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How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

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Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#171

Post by pbhjpbhj »

stevvve wrote: post #146
huhtenberg wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: balancing the needs of advertisers - We looked at advertising with them about a year ago and their options and response were both underwhelming. It wasn't possible to geo-target, it wasn't possible to advertise on most relevant sites (e.g. SoftwareRecs), and their upfront budget requirements weren't compatible with how we normally do things, which is to run a small test campaign to see what sort of traffic an out…

Hi there! I'm Steve Feldman and I manage the Ad Ops team at Stack Overflow. I'd like to make a few leaps based on your comment and offer a little insight our business. I'm very interested in learning more about your experience. - Based on your targeting concerns where we failed to adequately meet your request (geo, site, budget), I'm going to assume you tried to purchase advertising through our self-serve option. We…

Sounds like "if you're not spending the minimum then we don't want you ... unless you're a business that spend much more"? Surely the only businesses that would advertise without tag or geolocation specifying would be massive brands?

Are you shy about mentioning that you only want large advertisers; it's not possible you don't realise the ordering only makes sense for such companies, is it?

Or did I miss something?

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#172

Post by pbhjpbhj »

contras1970 wrote: post #143
vintageseltzer wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be interested in: https://www.codementor.io/ I have personally never used it and am unaffiliated with it, but a friend suggested it and has found it useful. He explained it to me as a dedicated, personal Stack Overflow.

how come there's no https://www.contradementor.io/ ? where am i to get an opposing point of view?

There is one. ;o)>

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#173

Post by pbhjpbhj »

edem wrote: post #67
BipolarElsa wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ask a lot of question, and thus get banned from asking more... I wish they would have a "luxury" option for like 49.99 a year where students could ask like unlimited questions. Is this crazy?

Not crazy but out of scope. If you need a mentor get one but SO is not for mentoring. On the other hand even 49.99 per month is too cheap for a service like this.

You could try offering that money to a TA for a limited number of email assists or phone calls. They're usually both pretty strapped for cash and people who enjoy helping.

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#174

Post by pbhjpbhj »

marxidad wrote: post #56
lordnacho wrote: post #20

So is it cash flow positive? I hope so, because it's hands down the most useful site for programmers. I even got the gold medal for using it every day for a long time.

They make over 10 million dollars a year.

Between 300 people cited elsewhere that's only $30k. Presumably they pay for hosting, facilities. Doesn't sound like it leaves a lot of pre-tax pay unless they're using primarily overseas workers in low-cost countries?

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#175

Post by pbhjpbhj »

mrfusion wrote: post #62

I'm so happy we have stack overflow. Do you guys remember experts exchange.com?

It was pretty good and usually useful IME until they got greedy and hid the content from all but subscribers.

It made me quite angry when they locked up my content. I switched to posting solutions on my blog then. Now I tend to stick stuff on Stack rather than blog it.

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#176

Post by pbhjpbhj »

ocoster wrote: post #28
jack9 wrote: post #19

> And we don’t want to use an automated system that selects some ads for us. So they do direct deals mostly, which is antiquated and probably to preserve their branding as a "tech site". > Did you know we have a lot of unpaid inventory on Stack Overflow every month? This is what trying to guess your avails with direct ends up doing. Leaving inventory unmonetized. Typically, you get paid less for less of your inventor…

What you are missing is that there is a cost associated with monetizing the full inventory with automation. You lose control over what is being shown, you are diluting your brand and you are at risk of alienating your users. At Stack Overflow we are not willing to make this trade off.

Surely you can automate everything but keep manual curation?

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#178

Post by isxek »

tikhonj wrote: post #82
subhobroto wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My following suggestion is a very unpopular one, but it is this: If you are a student, use the money you would have donated to StackOverflow to purchase a book or a tool that will help you to learn better and become an expert. If you are an expert, contribute your time to StackOverflow (instead of money). Money is easy to get compared to content. What helps StackOverflow grow is quality content. I am also interested…

I've contributed a fair amount to Stack Overflow, but it's actually pretty hard in the niches I care about. Not because the questions are hard, but because people answer them so quickly: it's hard to find a question I can answer that hasn't been addressed well. That's a great problem for Stack Overflow to have, of course, but I do wonder if there's some easy way to monitor specific tags without having to constantly r…

There is, if you use an RSS reader. There are feeds associated with each tag. Try clicking any tag, and you should see a link where you can get an RSS feed of all the new questions that come in for that tag.

It's been there for a long time. ;-)

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#179

Post by ori_b »

taco_emoji wrote: post #151
tgb wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they do that? Seems great for this use-case but terrible information to give bad actors.

What information does this reveal besides your email address, which they clearly already have?

It reveals that their email was detected as spam by an intelligent piece of meat instead of a shard of silicon.

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#180

Post by gsylvie »

criddell wrote: post #36
vlunkr wrote: post #14

Another good article linked from this one: https://stackoverflow.blog/2016/02/why-stack-overflow-doesnt... . Stack Overflow is IMO the site to look to if you want to do ads correctly. So many big sites have incredibly trashy ads, SO shows that they care to not subject their users to that junk.

I'm actually surprised ads work at all on StackOverflow. I would have guessed that most of their visitors are blocking ads.

If you turn off your ad blocker for SO, you get to see targeted job postings in your geographic and expertise area.
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