
Students Read Hacker Monthly For Free - bearwithclaws
http://hackermonthly.posterous.com/students-read-hacker-monthly-for-free
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patrickaljord
What's the point in reading HN on paper? I would hate to type all those links
manually after reading them.

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apsurd
Just curious;

I never got these "for students" type of promotions. Everyone does it. Amazon,
fogbugz, local pizza shops, and a ton of others I'm sure.

Maybe I shoudn't say "I don't get it", because I guess I do. The student label
is pretty convenient and as everyone seems to understand it; "students are
broke" because they have to pay for school and cannot work full time? Is that
it?

A lot of people legitimately struggle to pay for things and are "broke". While
it is true that being a student is a good thing, it does not entail that not
being a student, (or maybe just specifically not being a student at a
qualifying university that gives out .edu addresses or something) is a bad
thing.

I guess my point is people struggle in all sorts of ways, and I would be happy
to see a company say something more like "Free for people in need", "Pay what
you can", or something like that. Ok so I'm not the best marketer but that
would be nice in my book.

An open, honest, and truly unbiased form of helping out. =)

P.S. I guess I should put my money where my mouth is. I'll incorporate that
into my side projects and hopefully I can refine it enough to share my results
(and promotions) here with HN.

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necubi
The answer (in general, though not in this particular case because the product
is free) is price discrimination[0]. The basic idea is that by segmenting
their customers roughly by ability to pay (students and seniors will _on
average_ pay less for your product than others) you can charge higher prices
to everybody else. Otherwise, you would have to reduce your prices across the
board in order to maximize profits.

[0]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination>

~~~
Locke1689
Ah, but students aren't just poor -- they're a tricker state, one which I'd
refer to as "probabilistically temporary poor." Consider that people who read
Hacker News are probably intellectually curious and are probably more likely
to be computer science majors. It's also pretty likely that these students are
bright and will grab decent jobs after graduation. After having exprienced the
quality of Hacker Monthly, they will probably wish to continue. While they
would no longer get the student discount, they now longer need it since they
have acquired decent jobs. Since digital distribution costs practically
nothing, the only cost to the distributer is marginal, but with the benefit
that the students will probably become paying members in the future.

~~~
dekz
Exactly this. I'll attempt to speak for my kin here, I'm currently a student
and while interested in Hacker Monthly, I couldn't justify paying
(subscribing?). I entered my details in the form and hopefully I am eligible.
If the product is interesting and useful I would have no problems paying
(either when I'm no longer a student or even before that). I'm sure there are
others like me and this seems like a case of "get them hooked young and they
will be customers for life".

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ajaimk
I LOVE YOU GUYS!!! Thanks a lot. I've actually been saving money for a
subscription but this is awesome...

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k3dz
"students can't afford $29 a year" seriously? a dinner at a half decent
restaurant would cost more

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nickbarnwell
Thus why most students aren't eating dinner at a half-decent restaurant.
Certainly $29 a year is affordable, but that's also nearly two months of a
20GB Heroku DB addon or a month and a half of an MediaTemple GridServe
instance. At the moment every penny I make from work is being put straight
into my own startup, and I'm sure it is the same for many other students that
are reading HN.

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jasonkester
This type of promotion is a great idea if you run a service that
businesspeople pay money for. Especially if said service is tons better than
the entrenched Enterprise Thing in its niche.

Roughly 100% of the students you give free licenses to will one day be sitting
in a room full of people wearing ties, trying to, for example, get WebEx to
work _at all_ so that they can get on with the big call. It's costing them
$1000 per minute to have the Director of Finance messing with the computer,
and if Bright Kid chimes in saying "why don't we just use this simple
conference thing we used in school. It always just works", then you've more
than paid for the free license you gave that kid all those years ago.

It costs you nothing to do. It gains you goodwill, marketing, future sales,
and a ton of other side benefits. If you sell stuff to businesses, absolutely
do this.

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rewolverine
Thanks for this. You may want to add emails as .ac.* since in India too we
have ac.in domains.

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bearwithclaws
Done.

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mattew
This is great. I am not a student but plan to subscribe. Now I feel even
better about my subscription.

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dgraunke
Awesome, thank you!

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rb2k_
Was there ever any sort of eMail confirmation? So far, I've put in my data and
nothing happened after that O_o

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dreur
You should add some share button on your homepage :) Would make it easier to
share this awesome mag

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ashconnor
American students only?

If not could the form be modifier to accept *.ac.uk email addresses.

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bearwithclaws
Worldwide.

Apology for my ignorance for not knowing the *.ac.uk for students in UK. I've
did a slight modification to the form.

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ugh
Universities in Germany and probably many other countries don’t have special
e-mail addresses. I guess you will either have to verify manually (if there is
indeed some kind of college or university behind the address) or just not
accept those submissions.

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bearwithclaws
Guess I will verify manually (I could always google).

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SZW
That would help. Many German universities have rudimentary English versions,
which makes things easier, too. I suppose it's enough to search the
university's name and "email", though. I found some email adresses of my
university that way, anyway. Thanks for doing this - I (and the other
students, I bet) appreciate it a lot.

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Scriptor
Awesome! Is there any way we can have access to the previous issues as well?

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bearwithclaws
Drop me an email: cheng.soon at hackermonthly

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manvsmachine
The form was broken for me; it wouldn't accept a graduation year of 2010.

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bearwithclaws
Fixed.

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raptrex
I signed up, am I suppose to get a confirmation email?

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ld50
i've been working on an extended digital version of hackermonthly that i
should mention here for all you HM subscribers.

it's a 100% digital interactive magazine (click through it!) that on a daily
basis takes the 30 "most interesting" posts from hackernews and puts them all
on a single "front page".

as a bonus i've included not just a few dozen comments but HUNDREDS of
comments (for your reading pleasure). the "front page" subscription service
costs only $.99 a month and gives you a daily "front page" in a digital,
interactive, and browser-friendly format (ipad & kindle too!). i've also put
together a "more page" subscription service that gives you access to not just
the top 30 stories but ALL STORIES -- in 30 page increments.

if you act now, each additional 30-story "More" page can be accessed for the
ridiculously low price of $.25/page.

but that's not all. if you're a student and respond to this post in the next
30 minutes, you'll get daily access to not just the "front page", not just a
"more" page, but EVERY PAGE in the entire hackernoobs archive for just
$1.99/month.

limited supply, so hurry! act now!

