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When did "build something people want" turn into making money at any cost? This is the 2nd or 3rd highly voted article about ways to make money without building
by javery 17y ago
When did "build something people want" turn into making money at any cost? This is the 2nd or 3rd highly voted article about ways to make money without building a startup that provides meaningful value to it's users.
- compumike 17y agoThe tech / startup world is filled with lots of people who are interested "building something people want" but with no clue about monetization. (Twitter, or just about any company with no revenue/profit model...) Articles like this provide contrast -- people who've figured out how to monetize the web (but aren't necessarily adding a ton of value). Affiliate marketers have at least figured out that "unique visitors" or "active users" doesn't pay the bills like it did in the late '90s. It does seem shady / etc, but I think there's lessons to be learned. I think many in this community are hoping that there's a middle ground, with both value creation ("building something people want") and extracting that value via monetization.
- javery 17y agoThere is plenty of information out there from great companies who are making money from day 1 while providing value, it seems like it's pretty damn simple actually. Create a product that does something useful, charge people for it.
- il 17y agoWhen did "start a business" become "build something that you can't monetize"? The goal of business is to make money. The people you should be most concerned about building value for are your shareholders.
- javery 17y agoThat's quite a leap you made there, the businesses I run have been profitable from day 1 and also provide value to people. Making money is one of the best ways to know that are providing value, if people will pay for your app on a monthly basis then you know they find it valuable and are using it. These recent posts, this one included, are about making money through shady tactics (there is a reason they have to create adsense accounts every two weeks).
- il 17y agoThat wasn't meant to be a personal attack, I apologize if it looked like one. It's more an attack on the general sense here on HN that people are spending lots of time and money building things they have no idea how to monetize. Absolutely, the best way to create value for investors is to create value for customers by selling them something they want. In the affiliate's case, the customers are the merchants that pay for leads or sales, NOT the end users of the product, and there is nothing shady about that relationship. As an affiliate, I always create compliant and legitimate landing pages and ads. Ultimately, it is the merchant's responsibility to adequately disclose billing and allow for easy and timely cancellation. I try to work with compliant merchants, but their billing practices are beyond my control.
- javery 17y agoDidn't think it was an attack, was just using my experience as a reference. :) I agree that lots of affiliate stuff is valuable, I wrote a site a couple years ago that makes it money through affiliate ads and provides value to both the vendor and customers. But reading what he was doing, stuff like re-bill, seems really shady and while it might technically provide value to the vendors it is at the huge cost to the customers who are being tricked.