

Ask HN: A startup that is not charging user and still profitable? - rokhayakebe

Do you know of any startup that is not charging users or taking a commission from sales and still profitable?
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patio11
See, I think this question isn't as actionable as you might think it is. It is
like saying "Do you know of anyone who dropped out of high school to play
professional basketball and made it to the NBA?"

Yes, I do. I still really wouldn't suggest you try it. The countries' stoops
and prisons are covered with was-a-sure-thing-to-go-pro. And the Internet has
several million sites already hunting for that six figure AdSense check.
(While boring little niche websites with subscriber numbers smaller than many
people's Facebook friends list can be ramen profitable within weeks or months
of launch.)

~~~
rokhayakebe
No matter how I look at it, it seems that every new startup "secretly"
believes that somehow they will make money where others have not when using
the same model (advertising). At the same time, online advertising is still
young and maybe some of these startups will do well in the near future.

~~~
eru
Google makes a lot of money advertising. Though you might say there are mostly
meta-advertising.

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FiReaNG3L
<http://esciencenews.com> is profitable 7 months after launch, with only some
ads on the backend where most users dont see them, and i put the ads there a
month ago.

~~~
shafqat
How do you make money? I love the site btw. And love the fact that you can get
full text "articles" because you go to research/universities for content.

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ctingom
One that come to mind that _might_ be making a profit: Mint.com

~~~
unalone
Doesn't Mint charge its customers?

~~~
patio11
Yes, Mint does charge its customers, but their customers aren't who you think
they are.

They automatically suggest [= scales with no marginal effort] financial
products which they claim are good fits for the users (who are _not_ the
customers). For example, they might say "You're paying $X in interest a month
with your current credit card Y. If you were to switch to credit card Z, you
would only be paying $Q, saving you $P a month."

Credit card Z then pays them an affiliate commission for the lead. The issuer
of credit card Z is the actual customer.

~~~
moswald
This is the model I have been using in my app. The goal is to have your
vendors/customers be a function and asset of your service, provided to the
free user base.

It's really all about extremely targeted but transparent marketing as well as
finding interesting ways to utilize user data. The data and its interpretation
is what is really valuable, and that is what the customers are paying for. It
cant just be simple advertising though, it has to resolve a shared necessity
of both customer and user.

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kyro
PlentyOfFish.com comes to mind because of recent buzz.

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brianr
Yes! We (LOLapps) fall into this category. Lots of traffic + ads = $$$

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dejb
Pretty much every web publishing company aims to make money from advertising
and yes many do actually make a profit. Perhaps you have not framed your
question as intended.

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axod
Depends what you class as "startup".

There are millions of websites, making millions from advertising, without
charging users.

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bjclark
Hulu.com is making money hand over fist.

~~~
staunch
Revenue != profit

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phil_KartMe
some businesses that might fit the criteria are LinkedIn, digg (profitable
without growth investments), gawker media, and techcrunch

that said, i consider advertisers, investment professionals, and hr recruiters
"users"

~~~
DenisM
let's not mix users and customers.

~~~
phil_KartMe
its tricky when users and customers can migrate back and forth between the
roles (e.g., linkedin's freemium model)

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DenisM
google :-)

~~~
statictype
I'm pretty sure they stopped qualifying as a startup at least 5 years ago.

