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Perplexity got ads

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Re: Perplexity got ads

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because payment processing and customer support take almost all of the $5, if not more than it.

Isn't payment processing just single digit percents? And customer support... What's that?

> Isn't payment processing just single digit percents?

It is usually a fixed component + a single digit percentage. For larger payments the fixed component becomes largely irrelevant. For small payments it can eat up most of the money involved.

As a quick example, Stripe's standard price for a credit card transaction in the US is 2.9% + $0.30. For a $5 payment that's almost 10% in direct fees, which is just about low enough that this is often where saas pricing starts.

This assumes you do tax calculation yourself (or ignore it until you're big enough) and handle fraud detection yourself. If you pay Stripe for these you're paying a significantly larger fixed fee.

There's also another significant risk at such low prices: In case of a disputed payment, which can happen a long time after the payment and will likely be more frequent if you don't pay to proactively deal with fraud, Stripe will charge you a $15 dispute fee regardless of the end result.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because payment processing and customer support take almost all of the $5, if not more than it.

Isn't payment processing just single digit percents? And customer support... What's that?

No, it's percents plus a fixed cent amount. Something like 30c is normal.

Customer support: When you are charging money for something, you need to give support to customers regarding their billing etc.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, 29K subscribers is quite alright considering that they are not doing any ads. So their marketing is largely word of mouth as I understand it. Of course, they are not going to grow to the level of FANG with this approach but do they have to? I am a very happy Kagi subscriber myself. And I loathe when I have to wade through SEO spam sites on the few occasions where I have to use Google, Bing, etc. due to being on…

> Of course, they are not going to grow to the level of FANG with this approach but do they have to? They do if they want to demonstrate that paying is a viable alternative to ads, and not just a niche curiosity.

Why would anyone want to demonstrate that? Why would any small player feel the need to grow to FANG level at all?

They run a profitable company that is supported by fees paid by clients. Just this alone is the proof it works. And is far, far away from the speculative nature of stock market and FANG.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, 29K subscribers is quite alright considering that they are not doing any ads. So their marketing is largely word of mouth as I understand it. Of course, they are not going to grow to the level of FANG with this approach but do they have to? I am a very happy Kagi subscriber myself. And I loathe when I have to wade through SEO spam sites on the few occasions where I have to use Google, Bing, etc. due to being on…

> Of course, they are not going to grow to the level of FANG with this approach but do they have to? They do if they want to demonstrate that paying is a viable alternative to ads, and not just a niche curiosity.

By that measure, every company in the world except the magnificent seven is a niche curiosity.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#245
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think ads fundamentally help people.

Except they do. They help connect buyers with needs/wants to sellers with solutions. I know this breaks HNs brain so I don't expect to win this one however. Can ads encourage people to buy stuff they don't need? Yes. Like most things (including humans), they aren't perfectly rational.

> They help connect buyers with needs/wants to sellers with solutions.

You know what else does this but in a non-creepy, non-tracking way that doesn't try to artificially create needs/wants in people? Accurate search results.

If I want something I can search for it and find it. SEO and advertising and sponsored results are the way companies try to skew search results (usually by making them less accurate and useful for the person searching) in a way that benefits them.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#246
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet Kagi is doing well, and I'm very happy to pay a few bucks a month to be their customer instead of their product.

Genuinely interested. So I went to their site and I have to say it's quite refreshing. But then - a few bucks a month turns out to be $5/month, and that comes with a limit of 300 searches/month. That's an average of just 10 a day and while in practice I probably wouldn't actually hit that limit it's uncomfortably low enough that the added fiction of each search having a tangible cost is just a non-starter. I can't he…

But search is not just another service, a hardly noticeable addition to the daily internet experience. Much like a browser is not just another app you barely use.

Search is central to my internet experience. If there is one service worth paying for, it should be search. But for that it should be better enough than ad-supported options to be worth the subscription. I think Kagi has got so close that I should start shelling $10/mo for it.

(Another service I think is a no-brainer to pay for is YouTube, mostly because ad-ridden YouTube is insufferable.)

Re: Perplexity got ads

#247

Big surprise. It’s almost as if internet 1.0 shook out the way it did for a reason, and for all the complaining about ads, fast forward 25 years and consumers still fundamentally refuse to pay for search. It’s the same reason the phone book was also free and ad supported pre-internet. I don’t know why we can’t accept this reality and why we need to masochistically flog ourselves every time this is proven true over an…

> consumers still fundamentally refuse to pay for search.

Let's try again. Very few services that ask for "the price of a Starbucks coffee" subscription are actually worth that much to consumers.

Search or not search.

As long as the service providers don't understand that, they'll be limited in audience to high income techies and won't be able to grow any further.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#248
post #72
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a better idea for making AI chatbots profitable then I'm sure all the AI chatbot companies which are losing staggering amounts of money would love to hear it. The first step is to find any business model that works, shittily or unshittily.

Shouldn’t they just be asking their AI chat bot what’s the best way to make money and then do that?

Maybe they did.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because payment processing and customer support take almost all of the $5, if not more than it.

Isn't payment processing just single digit percents? And customer support... What's that?

Aren’t their in-house agents doing the “support” ?

Re: Perplexity got ads

#250

Big surprise. It’s almost as if internet 1.0 shook out the way it did for a reason, and for all the complaining about ads, fast forward 25 years and consumers still fundamentally refuse to pay for search. It’s the same reason the phone book was also free and ad supported pre-internet. I don’t know why we can’t accept this reality and why we need to masochistically flog ourselves every time this is proven true over an…

Do consumers refuse to pay for search, or has nobody asked them if they'd want to?

Kagi is well-known on HN, but I guarantee my parents have never heard of it. I told my wife about it the other day, and she had never heard of it either. She thought it was a cool idea. $10/month is just too much.

Sure, YellowPages had lots of ads. Hell, PCMag was ~35% ads. The difference was that their ads were clearly labeled and physically distinct from the actual content. They didn't camoflauge the ads to make them blend into the rest of the page layout. Advertisers occasionally tried, sure, but the layout would still be visibly different. Ads on the web are more insidious, and more intrusive.

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