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How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

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Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#211

Post by tedmiston »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #205
tedmiston wrote: post #58

> We are in the process of sending out an email now announcing Developer Story to the larger community in the hopes that we can help some percentage of developers. If that email is rejected, we’ll unsubscribe you. If you’re unresponsive to emails we send, we’ll unsubscribe you. If you mark it as spam, we’ll unsubscribe you. How great it would be if every site would subscribe to such high standards. Bravo, SO.

Sorry, if this is off-topic, you hit a nerve. The absolute antibehavior of what you descrcribe I've recently experienced with Air Asia. A few month ago they started to spam me with a newsletter I never requested. Last time I flew them was in the beginning of 2015 and I never subscribed for their crap. The unsubscribe link on the mail does not work and after a significant amount of digging I found a way to unsubscribe…

I think you're pretty on topic. Airlines...

I have had a very similar with Air France who I flew with once, through a "hacker" booking of a flight provided by Delta but through Air France's site to save hundreds of dollars over Delta's.

They actually subscribed me to four newsletters: "Flying Blue", "Hello from KLM US", "Air France USA", AND "iFly KLM Magazine United States". From those I've received ~75 messages over the past year.

Their unsubscribe links do not actually work. They prompt you to log in, but I can't log in to my account because I don't recall ever making one (and I'm diligent about storing passwords in a manager). Attempting to reset my password leads to a screen that says I'm locked out of my account for 3 unsuccessful attempts, and the only possible option is to call them. It's so broken.

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#212

Post by cjlm »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #174
marxidad wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

$300k, surely?

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#213

Post by dkersten »

MattSteelblade wrote: post #209
CaptainZapp wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, if this is off-topic, you hit a nerve. The absolute antibehavior of what you descrcribe I've recently experienced with Air Asia. A few month ago they started to spam me with a newsletter I never requested. Last time I flew them was in the beginning of 2015 and I never subscribed for their crap. The unsubscribe link on the mail does not work and after a significant amount of digging I found a way to unsubscribe…

Despite never having Comcast nor living in an area Comcast serves, I constantly get email from them. To unsubscribe I must login to my (nonexistent) account.

This may actually be against the CAN SPAM Act of 2003, which requires that non-transactional unsolicited commercial mail provide a means of being removed from the mailing database through the same means that the mail is sent.

IANAL, so I don't know if logging into an account would count or not. Personally, I see it as a hindrance to unsubscribing and by my reading of the CAN SPAM Act, it is illegal, but.. not a lawyer.

EDIT:

From https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can... (which isn't the Act itself, but an FTC compliance guide):

    Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient’s opt-out request within 10 business days. You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request. Once people have told you they don’t want to receive more messages from you, you can’t sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. The only exception is that you may transfer the addresses to a company you’ve hired to help you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#214

Post by morbidhawk »

codinghorror wrote: post #150
chubot wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know they don't make that much money? I didn't see that anywhere in the blog post. I agree that they make an enormous contribution to the world economy. Joel really did knock it out of the park -- remember expertsexchange? His goal was to get rid of that and it worked.

Joel, eh? Think you might be forgetting someone in there, somewhere? ;)

This is what I love about HN, occasionally the author of the software being discussed will randomly show up in the comment thread

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#215

Post by csomar »

tedmiston wrote: post #58

> We are in the process of sending out an email now announcing Developer Story to the larger community in the hopes that we can help some percentage of developers. If that email is rejected, we’ll unsubscribe you. If you’re unresponsive to emails we send, we’ll unsubscribe you. If you mark it as spam, we’ll unsubscribe you. How great it would be if every site would subscribe to such high standards. Bravo, SO.

If SO here I'd like to extend my thanks to. I might be interested in "offers" but it'd be nice to detect when I don't give a sh*t about it and back off.

SO is doing it right. But the community will very likely not care.

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#216

Post by astrodust »

gsylvie wrote: post #180
criddell wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is the way ads should be done. The only reason I run a blocker is because my tolerance for absolute bullshit ran out. No, there is no "one weird trick" to make hundreds of dollars a day and get rid of wrinkles at the same time. Just no.

I've seen the quality of advertising plunge to depths I never imagined in the last five years. I yearn for the days of "Punch the Monkey" level dribble rather than the pure poison we see today.

How is it that with more tracking, more compute power, more data than ever the ads are so appallingly stupid?

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#217

Post by pbhjpbhj »

cjlm wrote: post #212
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

$300k, surely?

      10,000,000 ÷ 300 
    = 1,000,000 ÷ 30
    = 100,000 ÷ 3
    ~ 33,333
(commas for grouping)

Or 1e07/3e02 = 1e05/3.

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#218

Post by nicky0 »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #170
nicky0 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the ads are served to non-logged-in visitors who come to specific question pages through a web search. SO actually shows you fewer ads the more reputation points you have.

What's the flow there for a user? They're researching an answer ... do they ignore the issue and run off and buy something? I sometime have poor focus but when you're problem solving it seems the least likely time to distract yourself with shopping. I did once follow a Google ad about 10 years ago, but in my defence I was just surfing cool tech and the image looked interesting. Of course I didn't buy anything, who le…

Of course, we know you are special. But consider that other people may not be as strong willed and resilient to the advertisers' ways.

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#219

Post by nicky0 »

criddell wrote: post #79
nicky0 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the ads are served to non-logged-in visitors who come to specific question pages through a web search. SO actually shows you fewer ads the more reputation points you have.

I think I would expect logged-in users to be more likely to have whitelisted the site than random Google visitors.

But there are a lot more of the random Google visitors than active participants. SO is effectively a machine for getting smart people to create specific, targeted searchable content to run ads against.

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#220

Post by jlgaddis »

rbobby wrote: post #87
tedmiston wrote: post #58

> We are in the process of sending out an email now announcing Developer Story to the larger community in the hopes that we can help some percentage of developers. If that email is rejected, we’ll unsubscribe you. If you’re unresponsive to emails we send, we’ll unsubscribe you. If you mark it as spam, we’ll unsubscribe you. How great it would be if every site would subscribe to such high standards. Bravo, SO.

> If you mark it as spam, we’ll unsubscribe you. How would they know?

See the List-Unsubscribe mail header.
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