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How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

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Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#141

Post by Jugurtha »

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.

In lecture 6 of "How to start a startup", entitled "Growth", Alex Schultz touches on this point specifically in a hypothetical concern people might have of being too spammy. His point was that one should worry about the marginal user who doesn't get notifications, not about the power users who are grown ups and can set filters. Granted, SO is no longer a "startup" but growth is still relevant to it nonetheless and it is interesting to note that the question of emails is far from being over and done with.

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#142

Post by chiph »

> Every new email, except for transactional emails like “Forgot your password?”, sent through this system will have three links at the bottom: a one-click unsubscribe, a direct link to manage all categories, and feedback.

It's terrific that they're doing this. The first two links are what the CAN-SPAM Act requires. The "feedback" link is not a result of complying with CAN-SPAM, but is a good idea for any online business.

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can...

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#143

Post by contras1970 »

vintageseltzer wrote: post #54
BipolarElsa wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ask a lot of question, and thus get banned from asking more... I wish they would have a "luxury" option for like 49.99 a year where students could ask like unlimited questions. Is this crazy?

You may be interested in: https://www.codementor.io/ I have personally never used it and am unaffiliated with it, but a friend suggested it and has found it useful. He explained it to me as a dedicated, personal Stack Overflow.

how come there's no https://www.contradementor.io/ ? where am i to get an opposing point of view?

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#146

Post by stevvve »

huhtenberg wrote: post #73
blowski wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, they do a pretty good job of balancing the needs of users and advertisers.

Re: balancing the needs of advertisers - We looked at advertising with them about a year ago and their options and response were both underwhelming. It wasn't possible to geo-target, it wasn't possible to advertise on most relevant sites (e.g. SoftwareRecs), and their upfront budget requirements weren't compatible with how we normally do things, which is to run a small test campaign to see what sort of traffic an out…

Hi there! I'm Steve Feldman and I manage the Ad Ops team at Stack Overflow. I'd like to make a few leaps based on your comment and offer a little insight our business. I'm very interested in learning more about your experience.

- Based on your targeting concerns where we failed to adequately meet your request (geo, site, budget), I'm going to assume you tried to purchase advertising through our self-serve option. We offer self-serve specifically for advertisers who want to work with budgets below our minimum of $5,000 per month. In doing so, we hope to allow clients who still want to target our users an option while preventing our salespeople from burning out or being unable to provide an excellent advertising experience due to an excessive client load. Please remember: the long-term success of the Ad Sales team is reliant on the success of our clients and their ability to interact with Stack Overflow users in the smartest, most mutually-beneficial way possible. That takes time.

- Targeting via our self-serve option is limited to global run-of-site. This means ALL tags and ALL countries. Any advertiser looking to reach specifics types of users-- mobile, web dev, cloud-- will see better results working with a sales rep and spending that $5,000 minimum, as impression volumes will be too low to make a real, measurable impact through self-serve. We see greater success for self-serve clients with (a) products that benefit ALL developers and/or (b) products related to some of our larger tags on the site, front-end tags for instance, as the largest volume of impressions go to the largest tags when targeting run-of-site.

- Self-serve is currently limited to sites that have a large impression volume, ie: Stack Overflow and Super User. We don't currently offer any advertising on many Stack Exchange sites, and SoftwareRecs is one of them, unfortunately.

- If you can share the interaction with our team with me, I'm happy to look into it and make steps to speak with the entire team to ensure we're doing everything we can to have your experience with us be a positive one. If you're so inclined, send an email to adops@stackoverflow.com or to reach me directly, steve@stackoverflow.com.

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#147

Post by my_ghola »

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.

Maybe not sending an email in the first place?

If their product is so great, they don't need to spam anybody, specially developers, to go look at it.

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#148

Post by tedmiston »

my_ghola wrote: post #147
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.

Maybe not sending an email in the first place? If their product is so great, they don't need to spam anybody, specially developers, to go look at it.

I really like email as a discovery channel for new products personally. Is there something else or another format you prefer?

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#149

Post by Ajedi32 »

tedmiston wrote: post #131
JeremyBanks wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, and would like to see a change like that in Q&A, but it would be a pretty big deal at this point in the site's life. However, the new Documentation section does a much better job with this. Each edit is worth +2, and upvotes give points to all significant contributors (+5 or +1 depending on size of contribution), not just the author! This system has had some issues and may still be adjusted, but I think it's…

> and upvotes give points to all significant contributors (+5 or +1 depending on size of contribution), not just the author That's interesting. I wasn't aware of the trickle down karma like that.

Keep in mind that's for [Documentation][1], not Q&A (which is what most people think of when they think of StackOverflow).

[1]: https://stackoverflow.com/documentation

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#150

Post by codinghorror »

chubot wrote: post #59
dolguldur wrote: post #24

Stackoverflow is the prime example for how a company can generate tremenduous value without making that much money. It's difficult to estimate its contribution to the world economy quantitatively, but I'd definitely say billions, many many billions.

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? ;)
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