

Ask HN: Could HN make it as a business? - pringle

Curious as a thought exercise -- how would/how well could HN be monetized?<p>I think PG recently mentioned it gets about 60k visitors a day. How well do you think it could be monetized, based on its audience/traffic?
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oziumjinx
Here's a revenue model: Offer users with certain karma levels discounts from
startups that provide services. The more karma you have, the higher discount
you may be able to receive from a variety of startups/services. When a user
cashes in their karma for the service, HN gets a recurring affiliate fee based
on the total fees paid to said startup. And of course users with lower karma
can still get some kind of discount from the services. Once those users karma
reaches a new higher level, another discount kicks in.

To personalize this a bit, show a simple survey link on the main nav bar that
lets users select the types of services they are intereted in. This would then
be used to populate a sidebar with dinky ads or other promotions from
startups/events.

Here's another one: Have events/conferences sponsor specific threads in
HN...Whichever comment receives the most points get a discount or free pass.
Once again, affiliate fees on other users signing up for the event kicks back
to HN.

And another: create an automated newsletter that sends you a roundup of the
days highest voted stories (with topic personlization if you want [ie, only
send me Ask HN or 'seeking feedback' type stories]). Sell a few ads in the
sidebar to startups on a budget.

If HN is averaging 60k uniques/day, that newsletter could grow pretty quickly.
Sell of small banners at a decent CPM and it should make some money. And then
of course layer on a taxonomy binding ad server that shows ads relevant to the
topic(s) that are displayed in the newsletter based on the users preferences.

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lhorie
You could use the site as a way to promote the existence of your venture
capital firm to highly intelligent people who are actually interested in
start-ups.

Oh wait, it does that already.

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pringle
That's a good point, but I meant this more in terms of taking YC out of the
picture and just looking at the site alone.

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lhorie
Hmm, you mean, look at HN as a Digg/Reddit/Slashdot look-alike? The
"aggregator site model" is pretty simple to describe, really: screw quality,
get moar users, ads, profit. It clearly works as a business model, but whether
that plays to the strengths of HN is a completely different matter.

~~~
pringle
I guess what sets HN apart is the premium it places on quality rather than
growth/traffic. And that it caters to a specific niche rather than a bunch of
disparate, mainstream topics. So the question is if it could still do well
given those differences.

~~~
lhorie
If your revenue comes from ads, then almost by definition, small community ==
small revenue.

Imho, leveraging pg's experience in start-ups and the community here seems
like a better way of exploring monetization options.

Look at it this way: of the following ways of monetizing, one could argue that
the more niche-specific, the more potential the model has:

\- ads (target: just about everyone)

\- sell a book/magazine about running a startup (target: people interested in
start-ups)

\- fund start-ups that came about partially thanks to HN (target: people
_doing_ start-ups)

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apollo
I think HN could charge a lot for a job board. I think this is the site with
the highest concentration of people I would want to hire.

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oziumjinx
Turn the "Seeking feedback on my startup" into a premium service. Startups
submit their site and mini-pitch/boilerplate. Users go visit the site but the
site could be framed with a dinky toolbar at the top that is used for
usability/feedback review. Mocking up their website, writing notes, giving
feedback, etc. All that data is aggregated into a nice dashboard that the
startup can review. They could even filter by a users karma to ween out the
crap if someone isnt giving constructive criticism. They could also vote on
who gives them the best feedback, which would add to that users karma
(redeemable for prizes or services from other startups).

So, the startup pays some amount, lets say, $500 for the feedback service. HN
guarantees that they will receive 100 pieces of feedback using this tool
(which of course would be using node.js, closure, haskel, [insert any trending
technology here]). Once the 100 pieces of feedback are received, the
'sponsored link' gets removed and another goes in its place. The startup could
also request feedback only from users with certain karma levels (which would
cost more money).

HN shows a maximum of 1 sponsored review link at the top of the site, or mixed
in somewhere, at a time. I dont think it would be too tough to get 100
feedback notes in a single day (with 60k users that love checking out new
startups).

Let's say only one is shown each day, thats $15,000 per month in revenue for
that service. That'll buy a lot of ramen.

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sabj
The question is how "much" monetization, right...? I think because it's a very
tightly targeted group, there is a fair amount of room - whether for some of
the more innovative offerings below, or just B2B things for startups - but it
seems like scalability would be a difficulty, in terms of 'growing' the
business. (Plus, the business aspects in that sense could corrode some of the
real motivations for HN).

HN _does_ serve a business purpose and I think it provides Y Combinator with
-great- ROI : )

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icey
Reddit has significantly more traffic and is having a tough time with it:

<http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/reddit-needs-help.html>

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pringle
I think that's a pretty fair example. But reddit is much less lean of an
operation than HN.

Would Reddit be considered more successful if it was a leaner organization?
They say in that post that revenues aren't great, but I wonder if that has
more to do with the size/nature of the reddit operation.

If it isn't, then my questions is: are they just not doing a good job of
monetizing, or is it just very difficult to monetize that kind of site?

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csbartus
Currently there are two ways to monetize: subscription fees or ads.

The first is not viable the second is already 'built in' by discussing and
recommending various services and products on HN

~~~
coryl
Premium membership is a viable way of making money. I don't think any of this
user group would like ads though. I think they'd be willing to pay for some
sort of premium status. There is the potential for commercial gain here as
upvoted stories get lots of traffic from smart people with good income.

