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Reddit needs help

blog.reddit.com

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Re: Reddit needs help

#41

Post by nailer »

axod wrote: post #35
vaksel wrote: post #6

280 million page views a month and they aren't breaking even to support 4 engineers? wtf

They have a userbase which is ridiculously hard to monetize (IMHO). I'd bet the % of adblock users on Reddit is way higher than the average. The Reddit crowd aren't your average mainstream user. It's a particular crowd (liberal anti-capitalism pro-cannabis etc etc) [Again, just my opinion] Also they really have very few adverts at all on the site, and those that are there, are tucked away not very noticable. Say you…

They should integrate their ad platform with their static image platform - ie, all logos, thumbnails, and ads are served from the same dir on the same host, perhaps with similar filenames.

Adblock would still work, but ad-rippers be reduced to a text only site.

Re: Reddit needs help

#43

Post by hotmind »

Reddit is user generated content. Without the users, who are the readers and contributers, Reddit wouldn't even exist. And yet they want subscription fees from the very users who carry the website?

Reddit have ads plastered prominently on the site, Reddit TV, a 99 cent app, I assume merch (correct me if I'm wrong), free user generated content from a massive hardcore following, and millions of pageviews a day (too lazy to look up the exact number) - and yet they still can't make a go of it?

If so, that does not bode well for the rest of us.

Re: Reddit needs help

#44

Post by mdwrigh2 »

swilliams wrote: post #2

It's good that they're seeking ways to increase revenue, but this comes across as nearly cyber-begging. "...we can right now only offer you our undying gratitude and an optional trophy on your userpage." Yikes. What else could reddit offer for subscribers other than a png? Can reddit or similar platforms find a good way to generate revenue? Obviously ads and merchandise (t-shirts, etc) aren't doing it alone here.

They don't actually have merchandise that generates a profit. All of their merchandise is done through breadpig, where 100% of the profits go to a charity.

Re: Reddit needs help

#45

Post by sethg »

gonehome wrote: post #4
swilliams wrote: post #2

It's good that they're seeking ways to increase revenue, but this comes across as nearly cyber-begging. "...we can right now only offer you our undying gratitude and an optional trophy on your userpage." Yikes. What else could reddit offer for subscribers other than a png? Can reddit or similar platforms find a good way to generate revenue? Obviously ads and merchandise (t-shirts, etc) aren't doing it alone here.

I think they are generating revenue, just not enough for Conde Nast to increase their budget. This seems like a way for them to get extra money that they can personally use toward the site.

...unless, of course, the Conde Nast “mother ship” sees the income figures from the reddit subscribers and says “Nice revenue stream. We’ll take it!”

Re: Reddit needs help

#46

Post by brianwillis »

I gladly forked over $10.

I can't remember who I'm quoting here, but it comes from someone in the Voluntary Simplicity movement and it really struck a chord with me:

>With your money you get to chose what exists in the world.

It's one of the the last truly democratic forms of voting. In some ways, consumerism is an unriggable election, with the market deciding (for better or worse - sometimes worse) what is allowed to thrive and what dies.

A few people have expressed the opinion that because Reddit is owned by a large corporation, that asking for donations is unjustified. The way I see it, they're creating value, and have a right to ask for payment for that. In exchange for your dollars, you get to see a great community continue existing in the world.

Re: Reddit needs help

#47

Post by axod »

lipstick.com was always going to be far easier to monetize.

(The site Reddit made for Conde Naste before they bought Reddit).

Celebs? Gossip? Woman demographics? non techie? Jeez you'd have been able to make millions...

http://web.archive.org/web/20071025012630/http://lipstick.co...

The site seems to have been killed and not used since 2007. Stupidly bad decision IMHO.

Even if you stuck up a crappy website on that domain and just sold lipstick it'd probably pay to run Reddit.

Re: Reddit needs help

#48

Post by zyb09 »

city41 wrote: post #12

I think if any site could pull this off, Reddit could. Somehow, somewhere, someway, Reddit became a social news site that has a strong sense of community to it. Redditors feel good being "Redditors", and feel an affinity towards the site. My prediction is this actually works.

No doubt, I gladly donated. I'd rather see a site asking for donations if their user-friendly business model isn't quite making enough then it turning into some kind of profit-driven popup-banner mess. Sometimes the community just needs to support the free services it enjoys, be it Wikipedia, Apache or Reddit.

Re: Reddit needs help

#49

Post by axod »

nailer wrote: post #41
axod wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a userbase which is ridiculously hard to monetize (IMHO). I'd bet the % of adblock users on Reddit is way higher than the average. The Reddit crowd aren't your average mainstream user. It's a particular crowd (liberal anti-capitalism pro-cannabis etc etc) [Again, just my opinion] Also they really have very few adverts at all on the site, and those that are there, are tucked away not very noticable. Say you…

They should integrate their ad platform with their static image platform - ie, all logos, thumbnails, and ads are served from the same dir on the same host, perhaps with similar filenames. Adblock would still work, but ad-rippers be reduced to a text only site.

It's trivial to get past adblock, but the fact that users use adblock means they're not the type of user you can monetize easily.

Getting past adblock doesn't really help. Changing the userbase does, but it's a bit late for that :/

Re: Reddit needs help

#50

Post by nir »

jamesshamenski wrote: post #7

Conde Nast looks like a bunch of chumps right now. I doubt Mike Raldi will last longer than a year if he has to raise funds in this way.

To be blunt (we are talking Reddit..) Conde Nast were chumps when they allowed Chris Anderson, high on his own supply, convince them to buy Reddit for its supposed "Long Tail News" value.

Now they're chumps for not putting a grown up in charge of converting 280 million page views/month and a dedicated community to enough money to support 4 engineers and a bunch of servers.

The comparison to Gruber etc is misleading, since Gruber never got bought by a major company. This is more like 30 Rock asking you to donate to NBC.

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