Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The war to sell you a mattress

fastcompany.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 235 posts

Re: The war to sell you a mattress

#111

Post by saimiam »

graeme wrote: post #106
whamlastxmas wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More accurately, he's accepting bribes to silence his freedom of speech. He's entirely in his right to have negative reviews as long as they're truthful.

That’s blackmail. Making a legal threat and making a legal money request combine into an illegal act.

What law says I can’t give you an incentive to stop badmouthing me?

According to this link, defamation - written (libelous) or verbal (derogatory) - is a civil matter and not a crime.

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/defamation-law-made-...

Re: The war to sell you a mattress

#113

Post by [deleted] »

graeme wrote: post #106
whamlastxmas wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More accurately, he's accepting bribes to silence his freedom of speech. He's entirely in his right to have negative reviews as long as they're truthful.

That’s blackmail. Making a legal threat and making a legal money request combine into an illegal act.

[deleted]

Re: The war to sell you a mattress

#114

Post by rwmj »

dzink wrote: post #9

What does YC think of companies that make affiliate revenue? Is it a positive or a negative in the VC world?

Not VC-funded, but MoneySavingExpert which is a fairly well regarded and large UK site for people interested in financial products, FI, etc was sold by its owner in 2012 for £87M. It makes most or all of its money from affiliate links, although it has a transparency policy where links that make money for the site have an asterisk next to them, and they also include (but not as prominently) non-affiliate links.

There are some revenue numbers in the Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoneySavingExpert.com

Re: The war to sell you a mattress

#115

Post by mrhappyunhappy »

baby wrote: post #61
Animats wrote: post #17

The whole mattress industry is a scam. Actual manufacturing cost is $75-$300. Mattresses are even cheaper on Alibaba. Vacuum-packing memory foam shrinks mattresses for shipping, and now they can be imported easily. If you really want to annoy the US mattress industry, set up a review site and review sub-$100 mattresses off Alibaba. (Personally, I have an air bed which cost about $200.)

It is. I bought mine for 200-300$ on Amazon a while ago (lots of good reviews) and it was the best bed I’ve slept on. I laugh at people who spend thousands of dollars in their mattress and repeat out loud the marketing speech “you spend a third of your life on it”

I wish I could do the same. Here in Japan I had to settle for a pricey inner spring. Damn islands.

Re: The war to sell you a mattress

#116

Post by noitsnot »

inanutshellus wrote: post #63
PhilWright wrote: post #3

Amazing to see people stumbling upon millions. Most techies are trying to come up with clever technical solutions to try and build an online business. Whilst elsewhere there are people making millions from reviewing mattresses. Or whatever the next accidental hot market will be.

A friend of mine made a fair bit of money off of a website that listed "free stuff" promotions around the web. But it was manually-maintained and so quickly died. ... BUT... He really only started making ad revenue on the site once he stopped maintaining it! People would find his site, then would realize the content was old, but would click on an up-to-date ad instead. Accidental genius. :)

Sounds like seo took hold on its own over time. It accumulated links and ranking naturally.

Re: The war to sell you a mattress

#117

Post by mrhappyunhappy »

greedo wrote: post #110
mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly some people can’t tell the difference between a sponsored read and an endorsement precisely because they make it sound like an endorsement.

Even when you can tell the difference, it's hard to ignore the effect of someone you enjoy listening to do the read. With my favorite podcasts, I enjoy the "company" of the hosts, and have an implicit bias towards what they say. So an ad read by them is extremely effective. If it was a canned commercial like on TV, I'd be able to tune it out much more effectively.

Good point!

Re: The war to sell you a mattress

#118

Post by noitsnot »

Untit1ed wrote: post #10
PhilWright wrote: post #3

Amazing to see people stumbling upon millions. Most techies are trying to come up with clever technical solutions to try and build an online business. Whilst elsewhere there are people making millions from reviewing mattresses. Or whatever the next accidental hot market will be.

True, but there's a survivor bias there - for every guy who stumbles into millions there's 100 writing content that gets ignored and making nothing.

Id say it's huge. More like a tens or hundred of thousands at one point. Everyone and there mother was blogging. Now it's just sexy insta pics holding brand name merchandise with hash tags mixed into 20 others as the advertising notice.

Re: The war to sell you a mattress

#119

Post by colmvp »

greedo wrote: post #110
mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly some people can’t tell the difference between a sponsored read and an endorsement precisely because they make it sound like an endorsement.

Even when you can tell the difference, it's hard to ignore the effect of someone you enjoy listening to do the read. With my favorite podcasts, I enjoy the "company" of the hosts, and have an implicit bias towards what they say. So an ad read by them is extremely effective. If it was a canned commercial like on TV, I'd be able to tune it out much more effectively.

I can't help but laugh when the guys at Pod Save America plug Square Cash and other companies
Post reply on HN