

Ask HN:  How does this AddThis.com make money? - sam_in_nyc

I don't get it... they offer a button that goes on a page so that users can share stuff easily.  They claim to server 20b a month.  It must cost a significant amount to run those servers.<p>How are they (and several competitors) possibly making money from this?
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tsetse-fly
Is this some sort of ploy to get us to visit that site?

It's simple: if you're not selling anything, whether it's goods, services, or
ads, then you're not making money. Not all sites on the Internet exist for
profit.

~~~
sam_in_nyc
No, it's not a ploy to get you to visit a site that I'm not at all affiliated
with. Rather, I included it in the hopes that people give it a look so that
they can answer the question at hand: "how do they make money?"

There are actually three ways to make money. You can sell things, receive
money for nothing (donations), or steal. I would have to agree with you that
selling goods, services, or ads makes money. So, I wonder, what does
AddThis.com sell, and to whom? Or are they just hemorrhaging money on the
servers needed to serve (and track) 20b impressions a month?

~~~
tsetse-fly
They don't sell anything to anyone. The site was acquired and is operated by
Clearspring, who has received $36M in funding.

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

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

~~~
fizx
Someone still has to (indirectly?) be making money from this. My guess is that
this is a great source of general web analytics data, which someone will pay
to have.

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tsetse-fly
Yes, the idea seems to be that they'll gather and monetize the data though I
don't think that's sustainable. No one _has_ to make money on this, they could
fail while blowing all of their VC money.

All of these widget companies seem like a bit of a scam to me. Do you really
need $36M to create a bunch of crappy widgets? I've never even seen a widget
from RockYou/Slide/Widgetbox/Clearspring on any of the sites I visit.

~~~
sam_in_nyc
So AddThis makes out as the real winner.. they got eaten up by a bigger fish,
funded by that sweet VC money, without ever having to prove themselves.

I couldn't agree more with how much money is spent on the lamest things...
$36M for widgets. Then again, back in the 90's, people would pay thousands to
have a counter installed on their page.

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bemmu
Seems difficult to make money with this, but here's a few ideas.

They could charge new link sharing sites for the privilege of being available
in their widget, or for better placement.

They could start their own link sharing site / link aggregator based on the
data they gather from the widgets, then of course also get prominent placement
in the widget for the new site.

They could show a small ad in the widget.

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tdavis
I don't think they do, unless they offer some premium plan I am unaware of. We
use AddThis and honestly don't have much faith in them; it took over a week to
reply to our e-mail informing them of a bug that was keeping us from logging
into their analytics.

