

Ask HN: US users, or Global? - Mazy

I work for a startup who's current main source of revenue is advertising based. We are leading in our space in the US, but lagging behind some competitors globally. Given how we all make money, I think this is a pretty good situation to be in.<p>What do you think, would you rather be leading in the US, and other more highly monetizable markets (Germany, Japan, UK, etc), or be leading in an absolute, global scale, even if a good chunk of your traffic won't necessarily bring revenue?
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jasonlbaptiste
Profits = Revenue - Costs

If you can't make money there, and with the business you're probably in, the
costs are significant when it comes to bandwidth, then you should not be
there.

We're also not talking about a _gain lots of users and monetize later_ type of
plan like Twitter. There's no money to be made in these countries. With the
economy being the way it is, and being a startup, you can't run yourselves
into a wall of knives.

Also look at it from a competitive angle. What would you think if your
competitors went there just to be a _bigger brand_. You'd probably think they
made a bad move. If dominating countries that are monetizable doesn't make you
a big enough brand, dominating in countries that don't bring revenues surely
won't. It will probably make you go broke.

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medianama
I would say it depends on marginal cost of growing in other markets. If you
need to localize the site/content and/or need offline presence (sales team,
etc), it might not be such a good idea. If all you need to do is strike a
couple of content partnerships or PR exercise in those regions and can be
handled by one person - you must go for it... Growth of
Orkut/Linkedin/Facebook in India is a good example

Monetization might be lower today, but things may (and will) change going
forward...

