Ask HN: How do Tumblr & Posterous make money?  - dropshopsa
======
geekfactor
I've included links to a few relevant Quora threads here:

<http://www.quora.com/What-is-Posterous-business-model>

<http://www.quora.com/Posterous/How-does-Posterous-make-money>

<http://www.quora.com/Tumblr/How-does-Tumblr-make-money>

[http://www.quora.com/How-exactly-will-Tumblr-monetize-
Other-...](http://www.quora.com/How-exactly-will-Tumblr-monetize-Other-than-
premium-themes)

<http://www.quora.com/Tumblr/How-does-Tumblr-generate-revenue>

[http://www.quora.com/How-do-free-blog-publishing-
platforms-e...](http://www.quora.com/How-do-free-blog-publishing-platforms-e-
g-Blogger-Tumblr-WordPress-make-money)

[http://www.quora.com/How-do-you-monetize-blogging-as-the-
blo...](http://www.quora.com/How-do-you-monetize-blogging-as-the-blogging-
platform-provider-\(e.g.-Tumblr-Posterous-etc.\))

There is surprisingly little detail here, though, possibly suggesting that the
companies haven't quite figured it out yet!

~~~
dropshopsa
This is a nice comment from one of your links: Luis Felipe Lanz, Intrapreneur,
software architect, tec...

In my humble opinion, Posterous seems to be following the same strategy than
Foursquare, Twitter or even Quora, start for free until get a consolided
installed base users, then start side business around publicity.

~~~
cageface
That sounds uncomfortably familiar to us veterans of the '99 crash.

~~~
mattslight
until adwords, what was the Google business model?

~~~
william42
Wasn't it «being part of Stanford» originally?

~~~
ianl
Larry and Sergey started Google, at which time it was no longer a stanford
research project, many years before AdWords.

In fact, they were very resistant to the idea of have any advertisements and
were adamant in maintaining clean search results.

------
nhangen
I don't know why they won't use nice looking ads from sites like Carbon or The
Deck, which IMO add value rather than take away.

I just read that Tumblr has passed WordPress in terms of # of installed blogs,
but I believe Matt's company makes tons more cash. Very interesting too,
considering WP is OS.

~~~
rokhayakebe
Wordpress has also enabled lots of developers to make tons of money through
templates and plugins. For example, woothemes makes millions/year selling
wordpress templates.

------
daydream
Serious question: do they?

~~~
foos
Yep: <http://mixergy.com/woothemes-adriaan-pienaar/>

------
e-dard
I don't think Tumblr are making money at the moment. I mean, they might sell
themes but that's hardly going to come close to their outgoings.

I guess they're working on the revenue generating bit, as seems to be the case
for so many funded tech companies over the last few years.

~~~
ivanbernat
They are making money but probably not much. David once said they would
probably make millions if they put a single AdSense banner in the Dashboard,
but they refuse to use regular advertising and want to make a more creative
way of making money.

(Source: [http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/22/founder-stories-karp-
tumblr...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/22/founder-stories-karp-tumblr-
making-money/))

------
rokhayakebe
If they could fetch $1 cpm and sell their entire inventory they could pull
$1M/day.

Correction: $1M every four days <http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/17/tumblr-
pageviews-a-day/>

------
dropshopsa
According to Techsmart Posterious a Funding:$5.14M! There has to be some
brains behind it somewhere.

<http://www.crunchbase.com/company/posterous>

~~~
dropshopsa
Tumbler 40.3M! <http://www.crunchbase.com/company/tumblr>

------
jarin
I believe I saw something about Posterous adding affiliate codes to links
unless you already have one on there.

~~~
dropshopsa
Can this generate enough revenue to run the service?

~~~
jarin
I don't think so, but I also know that judicious use of caching and Amazon S3
can keep your costs relatively low.

------
duck
With how terrible the Tumblr service has been the past year (I finally had to
move every site I had off of it) I often wonder if they _are_ making money. I
had read somewhere they make pretty good on the themes and "feature" piece,
but not sure how that could amount to very much.

~~~
kawohi
Must be just you, Tumblr been running great for my 30+ blogs.

~~~
ceejayoz
Point Pingdom at it and see if you still think that. I get at least one
downtime notice a week.

------
evertonfuller
I wonder how file hosting sites make money. Especially those without ads.

/threadjacker

~~~
just_testing
Those with ads (like 4shared and megaupload) get money from annoyingly trying
to get you to subscribe to get pirated content.

Yes, megavideo, I am looking at your 72-minutes limit.

About those without ads, probably their business model is to trying to get you
to subscribe, by being less annoying than those without ads.

------
kristofferR
Posterous: Add affiliate links, special marketing deals with brands

Tumblr: Premium themes, featured directory listings, "digital stickers"

They could probably earn a lot more if they started with ads or premium
accounts. Right now it looks like they're focused on acquiring users, the
focus on profits will likely come later.

~~~
cmelbye
Two of Tumblr's three sources of revenue (featured directory listings and
digital stickers to put on directory listings) are no longer after they
ditched the old directory system a few months ago in favor of a curated one.

------
dpcan
Personally, I think if they just offered premium themes at a fair price they
would make a killing.

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lurchpop
they borrow it

------
jroes
For Posterous, custom domains are $13 (or maybe $25, the custom domain signup
page is a little confusing) if you register through them. There's a fair
amount of markup there.

