3 ms·

Hi YC partners, We're a link shortener called Credhot and our business model is to syndicate (potentially sponsored) content on an interstitial page. We also r

by chejazi 11y ago

Hi YC partners, We're a link shortener called Credhot and our business model is to syndicate (potentially sponsored) content on an interstitial page. We also rev-share with our users based on the number of visits. The biggest hurdle to this strategy has been building an interstitial people want to share with their friends. Here is an example of our latest attempt at that, leading to "coinmarketcap.com": https://crd.ht/H7TLMpn https://crd.ht/H7TLMpn. Our volume is low enough that we haven't tested syndicating sponsored content on that page. Right now we're mostly focused on "building a product that users love" but at some point we will need to strike a deal with a publisher. When should those conversations start happening? We're currently bootstrapping but will want to raise capital in the next few months as we're growing (we've doubled since the last HN office hours ~34 days ago). Should we wait until after securing funding?

tedmiston 11y ago
I've seen another related type of service called Linkis (http://linkis.com/ http://linkis.com/). I don't interact with it much myself because usually I'm just interested in getting to the content quickly without all the cruft. Perhaps that's something that can help guide your thinking.
- chejazi 11y ago
  Thanks for the suggestion. We considered customizing the destination page, but we decided against it due to a big looming threat: an increasing number of sites can't be embedded. From a technical perspective, a site can block embedding by setting one HTTP response header (X-FRAME-OPTIONS) which is very easy to do.
  - tedmiston 11y ago
    This is one of the biggest problems for Genius. Ex. http://genius.it/www.nytimes.com http://genius.it/www.nytimes.com breaks vs. http://genius.it/www.wikipedia.org http://genius.it/www.wikipedia.org works fine.
snowmaker 11y ago
Why do people use this versus bit.ly or a non-paid link shortener? Are they actually interested in sharing the interstitial page's content, or is this primarily a way to make money? What's the nature of the publisher deal you are thinking about? Generally, you should start talking to publishers when you can pay them a meaningful amount of revenue. How much is meaningful? Depends on the publisher. For a small blog, it might be a hundred dollars. For the New York Times, it's probably a million dollars.
- chejazi 11y ago
  People use us over Bitly because they earn rewards. What we know from the feedback we've received is users don't like seeing blatant ads (ex. banners) on the page. Our response has been to syndicate other content the user has shared; so far the design has received a some praise and nobody has complained (whereas w/ ads we received complaints), but the change hasn't been live for long (less than a month ago we were showing ads). The money in a publisher deal flows opposite of the direction you described. They would pay us to get their content syndicated on the interstitial. From my limited knowledge, ad sales for bigger publishers start from 10k and go up, which means we need to guarantee (at $1 CPM) 10M impressions. Currently the service does about 3M monthly impressions, so we're not quite there yet.
  - snowmaker 11y ago
    I see. OK, so the goal is to get publisher content because it's less intrusive than blatant ads. What you said about CPMs and minimum ad buys is true. The solution, it seems to me, is to simply go to smaller publishers. There are a million small blogs out there that might pay you $100 for some content marketing. The thing to think about is what your unique value proposition can be that will get them to spend their ad dollars with you. Perhaps it's something to do with the full-page sized ad format. It reminds me (from the advertiser standpoint) of the StumbleUpon model, which is very successful for certain kinds of sites.
    - chejazi 11y ago
      Ok. Our takeaway is to start going after customers now instead of punting on it. Thank you!

by chejazi 11y ago

tedmiston 11y ago

I've seen another related type of service called Linkis (http://linkis.com/ http://linkis.com/). I don't interact with it much myself because usually I'm just interested in getting to the content quickly without all the cruft. Perhaps that's something that can help guide your thinking.

chejazi 11y ago
Thanks for the suggestion. We considered customizing the destination page, but we decided against it due to a big looming threat: an increasing number of sites can't be embedded. From a technical perspective, a site can block embedding by setting one HTTP response header (X-FRAME-OPTIONS) which is very easy to do.
- tedmiston 11y ago
  This is one of the biggest problems for Genius. Ex. http://genius.it/www.nytimes.com http://genius.it/www.nytimes.com breaks vs. http://genius.it/www.wikipedia.org http://genius.it/www.wikipedia.org works fine.

snowmaker 11y ago

Why do people use this versus bit.ly or a non-paid link shortener? Are they actually interested in sharing the interstitial page's content, or is this primarily a way to make money? What's the nature of the publisher deal you are thinking about? Generally, you should start talking to publishers when you can pay them a meaningful amount of revenue. How much is meaningful? Depends on the publisher. For a small blog, it might be a hundred dollars. For the New York Times, it's probably a million dollars.

chejazi 11y ago
People use us over Bitly because they earn rewards. What we know from the feedback we've received is users don't like seeing blatant ads (ex. banners) on the page. Our response has been to syndicate other content the user has shared; so far the design has received a some praise and nobody has complained (whereas w/ ads we received complaints), but the change hasn't been live for long (less than a month ago we were showing ads). The money in a publisher deal flows opposite of the direction you described. They would pay us to get their content syndicated on the interstitial. From my limited knowledge, ad sales for bigger publishers start from 10k and go up, which means we need to guarantee (at $1 CPM) 10M impressions. Currently the service does about 3M monthly impressions, so we're not quite there yet.
- snowmaker 11y ago
  I see. OK, so the goal is to get publisher content because it's less intrusive than blatant ads. What you said about CPMs and minimum ad buys is true. The solution, it seems to me, is to simply go to smaller publishers. There are a million small blogs out there that might pay you $100 for some content marketing. The thing to think about is what your unique value proposition can be that will get them to spend their ad dollars with you. Perhaps it's something to do with the full-page sized ad format. It reminds me (from the advertiser standpoint) of the StumbleUpon model, which is very successful for certain kinds of sites.
  - chejazi 11y ago
    Ok. Our takeaway is to start going after customers now instead of punting on it. Thank you!