
Let's Buy Hackaday - evlapix
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/let-s-buy-hackaday
======
joonix
Or we could setup a free wordpress site and spread the word that the new
Hackaday is at newsite.com, and not completely waste $540,000. What a
disgrace.

~~~
pavs
10 years worth of articles have value, I bet 80% of their monthly traffic
comes from search engine. No amount of opening up a new free hosted wordpress
blog and calling it the new hackaday is going to change that.

You might not see value in it, but I wouldn't be too surprised if some big
blog network snaps up hackaday soon.

With a little bit care you can make some serious money with that much traffic,
even if most of the traffic is tech savvy and some of them might use adblock
and generally immune to traditional ads.

~~~
joonix
Right. It's a business. I don't get any of the ad revenue. Why am I being
asked to donate money for what's essentially a private equity buyout?

~~~
pavs
Oh I misunderstood, I thought you were referring to the value of the blog.

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ljdawson
I saw they were going to sell Hackaday the other week and created my own
alternative: [http://hackeveryday.com](http://hackeveryday.com)

Would love to get a few authors /submitters on board and keep the site free.
There are better ways to spend that $500k.

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ryanmcdonough
Just so we're clear, I'm putting money towards it so someone else can buy it &
make profit? Not sure what I'm getting out of this deal that I'd get it some
private company bought it on their own.

~~~
sejje
Yes, seems like we're supposed to fund these guys buying it so it will
supposedly be "cooler." They're going to have the "current writers and
editors" own it, but they're at odds with other writers and editors, it seems.

Nary a buck was given.

~~~
calebkraft
Just to clarify a single point here. There are no writers or editors at odds
with eachother. Brian is doing this in an attempt to buy it from Jason. I'm
moving on to other things regardless of what happens at Hackaday. We're all
super good friends and get along great.

As for the rest of the thoughts and concerns, well, not my problem!

~~~
sejje
I read that you had come to an impasse about how the site should be run with a
competing group also seeking to acquire the site.

I didn't mean to imply anything too nebulous, and of course defer to you on
it...you guys wrote it in the first place, and I simply meant to reference it.

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mbesto
So the owner get's to sell completely on his terms?!? Sounds like Calacanis is
going to make out like a bandit.

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georgemcbay
How about we don't bother and just subscribe to the Adafruit blog, which
covers similar ground but is generally more interesting and timely (IMO)?

(Though, granted, it does include ads for Adafruit products, which isn't an
issue for me since that's some great targeted marketing).

I have nothing against Hackaday, I've followed the site for years, but I'd
rather spend money on cool products at Adafruit than toss it into a vague
blackhole for purposes I don't quite understand with no guarantee the site
will even remain up or relevant to me.

~~~
calebkraft
Their blog is fantastic actually. And while there are ads for adafruit items,
you'll notice there are literally no other ads. zero.

Hackaday has adsense, so if you're not blocking it, you get the usual banners.

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bestham
I don't understand what the money buys you. Just fork it, set up a new
Hackaday and raise money for a specific purpose. Not to make the people behind
the original site rich.

~~~
duked
I guess the money here buys you the domain name but more importantly the
traffic associated to it. If you fork it, you need to do a lot of SEO and hope
that one day you hit the stats of hackaday.

~~~
bestham
So I figured, but my stance is that in the long run the repute and traffic
would not matter. I'm more in favor of the OSS-mentatlity: fork it. I've never
believed in crowd-sourcing funding for a buyout as I have little faith in the
that the market is working when the buyer is not paying out of his own pocket
and after all you're only exchanging one private owner for another.

~~~
duked
I completely agree, in that case it makes no sense: why should I chip in for
someone else to be the owner.

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pdq
I've got much respect for Jason Calacanis and his "This week in startups"
Youtube channel, but I don't see how this benefits the contributors. Half a
million donations and the users don't reap the dividends of investment, or
earn an interest in the site?

Either the site should be sold as an investment so someone gets a real
financial interest, or someone should just make "newhackaday.com" as a non-
profit and move everyone over there.

~~~
harold
From Calacanis recently on Twitter:

 _" Need designer to work gratis on wearable computer mockups for editorial.
grt exposure/u own content. ping jason AT inside.com"_

[https://twitter.com/Jason/status/352489885682241536](https://twitter.com/Jason/status/352489885682241536)

~~~
jlgaddis
He's making five figures a month from this (Hack-a-day) site, putting that
back into other startups, looking to get half a million out of it, and wants a
designer to work for him _FOR FREE_!?

Yeah, now I'm even happier that I decided to keep my money.

------
pyoung
Before contributing, you should probably read this:

[http://hackaday.com/2013/07/15/were-going-to-buy-
hackaday/#m...](http://hackaday.com/2013/07/15/were-going-to-buy-
hackaday/#more-99917)

~~~
ChuckMcM
Fascinating, I liked this bit, _" Here’s the skinny: if this campaign is
funded, the writers and editors of Hackaday will keep doing what we’re doing.
If we’re successful, we’re going to write up more hacks than we are right
now,"_

Reading through that particular link its clear that the challenge here is a
business model that pays the writers and editors enough money. Raising 500K
isn't going to get them a business model. Which explains the second question I
had when I read the headline, which was "Why aren't they getting investment
from a venture fund?" I'm guessing they are still working on a model going
forward which would make an outside investor nervous.

The other thing I wonder is how their traffic has been changed by Google
Reader going away, if at all. That's because I'm generally curious on that
question. It seemed to me that it was a big traffic generator but I didn't
have any proof one way or the other on that.

------
JonSkeptic
I think the Hackaday site can shed some light on this. It appears that the
owner wants to sell and the community wants to buy to preserve it.

[http://hackaday.com/2013/07/15/were-going-to-buy-
hackaday/](http://hackaday.com/2013/07/15/were-going-to-buy-hackaday/)

------
steve19
I find it hard to believe it is worth $500,000. Jason is going to be making
some easy money.

~~~
dwild
Have you read the blog post? They are making $14k a month, I know nothing
about website valuation but I thought 36 months was the norm.

~~~
joonix
So I'm supposed to _give_ money so two managers can buy out the shareholder of
a company, with no expectation of returns. I'm sorry, is Hackaday a charity?
Am I getting a return on my investment here? Am I getting any of that $14k a
month? Let me get this straight, I'm giving money to two guys to do a buyout
of a site that makes $14k a month, and I don't get a piece of the cash flow?

This is all so preposterous, I don't know how Kickstarter is even allowing
this to happen on their site. Calacanis is one hell of a scammer.

~~~
dwild
I guess you consider content doesn't have value then? This is the return. If
it's not enough for you, nobody force you to give. This is the beauty of crowd
funding.

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rabidonrails
"If this is funded, what’s stopping you from buying Hackaday, then selling it
and keeping the money? The same could be said if Jason sells to someone else.
At least with this plan there’s some accountability."

Is ^this really true? I don't think so.

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nakedrobot2
Uh, selling a link for $10,000? Really people?

~~~
jlgaddis
That's against Google's rules and doing that could get them banned from
Adsense and then it's bye-bye to that easy $14k/month recurring revenue...

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kitcar
Odd they list Page Views and not Unique Visitors - page views as a valuation
metric really isn't THAT important, as you can inflate/deflate it using design
(i.e. split articles onto multiple pages, etc...)

