I'll be curious to see how the Medium/Svbtle model works the advertising/paid model introduced on the front end, rather than building critical mass around great content producers and working it in later on.
Referly Discontinuing Rewards, Paying Existing Links Through March 31st, 2013
31–40 of 42 posts
Re: Referly Discontinuing Rewards, Paying Existing Links Through March 31st, 2013
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
SeekingAlpha seems to be doing quite well and their content is all driven by paid user submissions. I've never submitted content, but as a user I love it. Very high quality articles.
Theory: their userbase is basically focused on monetization, so for them, the payment-driven model makes a ton of sense.
It's also very valuable traffic to advertisers so they can pay out attractive rates to writers while also making good money being the middle man.
If Pinterest, Twitter or Tumblr were to adopt this model, it probably wouldn't be very effective because their traffic is (essentially) worthless on a micro scale.
Re: Referly Discontinuing Rewards, Paying Existing Links Through March 31st, 2013
#33As a causal observer, I think one major weakness of Referly when put up against its ex-competitors, companies I'd consider to be Pinterest, Wanelo, The Fancy, Svpply, etc., is that consumer behavior on those sites was driven by the love of doing that thing--clipping, collecting, and presenting in a community of peers, whereas Referly was about monetization (baked into the name "Referly"). In my experience, in life, R…
You make excellent points. Our existing users signed up to make money, so for them (remember this was an email to our registered user base) paid posts is probably the most valuable thing we can offer. Going forward we probably won't focus on that much as we build our core base of writers, and we are going to have a high editorial bar for paid writers that many of our affiliate contributors - quite honestly - are not going to be able to meet.
I had a life before Referly, a life devoid of affiliate stuff where I was an editor in Chief of a local tech community site [1] - and I'm super excited to be digging up those old skills.
[1] http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2010/01/se...
Re: Referly Discontinuing Rewards, Paying Existing Links Through March 31st, 2013
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same. A Twilio-like aggregator for affiliate marketing could have been a special idea. Content/review sites could just sign up and have any product they reference from their content linked to the appropriate affiliate program. They went in a more consumer-focused direction though. I wish them luck.
Wont work. Affiliate networks generally do not want that behavior. Mostly its because the advertisers of each offer are specific about who can and cannot promote it. With a reseller, you lose that control. Affiliate networks would rather keep their advertisers happy (and not lose them, since they are the lifeblood of all networks) vs doubling income and potentially alienating/losing their advertisers. Also, This is t…
Subaffiliates are welcome in most affiliate networks. Some individual programs on those networks don't allow them, but the networks typically leave that call to the affiliate managers running the programs.
Re: Referly Discontinuing Rewards, Paying Existing Links Through March 31st, 2013
#35Wait, so every time someone posted a referly link to HN that seemed spammy, it's because it was spammy? That is, they were artificially constructed and there was money riding on that post getting upvoted?
The majority of HN submissions that were to a referly link were from the founders, I assume the sort-of spammy nature is something they're afforded permission to engage in because they're a part of YC.
Although, I've usually seen those types articles flagged off the front page, so it self-corrects. I don't think there's a bias in favor of YC founders.
There's another YC startup whose founders are more blatant, but their spammy posts are flagged even faster.
Re: Referly Discontinuing Rewards, Paying Existing Links Through March 31st, 2013
#36their != there.
Re: Referly Discontinuing Rewards, Paying Existing Links Through March 31st, 2013
#37Yay, more crowd-sourced content. Can't wait for the slideshows.
Re: Referly Discontinuing Rewards, Paying Existing Links Through March 31st, 2013
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Go with a name that will work even if you end up pivoting 10 more times, because you will if your company is still around in 100 years. Blog post I did on buying premium domains you might find helpful in your search - feel free to email me if you need help: http://franceschine.com/post/19837401405/how-to-buy-domains-...
I suggest "Pivot". Why a startup has not done this already, I have no idea. I will be registering Pivot.ly and Pivot.co shortly.
I could see it working as someone who called themselves something like a product/ market fit or pivot consultant.
You could come in on a big hourly rate and review startups products and the market, advising them whether to continue with the current idea or if not what kind of pivots would best fit the assets and skills they have built up.
Re: Referly Discontinuing Rewards, Paying Existing Links Through March 31st, 2013
#39That is one quick pivot. But I am against such pivots which shifts a non-performing business model to a new vague and time-buying model where you will wait to gain some momentum to either get acquired or waste some time to finally take the bold move of shutting shop and moving on. I wish goodluck to Refer.ly team.
Re: Referly Discontinuing Rewards, Paying Existing Links Through March 31st, 2013
#40[deleted]