Curious as a thought exercise -- how would/how well could HN be monetized?
I think PG recently mentioned it gets about 60k visitors a day. How well do you think it could be monetized, based on its audience/traffic?
Ask HN: Could HN make it as a business?
1–10 of 15 posts
Re: Ask HN: Could HN make it as a business?
#2Reddit has significantly more traffic and is having a tough time with it:
Re: Ask HN: Could HN make it as a business?
#3You could use the site as a way to promote the existence of your venture capital firm to highly intelligent people who are actually interested in start-ups.
Oh wait, it does that already.
Re: Ask HN: Could HN make it as a business?
#4Currently there are two ways to monetize: subscription fees or ads.
The first is not viable the second is already 'built in' by discussing and recommending various services and products on HN
Re: Ask HN: Could HN make it as a business?
#5Reddit has significantly more traffic and is having a tough time with it: http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/reddit-needs-help.html
I think that's a pretty fair example. But reddit is much less lean of an operation than HN.
Would Reddit be considered more successful if it was a leaner organization? They say in that post that revenues aren't great, but I wonder if that has more to do with the size/nature of the reddit operation.
If it isn't, then my questions is: are they just not doing a good job of monetizing, or is it just very difficult to monetize that kind of site?
Re: Ask HN: Could HN make it as a business?
#6You could use the site as a way to promote the existence of your venture capital firm to highly intelligent people who are actually interested in start-ups. Oh wait, it does that already.
That's a good point, but I meant this more in terms of taking YC out of the picture and just looking at the site alone.
Re: Ask HN: Could HN make it as a business?
#7Currently there are two ways to monetize: subscription fees or ads. The first is not viable the second is already 'built in' by discussing and recommending various services and products on HN
Premium membership is a viable way of making money. I don't think any of this user group would like ads though. I think they'd be willing to pay for some sort of premium status. There is the potential for commercial gain here as upvoted stories get lots of traffic from smart people with good income.
Re: Ask HN: Could HN make it as a business?
#8You could use the site as a way to promote the existence of your venture capital firm to highly intelligent people who are actually interested in start-ups. Oh wait, it does that already.
That's a good point, but I meant this more in terms of taking YC out of the picture and just looking at the site alone.
Hmm, you mean, look at HN as a Digg/Reddit/Slashdot look-alike? The "aggregator site model" is pretty simple to describe, really: screw quality, get moar users, ads, profit. It clearly works as a business model, but whether that plays to the strengths of HN is a completely different matter.
Re: Ask HN: Could HN make it as a business?
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a good point, but I meant this more in terms of taking YC out of the picture and just looking at the site alone.
Hmm, you mean, look at HN as a Digg/Reddit/Slashdot look-alike? The "aggregator site model" is pretty simple to describe, really: screw quality, get moar users, ads, profit. It clearly works as a business model, but whether that plays to the strengths of HN is a completely different matter.
I guess what sets HN apart is the premium it places on quality rather than growth/traffic. And that it caters to a specific niche rather than a bunch of disparate, mainstream topics. So the question is if it could still do well given those differences.
Re: Ask HN: Could HN make it as a business?
#10Here's a revenue model: Offer users with certain karma levels discounts from startups that provide services. The more karma you have, the higher discount you may be able to receive from a variety of startups/services. When a user cashes in their karma for the service, HN gets a recurring affiliate fee based on the total fees paid to said startup. And of course users with lower karma can still get some kind of discount from the services. Once those users karma reaches a new higher level, another discount kicks in.
To personalize this a bit, show a simple survey link on the main nav bar that lets users select the types of services they are intereted in. This would then be used to populate a sidebar with dinky ads or other promotions from startups/events.
Here's another one: Have events/conferences sponsor specific threads in HN...Whichever comment receives the most points get a discount or free pass. Once again, affiliate fees on other users signing up for the event kicks back to HN.
And another: create an automated newsletter that sends you a roundup of the days highest voted stories (with topic personlization if you want [ie, only send me Ask HN or 'seeking feedback' type stories]). Sell a few ads in the sidebar to startups on a budget.
If HN is averaging 60k uniques/day, that newsletter could grow pretty quickly. Sell of small banners at a decent CPM and it should make some money. And then of course layer on a taxonomy binding ad server that shows ads relevant to the topic(s) that are displayed in the newsletter based on the users preferences.