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How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

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Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#81

Post by lucb1e »

edblarney wrote: post #51
lucb1e wrote: post #5

StackOverflow is an extremely valuable resource for all programmers. I've not seen the option anywhere, but a yearly donation would definitely be something I'd do for a substantial amount (substantial to me as a student, so it's not the moon but not a beer either).

"a yearly donation would definitely be something I'd do for a substantial amount" There's a word for this, it's called 'subscription' : ) They provide a service, you pay for it. It's how most of the world works. I think the underlying issue is price discrimination: how to get the large numbers of those unwilling/unable to pay some value, while providing value to the higher order users as well. It's a paradox that peo…

> There's a word for this, it's called 'subscription' : )

I avoided that word because it's the wrong word.

A subscription implies I get something that normal users don't get. I don't want that. I hate services like Dropbox where the free users get benefits for installing it on their Android or from referrals (shitty stuff) and live off of the backs of paying users. Yet here I think it's much more akin to something like open source software, which is for the general good and is worth supporting for those who are able to afford it.

Edit: There is no need to downvote the person, though. To me he seems to be contributing to the conversation.

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#82

Post by tikhonj »

subhobroto wrote: post #9
lucb1e wrote: post #5

StackOverflow is an extremely valuable resource for all programmers. I've not seen the option anywhere, but a yearly donation would definitely be something I'd do for a substantial amount (substantial to me as a student, so it's not the moon but not a beer either).

My following suggestion is a very unpopular one, but it is this: If you are a student, use the money you would have donated to StackOverflow to purchase a book or a tool that will help you to learn better and become an expert. If you are an expert, contribute your time to StackOverflow (instead of money). Money is easy to get compared to content. What helps StackOverflow grow is quality content. I am also interested…

I've contributed a fair amount to Stack Overflow, but it's actually pretty hard in the niches I care about. Not because the questions are hard, but because people answer them so quickly: it's hard to find a question I can answer that hasn't been addressed well. That's a great problem for Stack Overflow to have, of course, but I do wonder if there's some easy way to monitor specific tags without having to constantly refresh the page...

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#83

Post by Latty »

jack9 wrote: post #19

> And we don’t want to use an automated system that selects some ads for us. So they do direct deals mostly, which is antiquated and probably to preserve their branding as a "tech site". > Did you know we have a lot of unpaid inventory on Stack Overflow every month? This is what trying to guess your avails with direct ends up doing. Leaving inventory unmonetized. Typically, you get paid less for less of your inventor…

Except for all the crap about "targeted advertising", it turns out that if you run a site like StackOverflow, you can more accurately target adverts to your average user by curating the adverts than by letting some system try and guess based on whatever they have managed to sniff.

More importantly, the automated stuff is a huge security risk, and will generally annoy your users when someone puts out something they shouldn't, even if it's not a security issue.

Sure, they could saturate the pages with more crap adverts no one wants, and they would sell for less (because they would be less effective), and they'd piss off their user base.

SO has long been one of the very, very few on my adblocking whitelist. I don't dislike adverts as a core idea, but 99% of advertising online is invasive, annoying and useless.

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#84

Post by lucb1e »

Paul-ish wrote: post #10
lucb1e wrote: post #5

StackOverflow is an extremely valuable resource for all programmers. I've not seen the option anywhere, but a yearly donation would definitely be something I'd do for a substantial amount (substantial to me as a student, so it's not the moon but not a beer either).

It is probably better that stack overflow can support itself. Donations would put them at the mercy of others whims. A donation model doesn't make sense when a company can sustain itself while still preserving its core values.

> Donations would put them at the mercy of others whims.

Yes, which is why I assume they didn't even bother putting up a donate button. The thing that convinced me to post anyway is that it's probably very clear to a lot of people that it is definitely worth supporting. Much more than the Archive project or the Tor project, this is something I know people use so much every day and get tremendous value from. That's why it might just work in this case, similar to Wikipedia.

It's also not exclusive, they can totally put up donations and try to attract some attention for it by posting it to their own ad system, and at the same time continue with all the current efforts.

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#85

Post by lucb1e »

tikhonj wrote: post #82
subhobroto wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My following suggestion is a very unpopular one, but it is this: If you are a student, use the money you would have donated to StackOverflow to purchase a book or a tool that will help you to learn better and become an expert. If you are an expert, contribute your time to StackOverflow (instead of money). Money is easy to get compared to content. What helps StackOverflow grow is quality content. I am also interested…

I've contributed a fair amount to Stack Overflow, but it's actually pretty hard in the niches I care about. Not because the questions are hard, but because people answer them so quickly: it's hard to find a question I can answer that hasn't been addressed well. That's a great problem for Stack Overflow to have, of course, but I do wonder if there's some easy way to monitor specific tags without having to constantly r…

Well if there is no work left to be done, so be it I guess? I don't think you should feel bad about that :)

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#86

Post by mehrdada »

lucb1e wrote: post #5

StackOverflow is an extremely valuable resource for all programmers. I've not seen the option anywhere, but a yearly donation would definitely be something I'd do for a substantial amount (substantial to me as a student, so it's not the moon but not a beer either).

You can also buy a beer for folks who actually wrote an answer you used if you ever meet them IRL. I bet direct revenue from users would be negligible by the other revenue streams Stack Overflow Inc pursues.

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#87

Post by rbobby »

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.

> If you mark it as spam, we’ll unsubscribe you.

How would they know?

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#88

Post by chinathrow »

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.

How about opt-in first?

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#89

Post by skizm »

rbobby wrote: post #87
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.

> If you mark it as spam, we’ll unsubscribe you. How would they know?

They probably assume if you make as spam, you will also be unresponsive to the email. If you are responsive they can say that overrides the marking as spam action.

Re: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow

#90

Post by Latty »

Alupis wrote: post #22

Perhaps it's time they consider paying Moderators for their time and effort. It doesn't need to be anything large, even a small stipend will suffice. Moderators are the real lifeblood of StackExchange. They spend countless hours ensuring their respective Sub Exchange hums along. Yes, it's a volunteer "job", but it's a job none-the-less - especially since once you become a Moderator, it's more-or-less expected you hav…

I mean, sure, but I'm not sure why you say '"volunteers"' - they are exactly volunteers. Yes, extracting labour for free from volunteers can be the sign of something shady, but with SE I don't really see that evil intent.

Moderators not being staff means that the community has more say in how the sites function, which is a thing people want. It's hard - communities want to police themselves, not be dictated unto by a controlling body. As soon as you start paying the moderators, they are under your sway.

I also don't think it'd be easy to create a fair remuneration system that didn't incentivise the wrong thing, or create pressure on moderators that they don't currently have.

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