Similar to what Gruber does to live. I like it.
What does he? Ask users to pay for seeing daringfireball without ads?
Reddit needs help
231–240 of 258 posts
Re: Reddit needs help
#232Time 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…
I would rather pay $10 a month than have to shuffle through corporate-generated content.
Re: Reddit needs help
#233Time 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.
What amazes me most about Reddit, apart from it's apparently Craigslist inspire design, is that there is only the most sheepish attempts to advertise.
As a registered user you know all the stories I've clicked on, all the stories I've voted for, and the sections I'm following, and with all this information you can't do something meaningful like put an ad or a "suggested link" for a product or service I'd like. I see links to the most random crap ever.
Why is it so hard to apply some sort of affinity metric to the advertising problem?
The sad truth is that if Reddit doesn't advertise, if the developer time is simply spent putting out fires, then it will end up being an irrelevant property. There is an amazing community there, which is a credit to what the site has managed so far, but that community will simply migrate to a better platform. It happened with Digg, it happened with Slashdot, and sadly it is inevitable that it will happen to Reddit unless some big changes are made.
Although I find many aspects of Facebook to be in outrageously bad taste, or rudely invasive, the one thing they've managed to do as a company is grow, build out, and become highly profitable. There are a lot of things Facebook does that are worth studying in meticulous detail, deconstructing and re-implementing, from their process, to their features, to their strategy to maintain growth. Their capability to execute on complicated technical problems is spectacular.
If Conde is unwilling to invest, maybe the best plan is to seek investors to buy out the property and make it an independent venture that's more focused on the site.
Re: Reddit needs help
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
What amazes me most about Reddit, apart from it's apparently Craigslist inspire design, is that there is only the most sheepish attempts to advertise. As a registered user you know all the stories I've clicked on, all the stories I've voted for, and the sections I'm following, and with all this information you can't do something meaningful like put an ad or a "suggested link" for a product or service I'd like. I see…
Their attitude is somewhat Twitterish. They aren't going to scare off their readers with minor, unobtrusive advertising, and should just go ahead and be more direct about it. Strike while the iron is hot, make some money.
Re: Reddit needs help
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should really get a Flattr button too, it's starting to get traction now.
You should also ask them about their "Flattr for comments" model. I can't remember where I heard about it, it might not even be implemented yet. Anyways, the idea is to give the site hosting the user generated content (comments etc.) part of the revenue. When you've upvoted a comment you could get the option to Flattr it, if you have added Flattr to you profile etc.
Hmm, making money as an incentive to post great comments? I like that idea.
On the other hand, if only we could charge people for comments we hate! The internet would get so much better...
Re: Reddit needs help
#236Earlier 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?
First, he lives in Cupertino. Coffee there might cost $25, I'm not sure.
Then, Google payments have been declining for a long time. We tried AdSense and I STILL haven't made enough to get Google to send a check (nice how they'll hang on to your $80 to the end of time, hmm? Wonder how much free advertising Google scams that way). Then, we switched to our own ads and make approx. 800 times as much per day (not an exaggeration).
Re: Reddit needs help
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, the trick about that is that servers aren't really as cheap as everyone says. Also, with horizontal scaling you spend more money elsewhere: on stuff the programmers usually don't know shit about, like big-iron loadbalancers, and on systems administration. So when someone says "hardware is cheap, programmers are expensive" be aware that they are forgetting about systems administrators who are often more expensiv…
I'd love to hear more about this ruby -> java transition if you're willing to share.
Generally, the steps are
1> rewrite your Ruby code in Java
Re: Reddit needs help
#238A user's willingness to pay is going to be based either off of charity (a la NPR) or as an exchange for a service/good. You can't have both, simply due to human nature.
You don't know reddit community. They will gladly pay monthly fee (which is not forced) just to get a gold icon on their "Trophy case". Its not because Reddit users has more expendable expenses compare to other online communities its because reddit community is more "involved" than other online community I have ever seen. Just compare reddit charity to Haiti fund and Digg doing the same thing. Reddit: http://dri.conv…
I'm not sure you read my comment. I'm not saying that charity requests don't work. I'm saying that you can't (effectively) mix charity and selling services.
Re: Reddit needs help
#239make expenses completely transparent (+hosting +salaries -advertising). prominently display this per-month quota as some kind of health-bar, and next to that a payment button. if the health-bar drops below x%, the rest of the site disappears. there is no profit in this model. let the users finance their own addiction.
I'd love to see the "health-bar" implemented - reddit is absurdly secretive about what is going wrong behind the scenes and seemingly unwilling to allow users to help. The site has suffered for lack of transparency and community management.
Re: Reddit needs help
#240Time 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.
If Condé Nast is unwilling in investing in reddit, what exactly DO they do?