According to this talk they're paying around $250k/year for server hosting at EC2: http://pycon.blip.tv/file/3257303/
See the question at around ~27m into the video.
Reddit needs help
11–20 of 258 posts
Re: Reddit needs help
#12I think if any site could pull this off, Reddit could. Somehow, somewhere, someway, Reddit became a social news site that has a strong sense of community to it. Redditors feel good being "Redditors", and feel an affinity towards the site. My prediction is this actually works.
Re: Reddit needs help
#13280 million page views a month and they aren't breaking even to support 4 engineers? wtf
They need to put a link to Amazon on their site and earn some referral cash. Just a thought...
Re: Reddit needs help
#14A user's willingness to pay is going to be based either off of charity (a la NPR) or as an exchange for a service/good. You can't have both, simply due to human nature.
Sure you can. I routinely pay more for things when I know that the proceeds are going to a good cause. The way I look at it is that it's both a purchase and a donation.
Say I see a cool T-shirt that some charity is selling for $25. That's pretty steep for a T-shirt. I'd probably only pay around $15 for a T-shirt normally. But if I like the shirt and like the charity, I might buy it anyway. I view that as a $15 purchase and a $10 donation.
Stuff like that happens all the time.
Re: Reddit needs help
#15I paid. I love reddit.
Re: Reddit needs help
#16It's good that they're seeking ways to increase revenue, but this comes across as nearly cyber-begging. "...we can right now only offer you our undying gratitude and an optional trophy on your userpage." Yikes. What else could reddit offer for subscribers other than a png? Can reddit or similar platforms find a good way to generate revenue? Obviously ads and merchandise (t-shirts, etc) aren't doing it alone here.
There are tons of sites where people can (and do!) pay money for a simple PNG.
I'd know: my web based MMO, Forumwarz is one. People can pay to buy some kinds of "E-Peen" which is our version of badges.
Re: Reddit needs help
#17A user's willingness to pay is going to be based either off of charity (a la NPR) or as an exchange for a service/good. You can't have both, simply due to human nature.
You don't know reddit community. They will gladly pay monthly fee (which is not forced) just to get a gold icon on their "Trophy case". Its not because Reddit users has more expendable expenses compare to other online communities its because reddit community is more "involved" than other online community I have ever seen.
Just compare reddit charity to Haiti fund and Digg doing the same thing.
Reddit: http://dri.convio.net/site/TR?pg=fund&fr_id=1030&pxf...
Digg: http://dri.convio.net/site/TR?pg=fund&fr_id=1030&pxf...
They both promoted it, they both blogged it in their official company blog. Kevin rose personally tweeted it to his 1million+ followers. And they got 4k measly dollars and Reddit got $185k, albeit reddit started few weeks sooner, but still....
I am not trying to make a reddit > digg derpity derpity derp argument, I am just saying that people greatly underestimate the power of "involved" community. Not a community by page views numbers ala Digg.
Re: Reddit needs help
#18280 million page views a month and they aren't breaking even to support 4 engineers? wtf
It sounds like they are profiting. They just aren't having high enough profits that Conde Nast is willing to cut into said profits to either spend more on servers to speed it up or hire another engineer.
Re: Reddit needs help
#19Every company/product with a strong community and few employees that I've seen try this has worked massively well.
http://unknownworlds.com/ is a great example. When it was still just a halflife mod, and the creator wanted to work on it full time while bootstrapping the company, he asked for donations to get a special icon in game and playtesting access. There was an incredible outpouring of support and it kept them in the green.
Now, to fund the stand-alone sequel, they are taking preorders far in advance to help the development, with an option to pay $20 extra for the game to get special black armor in-game and their eternal gratitude. Almost all of the preorders opted to pay extra, mostly out of thanks for the years they spent playing the first game for free.
Re: Reddit needs help
#20I think if any site could pull this off, Reddit could. Somehow, somewhere, someway, Reddit became a social news site that has a strong sense of community to it. Redditors feel good being "Redditors", and feel an affinity towards the site. My prediction is this actually works.
most sites can pull that off, almost every forum has the subscription model where all you get is some icon and different color username.
actually I think for reddit it'd be a little harder for comparison...because with those forums, the people know they are supporting small time folks...with reddit, they'd be asking people to donate money to a for profit billion dollar corporation.