

Ask HN: My site's popular. How would YOU monetise it? - TimH
http://favstar.fm/
Hey guys, the server bill's getting pretty big now.  I'd like to start setting up some paid accounts pretty soon.  Apart from crawling people more often, can you see any creative ways to give extra benefits to paid members?  Any suggestions appreciated.  :-)
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mahmud
Virtual goods. Go super edgy, forget flowers.gif and hugs.png: vices sell,
introduce liquor, hookers and hard drugs. Maybe even go deep on the cultural
references, even be a little harsh and xenophobic. Virtual gifts have a
general positive connotation because they're usually given to _friends_ , on
facebook and other closed social networks. Twittering is a place for
adversaries, a perfect play ground for irony and everything anti.

As a super premium: allow people to upload their own text and graphics for a
dollar, and attach _that_ to the tweet.

    
    
      @squarejaw bought *victim* a pair of nads
    
      @ironical sends you a touching violin solo on a miniature DVD
    
      @citygirl sends you another pair of pink polo shirts to wear over all your others
    

etc.

~~~
TimH
Interesting idea. Would anyone here actually pay for virtual goods? Examples?
I can't say I ever have on facebook apps etc..

~~~
patio11
I own about $20,000 of notional fractional interest in an absolutely ginormous
pool of paper slips with numbers on them. Except, there isn't actually any
paper anymore, since they made it all electronic. But if there were slips of
paper, they would number in the billions, each saying that I own fractional
interest in the real property and future earnings of a particular person. No
person named on any of the non-existent pieces of paper actually exists --
that is the point of having the paper in the first place. Or not having it, as
the case may be.

I have also paid for software, music, videos, text messaging, online
connectivity, phone time, concerts, priority boarding, and World of Warcraft.

But I wouldn't ever pay money for virtual goods, oh no, _that stuff just isn't
real_.

(Moral of the story: it is all how you sell it.)

~~~
dan_the_welder
If you think you've talked me into buying you "kiss under mistletoe" you're
wrong.

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vulpes
I don't think you'd be able to get people to pay for premium features...what
would they be anyways? I do have 1 idea: Sponsored tweet placement. Companies
are probably willing to pay extra money for certain tweets to get special
placement.

Besides that you should get retweets/replies working, i wanted to RT a few
things and got put off by the coming soon box.

~~~
nbhat
Sponsored tweets are a good idea. But results are best when companies get to
target the audience based on their interest. For example, a company would more
likely to spend to show ads on specific search term than all the search term.
So if you can find a way to categorize the people visiting your site based on
retweets or fav patterns and have separate categories of favs then you can
have targeted sponsored tweets.

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JshWright
Why not a simple "Buy this on a t-shirt" link next to popular tweets? Given
how easy it is to print stuff on shirts now, I'm sure someone has an API for
resellers looking to put words on a t shirt.

~~~
josefresco
Fark.com and CNN.com also do this. And it's an awesome idea. Geeks love
snarky/one-liner tshirts.

(hint: offer them in black and in XXL)

~~~
trafficlight
I wish there were fewer black tshirts out there. I will buy any color but
black.

------
TimH
Hey guys, the server bill's getting pretty big now. I'd like to start setting
up some paid accounts pretty soon. Apart from crawling people more often, can
you see any creative ways to give extra benefits to paid members? Any
suggestions appreciated. :-)

~~~
larryfreeman
You might want to check out the story behind HotOrNot:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_or_Not>

They were in a similar situation and according to Wikipedia, they sold in 2008
for a rumored $20 million. They started in 2000 and I believe they made a deal
with their internet service to reduce cost.

~~~
matt1
Founders at Work details HotOrNot's launch. If I remember correctly, they
worked out a deal with Rackspace where Rackspace would provide hosting and
HotOrNot would promote the fledgling hosting company whenever they could.

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sobriquet
nice work, it's fun to get some of the best stuff out there that doesn't seem
to be made up like tfln or fml

1) Add tipjoy functionality, encouraging users to tip the
best/funniest/helpful tweets.

2) charge referral fee to users who you scrape. Each new follower they get
from favstar.fm costs $0.10 (seems like many of the people you are featuring
are self-employed or creative types who would probably like more followers)

3) sponsored favoriters... allow brands/users who want their profile pic to
show up as if they had favorited a tweet. pay per impression or click basis
(they could get creative with the profile pics to grab attention)

4) promotion of top favorites across the web. build plug and play modules that
people can add to their own sites, my yahoo, igoogle, their facebook page,
etc. (or maybe just an RSS feed). Anyone can post it to their own site for
entertainment value, but the only tweets that are eligible for the module are
ones from paid accounts. Trouble is, the best/funniest twitter users probably
wont want to pay for that distribution, they don't need it.

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grass123
I found a small problem on your site (for me at least). For reference, I am
running Firefox 3.5 on Gentoo.

On a page like this, <http://favstar.fm/users/asshuku>, the Japanese kanji is
being rendered like Chinese kanji. It's still readable, but it's just a little
off-putting. I'm not native Japanese (I can read it, though), but the best
example I can give of what this feels like for a Japanese person is that all
of the text on the page has been highlighted and underlined. Readable, but
annoying.

I was playing around with it in Firebug, and it looks like a simple(?) fix
would be to change the line: <html lang="en"
xmlns="<http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml> xml:lang="en"> to: <html
xmlns="<http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml> xml:lang="en"> or: <html lang="ja"
xmlns="<http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml> xml:lang="ja">

You might also be interested in seeing Google's solution
(<http://www.google.com/search?q=google.co.jp>), Slashdot's solution
(<http://www.slashdot.jp/>), or Wikipedia's solution
(<http://www.wikipedia.ja/>).

~~~
TimH
Thank you. Will fix.

------
drusenko
What's your definition of popular? I can't find any stats on your site that
show any reasonable levels of traffic that would allow it to be either ad or
freemium supported.

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jbr
Maybe deck network (<http://decknetwork.net/>) or fusion ads
(<http://fusionads.net/>)?

~~~
trafficlight
The Deck is by invitation only.

~~~
pierattt
They're both by invitation only.

------
dustyreagan
Might I suggest <http://FeaturedUsers.com>? It's a Twitter application ad
network for users who want to promote their Twitter account. It integrates
into your site w/ 1 line of Javascript. Full disclosure, it's my project. :)

~~~
TimH
Hey Dusty, I had a look at your site a few days ago and followed you on
twitter. I was interested until I had a look at a few of the people
advertising themselves. The ones I saw looked pretty boring. ;-) I would be
interested in talking to you more about it though. tmhaines at googles mail
system.

~~~
pxlpshr
I know a few people using Dusty's service, for most it covered the hosting
bills and has much better returns than Google AdSense. He's putting a lot of
energy into making it even better.

I suggest diversifying your ad real estate, at least initially, there's no
reason you can't have Featured Users + Adsense + Deck, etc. Just don't go
overboard with the # of ads on the screen, you'll drive people away.

You may also try using Google AdManager or OpenX and selling ads yourself. I
prefer the former because Google handles the hosting.

~~~
jbr
Deck is exclusive. From <http://www.decknetwork.net/>

> Only a single ad will be shown for each page viewed.

I hear it's a pretty sweet deal, though.

------
naz
Adsense would be a good place to start

~~~
josefresco
Agreed. It's boring but starts you along the path to eventually selling your
own ads. I'd also recommend highly targeted affiliate programs, which can pay
better than AdSense and give you more control over who/what is shown.

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unohoo
I really didnt see why some of the tweets were being favorited. Based on their
content, i'd agree with vulpes above - it'd be pretty difficult to get ppl to
pay $$. Sponsored placement sounds like a good idea.

Another suggestion, although not monetization related - provide a widget of
say the top favorited / top favorited users - that bloggers could embed on
their blog - increases distribution.

------
larryfreeman
I would say register with a site like Quantcast.com so you can publicly
quantify popularity of your site. This gives bloggers and businesses easy
access to your numbers. People like to talk with popular sites.

You might want to check out Chris Anderson's book on Free: the Future of a
Radical Price as a good source for brainstorming business models.

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onedognight
After tweets have proved themselves, remove them from the site and hawk them
to comedians. You'd just need one motivated buyer willing to spend a lot. Or
better yet, use them yourself like William Shatner used Sarah Palin (giving
back some to the original tweeters for an extra bonus).

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niyazpk
I would love to suggest a good business model, but I am afraid I will have to
tell you that even twitter is not able to monetize its huge traffic.

Forget monetization for now. Try to get acquired by somebody who think they
can make use of your traffic.

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parterburn
The layout is bit odd to show the content; I prefer a site like fav.tweets:
<http://www.sixteenseven.com/fav.tweets>

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davidw
Sell it on to a 'greater fool'?:-)

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clistctrl
use your traffic numbers as a proof of popularity and sell the idea to
Twitter, then let them worry about it.

