
Ask HN: In theory, how would you monetize HN? - justinmares
How would you do it? How much do you think monetization would be worth?<p>Seems like an interesting marketing thought exercise.
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rgrieselhuber
I'd start a seed fund that specialized in startups driven by technical
entrepreneurs and mentor them / provide them with connections to investors. HN
would be the major channel for getting new startups to apply.

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hasenj
Didn't YC precede HN?

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e1ven
Yes; The observation is that HN _does_ monetize. It's effectively a filtering
mechanism and advertising tool for YC and YC companies.

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3dFlatLander
I'd change all amazon links to affiliate links (assuming they weren't
affiliate links already, not that I've seen very many here). There are a boat
load of posts devoted to books here, and lots of book recommendations going on
outside those posts. The big book threads get linked to again and again.

The only other thing I can suggest that I think would appeal to the community
would be to sell ads to ycombinator startups at ridiculously low rates. One to
two ads per page, nothing obscene.

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dougabug
The problem with that would be that it would encourage spam. I would only have
affiliate links in quality filtered lists (Top Picks/Most Recommended, Editors
Choice, and personal lists that users could maintain on their profile page).

Advertising inherently seems to warp content, I think a premium membership
option would put the incentive on satisfying user interests, rather than
marketers.

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zacharycohn
It would only encourage PG to spam. :p (I think the idea behind this is that
the site converts them to PG's amazon affiliate account, so he's making the
referral bonuses.)

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Adaptive
HN is already monetized. It's one of a couple effective vehicles for YC
awareness. I have no doubt that many applicants first encounter YC via HN.

That's a radically different monetization model than you might be thinking of,
but many other shorter term models would have a negative impact on the HN
experience and the YC promotion effect.

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edge17
I'm sure some do, but YC is already in the news heavily. If you look at it as
80/20, I doubt 80% of the people first learn about YC through HN.

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Vivtek
I'm in the 20, then.

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salemh
Interesting...in my techphilia, I found HackerNews through just following
interesting stories, and landing on a singular discussion, which is now a
daily obsession of going through the posted articles :D

This exposure is one of those hard to ROI measure functions (press) etc.

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petervandijck
Add a job board. 375$ per job posting.

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JunkDNA
While I think HN should have this too, I think you're setting that cost pretty
low. I've often wished there was a way to post (non-YC, non-startup) jobs to
HN. It would be at least as good as if not more effective than what you get
from a professional recruiter. I'm pretty certain a rate of $1500 would be
reasonable. Especially given the huge savings in time that I don't have to
spend filtering the total bozo applicants.

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tzs
Premium membership: $1/month, provides ability to collapse the comments below
any given comment.

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Evgeny
I would pay happily. Sometimes the discussion gets derailed and there is no
way I can effortlessly skip it.

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user24
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hockhafcdegocajmjh...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hockhafcdegocajmjhafgjncjpodihkd)

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zck
Unless the ethos of the site were changed, you'd have to have any features
limited to gold members limited because they're computationally expensive, and
not just to encourage payment -- the way reddit lets gold members have
different sort orders on eir profiles, or view more comments in one page.
Arbitrarily picking (i.e. "you can't see dead comments unless you're gold")
would make the site worse.

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geuis
I would turn HN itself into a startup company. Have some dedicated people
working on the problems of scaling, adding new frequently requested features,
and community management. It could be monetized by a mix of relevant ads and
paid premium accounts allowing access to additional aspects of the site.

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rradu
So... reddit?

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geuis
If reddit doesn't have scaling issues, then yes.

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abyssknight
Easy, charge for a monthly fee to access the site. Period. Sort of along the
lines of Metafilter's one time fee, in order to keep the commentary and
content both relevant and interesting you could raise the barrier to entry.

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rick_2047
I think this may harm the quality. I believe there are many students here who
contribute a lot and if you set the barrier too high, they wouldn't be able to
afford it.

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Zev
If you honestly think a college student can't find $5 somewhere to paypal for
a one-time fee, you're kidding yourself. And I say that as a college student.

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rick_2047
I am a college student and 10$ is my monthly allowance

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d99kris
Primarily Google Ads (or equivalent).

If HN has reached some critical mass of readers I'd (in a craigslist-fashion)
charge small fees for certain types of commercial posts (job postings, review
my startup/webservice etc).

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popschedule
I know searching the site is something I want to do constantly. I would offer
some sort of pay-for-search credits system or a membership $5-7 per month that
simply lets me search.

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zck
Did you know about <http://searchyc.com/> ? It's a good search engine for HN.

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popschedule
awesome thanks!

