
Ben Huh can has reddit? I respond entirely in LOLcat photos - Alexis Ohanian - pavs
http://alexisohanian.com/ben-huh-can-has-reddit-i-respond-entirely-in
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buro9
Reddit can be monetised today, right now, without a single intrusive advert.

The key is affiliate programs.

Go talk to Skimlinks, point out your traffic, laugh at their rates and then
stop to think for a moment. If reddit signed up to every affiliate program
there was and didn't share revenue with skimlinks or anyone... if reddit took
care of explaining what they were doing and how they were doing it... the
readership would be fine.

Hell, you want me just to use the site as normal and inadvertently through
doing so I end up clicking links that lead me to buy stuff occasionally and
this gives you some pennies. Sure thing, doesn't bother me.

Pennies, yeah, that's all it is. Except that's a penny or two per click.
Reddit has size and traffic. Reddit could link to the odd item here or there
behind affiliate paywalls and those unobtrusive and naturally organic links
created by virtue of creating such a large community could monetise the whole
thing.

Don't believe me? Try it for one month. And then when your jaw hits the flaw
remember to give me some credit for it. Affiliate schemes keep most forums
alive and allow them to exist with minimal advertising. There, I've let my
secret out. I run small forums, and they are making me a lovely nest-egg... if
I had the cash I'd buy reddit just to put affiliate links on it... it would be
an immediate cash cow, and the readership would be fine as they'd understand
why, and visually no garbage would have changed the experience.

The key is to do _all_ affiliates, leave no penny on any table. Every click
that could earn you money, should.

Technically all you need is a set of rules to process any existing link in any
post or comment, and to detect whether that URL goes to a destination that has
an affiliate program. If it does, strip any existing codes and drop in yours,
if it doesn't then leave it alone.

Oh,and tell people explicitly not to game it. No-one need ever create fake
clicks or fake atricles. The organic mass is enough.

~~~
StavrosK
Well there's an idea for historious! Seriously, though, while users might
rebel against this in many communities (rewriting their links to make you
money sounds bad), I think reddit could easily pull this off, as it's not
immoral or in any way reprehensible.

Besides, the community has been very understanding and accommodating time and
time again. I don't know about reddit, but this idea sounds like a goldmine
for my own sites. Thanks!

~~~
buro9
It couldn't work for historious. Your ability to store a cache of a whole page
is based on the same safe harbour that Google use to provide their cache.
Namely that you merely act as a cache and the page is unmodified in any way.
Modify the page, and you no longer have that safe harbour, now you'd have
taken content from elsewhere and re-purposed it to have affiliate click-
throughs... you'd have no defence to copyright infringement claims.

Historious has to store and present the cached page unmodified.

~~~
StavrosK
Oh, no, not the cache. There's much more opportunity in the links themselves.
You historify an amazon item to go back to it later, and when you click the
link to go there, our affiliate tag is inserted. Besides, you don't look at
the cache when shopping, you look at the links.

I already pushed an initial version of this yesterday, it leaves your cache
alone, is unobtrusive and gives us some extra money as you normally use the
service.

If it goes well, we can even think about removing the limit for free users!

~~~
buro9
That works, in fact that use is going to be fine.

For your size, you probably would benefit from just applying skimlinks as they
would give you a slice of revenue that you're not tapping into.

Once you go beyond a certain amount of traffic, ditch skimlinks and do it
yourself. They take too much revenue.

------
trun
"If you made it this far still expecting LOLcats, I'm sorry. I lied."

Sad.

~~~
kn0thing
You're right. I feel bad now. Adding LOL-TL;DR.

~~~
pavs
Someone forgot to sign up for reddit gold account (spez too). /r/lounge
without reddit founders just doesn't seem right.

------
vaksel
of course reddit is monetizable...all it takes is flooding it with ads

768x90 adsense unit just below the submission title alone would probably make
reddit instantly profitable.

and that doesn't take into account the premium google adsense ads.(imagine if
a random #1-#5 url title from the top was an adsense ad?)...one that had the
exact font style as regular reddit ads. Those just browsing, wouldn't even
notice the little gray "powered by Google" text.

then add CPM based ads...maybe something that would play on mouseover...those
tend to bring in the big bucks.

or just sell advertising directly for some brand awareness campaigns. Honda,
Walmart, McDonalds.

And boom...you got a profitable "community".

So there is no reason for Conde Nast to sell reddit(especially at a loss)...if
they were interested in generating more revenue, they could do it at a flip of
a coin.

Sure it would piss off a lot of users...but it's not like people would abandon
a site, just because there are a few more ads present.

~~~
RossM
These suggestions, while normal on any other site, wouldn't work on reddit.

The real problem reddit has is that it's community, which can be amazing at
times, has grown used to a great user experience when it comes to advertising
- the lack of it that is. Just ignore the box on the right and the occasional
sponsored link in the top box. Should a flash-based ad appear in the right-
hand box there'll be a front-paged topic on it in an hour. reddit has treated
it's users well, but they baulk at the slightest change in that - and herein
lies the real problem to monetising reddit. reddit has to monetise while
keeping it's community happy. Since community happiness and advertising seem
to be pretty much polar opposites it seems to be impossible.

What I'd do is increase advertising aggressively for non-logged in users,
reduce it greatly for registered users and keep the option to remove it
completely for gold members. Hopefully those that really hate advertising
would sign up for gold, however there is probably a correlation between those
that make the most noise about advertising and those that wouldn't do that as
they don't believe in paying for things on the internet - completely unfounded
but a gut feeling.

> Sure it would piss off a lot of users...but it's not like people would
> abandon a site, just because there are a few more ads present.

Being a technical audience AdBlock (already is but) would be widely used
rendering it useless. I know reddit was monitoring adblock usage at some point
- I'd like to know the results of that.

~~~
ars
Why is it necessary to keep the users happy? So some will leave, but others
will join. They are big enough that if they loose some, they'll be OK.

And actually I don't think they'll leave anyway.

They'll use adblock? So? What do they have to loose? You are worried that
users will block ads, and the solution is not to run any?

~~~
ja2ke
It's a user driven site. At millions of people it's obviously not entirely
personality driven, but still the site is driven by the actual individual
people who submit and comment. They generate not just the content but the tone
of the site, which is what keeps people coming back. You can't treat them like
a straight up commodity that can be swapped in and out.

------
Heston
So I guess no one has learned anything from the previous discussions on HN.

Reddit has hit critical mass and therefore has a substantial user base - start
charging a monthly fee. Even at $1 a month, I'm sure they could be pulling in
6 figures every month.

Or perhaps I'm mistaken and all they need is more ads.

------
guelo
Cheezburger sites are definitely tilted towards the annoying side of the ad
balance. Which is probably fine for the their audience but would be tragic for
reddit.

~~~
jacquesm
There is a middle ground there.

~~~
ja2ke
In the case of ads, "middle groud" is often a few steps down the slipperiest
of slopes.

