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People still want to consume content. What is the business model for content sites? Die? Right now it seems like people want to leach the content with out payi

People still want to consume content. What is the business model for content sites? Die? Right now it seems like people want to leach the content with out paying the bills.

InclinedPlane 11y ago
I happen to know a fair bit about a particular fairly popular content site. Ads make up a minority of their overall revenue, though it's still a significant chunk. They would survive quite easily without ads. The main advantage of ads is that they are potentially brain-dead easy to enable profitability if you have lots of traffic. But even then that's not necessarily an objectively good thing. Also, I wouldn't say that "people want to leach ... with out paying" is accurate whatsoever. Between merch, events, crowd funding, and patronage (patreon et al) there is a massive and rapidly growing amount of money that has been going to content creators direct from content consumers. It's easier than it's been in a long time, perhaps ever, for a creator to support themselves, aside from ads, and it's only getting easier.
joepie91_ 11y ago
That's a claim that people have made since pretty much the dawn of advertising on the internet, but there has yet to be any research actually backing that statement.
- paulhauggis 11y ago
  It's pretty simple: If I have a website that relies on advertising to make money and the majority of people coming to my site have ad block, they will never see my ads and I won't make money. But it really only hurts the small business trying to eek out a living. Small businesses will go under and what's left will be large conglomerates. Hacker news seems to be a popular place for people that no nothing about economics and do everything in their power to willingly give up markets to the likes of large companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. The interesting part is that that then there's outrage when the above companies abuse their monopoly...when the regulations and culture that you supported created them in the first place!
nosuchthing 11y ago
Some content is worth paying for, some content isn't worth spending time on even when it's free. http://www.pledgesociety.com/ http://www.pledgesociety.com/ (Patreon) https://streamtip.com/ https://streamtip.com/
- johnward 11y ago
  Are those numbers accurate? 67k per month to draw shit? I'd be more interested in the mean monthly earnings. There are hundreds of pages of content creators making $0 per month. In fact only about the first 10 pages make what I would consider a livable wage, but would still technically be poverty in the US. Only about 100 people are making a decent middle class wage. About 40% of the users on that first site make less than $100 per month. 90% are making less than $1000 per month. There are certainly sites that make way more than $67k per month in advertising fees. Tipping might be one of the possible business models but it still has a long way to go.

People still want to consume content. What is the business model for content sites? Die? Right now it seems like people want to leach the content with out paying the bills.

InclinedPlane 11y ago

I happen to know a fair bit about a particular fairly popular content site. Ads make up a minority of their overall revenue, though it's still a significant chunk. They would survive quite easily without ads. The main advantage of ads is that they are potentially brain-dead easy to enable profitability if you have lots of traffic. But even then that's not necessarily an objectively good thing. Also, I wouldn't say that "people want to leach ... with out paying" is accurate whatsoever. Between merch, events, crowd funding, and patronage (patreon et al) there is a massive and rapidly growing amount of money that has been going to content creators direct from content consumers. It's easier than it's been in a long time, perhaps ever, for a creator to support themselves, aside from ads, and it's only getting easier.

joepie91_ 11y ago

That's a claim that people have made since pretty much the dawn of advertising on the internet, but there has yet to be any research actually backing that statement.

paulhauggis 11y ago
It's pretty simple: If I have a website that relies on advertising to make money and the majority of people coming to my site have ad block, they will never see my ads and I won't make money. But it really only hurts the small business trying to eek out a living. Small businesses will go under and what's left will be large conglomerates. Hacker news seems to be a popular place for people that no nothing about economics and do everything in their power to willingly give up markets to the likes of large companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. The interesting part is that that then there's outrage when the above companies abuse their monopoly...when the regulations and culture that you supported created them in the first place!

nosuchthing 11y ago

Some content is worth paying for, some content isn't worth spending time on even when it's free. http://www.pledgesociety.com/ http://www.pledgesociety.com/ (Patreon) https://streamtip.com/ https://streamtip.com/

johnward 11y ago
Are those numbers accurate? 67k per month to draw shit? I'd be more interested in the mean monthly earnings. There are hundreds of pages of content creators making $0 per month. In fact only about the first 10 pages make what I would consider a livable wage, but would still technically be poverty in the US. Only about 100 people are making a decent middle class wage. About 40% of the users on that first site make less than $100 per month. 90% are making less than $1000 per month. There are certainly sites that make way more than $67k per month in advertising fees. Tipping might be one of the possible business models but it still has a long way to go.