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Reddit needs help

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Re: Reddit needs help

#151

Post by zach »

nostrademons wrote: post #79
zach wrote: post #55

I have to say, this looks bad for the whole "users first, revenue later" mantra. Now, admittedly, the founders got paid on the flip. But there are users, and now it's later, so... where is the revenue? I heard this moment described as the "where is the land" moment. The crew has been sailing the ocean for a long time and they're running on slim hope. They grumble, then complain, and finally they confront the captain…

I think this is the "revenue later" part.

I strongly doubt it. I can't see a public-media-style "pledge week" as a primary source of revenue for a for-profit company.

I think the best outcome would be that this is a one-time weird thing that happened before they found a real revenue model. That wouldn't be unprecedented at all, although every time I can think of, this happens before the founders sell to a large company who can monetize well. For example, I donated to faqs.org when it was just some guy, and now it's owned by some site aggregator I've never heard of. Which is fine with me, because I just wanted to keep it around.

But assuming this works spectacularly, doesn't this just make Reddit completely illiquid? How can you go about selling a company based on revenues that are primarily free-will gifts? What would you sell, a share of profits from people just giving the company money? And what would you tell your donating customers who have zero ownership? Maybe that's all okay, or maybe I don't get it -- is there some way for this to succeed that I'm missing here?

Re: Reddit needs help

#152

Post by paraschopra »

randallsquared wrote: post #140
jedberg wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was actually one of the things we already tried. I think in a month we made enough for a cup of coffee.

Something is seriously odd, here. I used to see $25 a month or so from an art-related site that got very little traffic in comparison. Unless you were just exaggerating for effect?

User demographics are very, very different. I'm betting most reditters are aware of Google AdSense (and consider it kind of lame?). But hardly any of your visitors may be aware of AdSense and may have actually considered as good-ol-relevant-link.

Re: Reddit needs help

#153

Post by jolan »

jedberg wrote: post #109
axod wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WTH are they using EC2 (One of the most expensive hosts around)?

They're not actually one of the most expensive. Yes it is true, they are more expensive than others, and if I were starting a new company I might not use them from the start, but they offer us one thing that no one else seems to be able to handle -- the ability to spin up a lot of heavy iron quickly to absorb sudden changes in traffic.

Just curious -- why don't you start a new company?

It's obvious that your work isn't being respected by your current employers.

Does reddit mean a lot to you personally?

Re: Reddit needs help

#154

Post by nostrademons »

zach wrote: post #151
nostrademons wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is the "revenue later" part.

I strongly doubt it. I can't see a public-media-style "pledge week" as a primary source of revenue for a for-profit company. I think the best outcome would be that this is a one-time weird thing that happened before they found a real revenue model. That wouldn't be unprecedented at all, although every time I can think of, this happens before the founders sell to a large company who can monetize well. For example, I d…

They're asking people to subscribe, not to donate. A subscription is a recurring revenue stream.

Re: Reddit needs help

#155

Post by [deleted] »

nostrademons wrote: post #154
zach wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly doubt it. I can't see a public-media-style "pledge week" as a primary source of revenue for a for-profit company. I think the best outcome would be that this is a one-time weird thing that happened before they found a real revenue model. That wouldn't be unprecedented at all, although every time I can think of, this happens before the founders sell to a large company who can monetize well. For example, I d…

They're asking people to subscribe, not to donate. A subscription is a recurring revenue stream.

[deleted]

Re: Reddit needs help

#156

Post by zach »

nostrademons wrote: post #154
zach wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly doubt it. I can't see a public-media-style "pledge week" as a primary source of revenue for a for-profit company. I think the best outcome would be that this is a one-time weird thing that happened before they found a real revenue model. That wouldn't be unprecedented at all, although every time I can think of, this happens before the founders sell to a large company who can monetize well. For example, I d…

They're asking people to subscribe, not to donate. A subscription is a recurring revenue stream.

Yeah, I'm just probably not being imaginative enough. Even if you give someone a tiny bit of status that says they're a member, that's what they're "paying for," even if it costs nothing. And all the psychic benefits just happen to be lurking behind that.

I just can't believe this is where you go to before exhausting everything else, though. Just up and asking your customers to give you money like this has got to change your relationship, just like lending or giving money to a friend, right? I have to say I am fascinated to see how this plays out.

Re: Reddit needs help

#157

Post by ahk »

jedberg wrote: post #105
Zak wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a t-shirt from kn0thing at startup school a few years ago, but I can't really see paying for reddit now. I wish them luck in finding a business model that works for them.

> but I can't really see paying for reddit now. If I may ask, what did we do to lose you?

The sub-reddits are very static. I see pretty much the same links over the course of a week on my landing page.

Plus, the "all" frontpage is now a cesspool of the internet (IMO).

Plus, twitter has a pretty good (and addictive) information flow nowadays.

Re: Reddit needs help

#158

Post by petercooper »

jedberg wrote: post #110
petercooper wrote: post #38

They could accept advertisers from outside the US without using some bizarre legal argument I've never heard from any other company.

The legal argument isn't that bizarre. :) Our lawyers fear foreign laws and will not deal with them. That being said, we are working on expanding into some of the other English speaking countries.

It's bizarre in the sense that it's a rare problem. I can approach any of a million US sites, give them some money, and put an ad on their site. I can head over to http://buysellads.com/ and do that right now.

Being subjected to foreign laws can't be a huge concern, surely. Contracts for advertising (and, heck, almost any online service) specify the legal jurisdiction that applies to the transaction. If I live in Kazakhstan, buy some ads on a US site, there's not much I can do if I agreed to a US-based contract whether Reddit breaks Kazakhstani law or not.

Re: Reddit needs help

#159

Post by pageman »

jedberg wrote: post #104
ww520 wrote: post #86

Time to hire some business folks? Really, now it is not the time to talk about server expansion or more page views. The highest priority now is monetization. They need to come up with ways to get paid sufficiently to expand. Here are the things they can do: 1. Place more ads. I don't buy the notion that many reddit users run ad-blockers. Even half of them do, you still get 140M/month page views. 2. Get Google AdSense…

Thanks for the suggestions. Some we have tried, others we would like to, and some are totally new. The big problem is that we spend most of our time just keeping the site up and don't have time to focus on these ideas, and Conde is unwilling to invest. We're hoping the reddit gold money gives us the flexibility to bring in the talent we need to make some of those ideas happen.

maybe you could hire ww520 and other interested HN'ers here to work on some of these ideas, maybe pay them on a performance-based/tiered bonus basis? :P
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