4:59 AM

I feel like the system probably won't work extremely well either way. Most people don't like ads, so I don't think they're going to go out of their way to look at them. And I can't see cohost putting ads in front of everyone's face because then they'd actually start looking like a social media website, which is kinda against their mission statement.