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Every consumer site wants user generated content for free but is not willing to share a tiny bit of the revs. This signals desperation than proper business dev

Every consumer site wants user generated content for free but is not willing to share a tiny bit of the revs. This signals desperation than proper business development. Reddit should look at Snapchat: today they have a Nike filter live. This is smart monetization and gives more bucks than this affiliate hack. Besides, Reddit should have done this affiliate thing themselves and not employed Viglink. Any intermediate will not just take their cut, they take more and send lower reports in general (if a CPA deal).

stdclass 10y ago
> This is smart monetization and gives more bucks than this affiliate hack. Do you have any numbers on that matter?
- greenspot 10y ago
  Just a feeling. It's really very hard to get major brands like Nike as advertisers on board. Why: they want a perfect environment. A positive one and a premium brand which fits to them and a great audience. And not to forget a HUGE reach. Once you have all of these PLUS contacts to the right media agencies then you get good deals based on CPM. The less you as a publisher can offer the more you end with CPC or even crappy CPA deals where you never know if the intermediate evades your commissions. Just look around, usually advertisers pair themselves with publishers with a similar brand awareness and quality. Eg Nike or BMW won't advertise on Reddit or Facebbok because there would be a too strong asymmetry between advertisers' and publishers' brands. Nike and BMW would rather place and position themselves to eg the next James Bond movie from Sony (=> similar brand perception). Reddit is the typical publisher that is avoided by a lot of major advertisers. The brand and the audience is maybe too heterogenous and inconsistent. While a sub like Photshopbattles might be positive and funny many other subs like Gonewild (which is huge btw) give Reddit a mixed perception. However, doing a deal with Viglink shows that they must have tried everything before (to get deals with major brands) but finally resigned and go now the affiliate path. There is one good thing about affiliate marketing though: ad blockers do not harm your business.
  - nsgi 10y ago
    > There is one good thing about affiliate marketing though: ad blockers do not harm your business. They can if you use something like Viglink. That's another reason to roll your own solution. Really don't understand why they decided to go through them just to avoid a bit of regex.
    - billmalarky 10y ago
      Why roll your own first when you can use an out of box solution to see if the monetization is a good strategy before investing engineer time into it? If it's a good fit they can always roll their own later. Hell, they may be rolling their own right now but wanted to start capturing the additional revenue at a lower margin immediately. >just to avoid a bit of regex I've never heard of Viglink and am too lazy to google, but I'd wager the real value provided by the company isn't adding affiliate codes, but rather strong analytics features allowing you to optimize revenue across different affiliates etc.
      - AznHisoka 10y ago
        It's the regex and the fact you can partner with any retailer automatically without individually applying to all of their affiliate programs. Reddit surely surely are implementing an in house solution (or maybe I'm giving their management too much credit)
    - Twirrim 10y ago
      Good enough is often good enough. Why shove non-trivial amounts of engineering effort into it when you can take advantage of a service? If there's enough money in it then maybe it would be justifiable to put engineering effort into it themselves. In the mean time "free money" for minimal effort.
      - conceit 10y ago
        > Why shove non-trivial amounts of engineering effort into it because it's more fun
readme 10y ago
I think Reddit provides those consumers with a forum for their content which otherwise would not be seen by as many people, and therefore defends its value up front. The contributors on the other hand get to use reddit for free. Sure, many of them could publish OC on their own websites and get hits. A lot of them, no one would care, because their content is only interesting in the context of the reddit culture and hivemind (this is especially true for comments). Lets not forget how much traffic reddit could drive to your personal site or blog, either. I am surprised it took reddit so long to do something so simple to generate money.
ben_jones 10y ago
I think Reddit has proven over the last decade that they have more limited options then other tech companies because of their engineering ability. Sports threads (NFL playoffs, NBA, MLB, Hockey, Football) up until maybe three years ago would unilaterally crash Reddit's servers or create large amounts of lag across the platform. It has been "solved" in recent years with an absolutely ABSURD amount of caching that is detrimental to the user experience because it will prevent the user from seeing updated content for a few minutes. They have limited streaming functionality that does not make up for this. They hired their first CTO in 2015 and he seems to be doing a good job. But theirs no silver bullet for a legacy infrastructure especially if you add all the pressure Reddit is receiving to monetize ASAP.
- victor9000 10y ago
  Reddit's management team has created a policy of underpaying engineers, so it's no surprise to me that their technical capacity is less than stellar.
  - ben_jones 10y ago
    I actually think companies can get away with "underpaying" engineers if they can offer alternative benefits like great culture, lower cost-of-living, growth opportunities (career and equity value), etc.. But Reddit is a company with a laundry list of PR crises, with an office in one of the most expensive cities in the world, constantly changing leadership, constantly changing leadership goals, extremely dissatisfied investors, an estranged and angry founder, AND a reputation for underpaying engineers. Ten bucks says they file a complaint somewhere stating "their aren't enough developers in the work force".
    - Twirrim 10y ago
      They didn't used to be in San Fran, and they used to support remote work, where cost of living was less of an issue, and lower salaries could stretch a lot further if (for example) an employee was working in the mid west. They had a bunch of strong advantages and an already geographically dispersed workforce and threw it away at a time when they really needed to be getting the most bang for their buck.
Gaelan 10y ago
They aren't overwriting existing affiliate links.
elsewhen 10y ago
Snapchat's revenue for 2015 was reportedly $59M [0] which does not seem to support their current valuation of $18B. i am not sure if they did native advertising in 2015 like the nike example you suggested. i suspect that they are going to have to get _significantly_ more aggressive with advertising or come up with a different business model altogether. [0] http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/26/snapchat-series-f/ http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/26/snapchat-series-f/
- coke12 10y ago
  Look at how fast they're monetizing: https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/snapchat-2015-rev.png?w=1250&h=524 https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/snapcha... (from the article). I'm sure the first half of 2016 has been insane.
- rhizome 10y ago
  they are going to have to get _significantly_ more aggressive with advertising Only if their monetization plan is being led by someone from a news site. Snapchat being what it is, they would be smarter to sell less for more. That is, if you don't have (much) advertising and a lot of demand, the little real estate you do cede to monetization is more valuable. They don't have to do takeovers.
notahacker 10y ago
Can you imagine Reddit's community responding to an equivalent of the Nike filter in a way which helped rather than harmed the brand? For the most part, I can't.
downandout 10y ago
Every consumer site wants user generated content for free but is not willing to share a tiny bit of the revs. I don't think there will be much revenue to share. It's too easy to get around this. Link to your own page, and redirect to your affiliate offer. Anyone that takes affiliate marketing on Reddit seriously will be doing this, so I doubt this will generate much revenue for Reddit.
- dack 10y ago
  They aren't editing links that already have an affiliate though, it only adds an affiliate if the link doesn't already have one.
  - downandout 10y ago
    You're right. I only read the announcement, which implied that they would be rewriting all links. I didn't see until just now that this was addressed in the comments.
zippergz 10y ago
> Every consumer site wants user generated content for free but is not willing to share a tiny bit of the revs. As a user, I feel that I get value from participating on Reddit (as I do here). If I didn't, I wouldn't participate. I'm not looking to get paid.
- mwfunk 10y ago
  Not only that, but I would think if Reddit participants did get paid, surely the quality (such as it is) would go way down as everyone would be even more incentivized towards producing clickbait comments and stories. I'm actually amazed that Reddit continues to even exist given how much traffic it gets every day and how little income it must get from what (relatively) few ads it serves. I don't know what this massive cashflow is that people think they're entitled to tap into.
Grue3 10y ago
>Reddit should look at Snapchat I don't think Reddit should take advice from the company that has never been profitable (not that Reddit had been profitable, mind you). And affiliate links are actually known to be profitable, there are countless of sites that exist solely off affiliate links. "Nike filter", you must be kidding me. Nobody wants to put goddamn ads on their photos.
- maccard 10y ago
  > "Nike filter", you must be kidding me. Nobody wants to put goddamn ads on their photos. Plenty of people want to put certain kinds of ads on their photos, and are happy to do so!
brown9-2 10y ago
Reddit should look at Snapchat: today they have a Nike filter live. This is smart monetization and gives more bucks than this affiliate hack. So Reddit should offer a photo filter feature? This comparison is hard to comprehend since their features are so different.
Bromskloss 10y ago
> Nike filter live What is that?
salemh 10y ago
I was never bothered by the Pinterest: Affiliate links are added if none are present.
CM30 10y ago
There are sites that do this. For example, Tsu did this as a social network. Digitalpoint was a forum that used to do stuff like this with ad revenue sharing, and other forums installed the add on for it too. The problem is twofold: 1. If you're massively successful, then revenue sharing creates huge incentives for spam. Hence you often get people posting links to their content all over the place (especially on rival sites), at which point your brand gets seen as sleazy and your domain often added to a lot of blocklists. You also get a lot of low quality users signing up to post junk in the hope x amount of people click their ads or affiliate links. Digitalpoint got flooded with one liners and gibberish from people in poorer countries and ended up losing most of its more respected users in the process. 2. Revenue sharing often breaks down to a very, very limited amount of money for anyone using the site. Social networks and forums are not the best for ad clickthrough rates or affiliate links, This varies based on how exactly the users are paid (per discussion, per post, per video/image, etc), but it generally isn't enough for anyone to live on unless either got really low expenses or the site itself is ridiculously massive. That's why new sites don't do it.

stdclass 10y ago

> This is smart monetization and gives more bucks than this affiliate hack. Do you have any numbers on that matter?

greenspot 10y ago
Just a feeling. It's really very hard to get major brands like Nike as advertisers on board. Why: they want a perfect environment. A positive one and a premium brand which fits to them and a great audience. And not to forget a HUGE reach. Once you have all of these PLUS contacts to the right media agencies then you get good deals based on CPM. The less you as a publisher can offer the more you end with CPC or even crappy CPA deals where you never know if the intermediate evades your commissions. Just look around, usually advertisers pair themselves with publishers with a similar brand awareness and quality. Eg Nike or BMW won't advertise on Reddit or Facebbok because there would be a too strong asymmetry between advertisers' and publishers' brands. Nike and BMW would rather place and position themselves to eg the next James Bond movie from Sony (=> similar brand perception). Reddit is the typical publisher that is avoided by a lot of major advertisers. The brand and the audience is maybe too heterogenous and inconsistent. While a sub like Photshopbattles might be positive and funny many other subs like Gonewild (which is huge btw) give Reddit a mixed perception. However, doing a deal with Viglink shows that they must have tried everything before (to get deals with major brands) but finally resigned and go now the affiliate path. There is one good thing about affiliate marketing though: ad blockers do not harm your business.
- nsgi 10y ago
  > There is one good thing about affiliate marketing though: ad blockers do not harm your business. They can if you use something like Viglink. That's another reason to roll your own solution. Really don't understand why they decided to go through them just to avoid a bit of regex.
  - billmalarky 10y ago
    Why roll your own first when you can use an out of box solution to see if the monetization is a good strategy before investing engineer time into it? If it's a good fit they can always roll their own later. Hell, they may be rolling their own right now but wanted to start capturing the additional revenue at a lower margin immediately. >just to avoid a bit of regex I've never heard of Viglink and am too lazy to google, but I'd wager the real value provided by the company isn't adding affiliate codes, but rather strong analytics features allowing you to optimize revenue across different affiliates etc.
    - AznHisoka 10y ago
      It's the regex and the fact you can partner with any retailer automatically without individually applying to all of their affiliate programs. Reddit surely surely are implementing an in house solution (or maybe I'm giving their management too much credit)
  - Twirrim 10y ago
    Good enough is often good enough. Why shove non-trivial amounts of engineering effort into it when you can take advantage of a service? If there's enough money in it then maybe it would be justifiable to put engineering effort into it themselves. In the mean time "free money" for minimal effort.
    - conceit 10y ago
      > Why shove non-trivial amounts of engineering effort into it because it's more fun

readme 10y ago

I think Reddit provides those consumers with a forum for their content which otherwise would not be seen by as many people, and therefore defends its value up front. The contributors on the other hand get to use reddit for free. Sure, many of them could publish OC on their own websites and get hits. A lot of them, no one would care, because their content is only interesting in the context of the reddit culture and hivemind (this is especially true for comments). Lets not forget how much traffic reddit could drive to your personal site or blog, either. I am surprised it took reddit so long to do something so simple to generate money.

ben_jones 10y ago

I think Reddit has proven over the last decade that they have more limited options then other tech companies because of their engineering ability. Sports threads (NFL playoffs, NBA, MLB, Hockey, Football) up until maybe three years ago would unilaterally crash Reddit's servers or create large amounts of lag across the platform. It has been "solved" in recent years with an absolutely ABSURD amount of caching that is detrimental to the user experience because it will prevent the user from seeing updated content for a few minutes. They have limited streaming functionality that does not make up for this. They hired their first CTO in 2015 and he seems to be doing a good job. But theirs no silver bullet for a legacy infrastructure especially if you add all the pressure Reddit is receiving to monetize ASAP.

victor9000 10y ago
Reddit's management team has created a policy of underpaying engineers, so it's no surprise to me that their technical capacity is less than stellar.
- ben_jones 10y ago
  I actually think companies can get away with "underpaying" engineers if they can offer alternative benefits like great culture, lower cost-of-living, growth opportunities (career and equity value), etc.. But Reddit is a company with a laundry list of PR crises, with an office in one of the most expensive cities in the world, constantly changing leadership, constantly changing leadership goals, extremely dissatisfied investors, an estranged and angry founder, AND a reputation for underpaying engineers. Ten bucks says they file a complaint somewhere stating "their aren't enough developers in the work force".
  - Twirrim 10y ago
    They didn't used to be in San Fran, and they used to support remote work, where cost of living was less of an issue, and lower salaries could stretch a lot further if (for example) an employee was working in the mid west. They had a bunch of strong advantages and an already geographically dispersed workforce and threw it away at a time when they really needed to be getting the most bang for their buck.

Gaelan 10y ago

They aren't overwriting existing affiliate links.

elsewhen 10y ago

Snapchat's revenue for 2015 was reportedly $59M [0] which does not seem to support their current valuation of $18B. i am not sure if they did native advertising in 2015 like the nike example you suggested. i suspect that they are going to have to get _significantly_ more aggressive with advertising or come up with a different business model altogether. [0] http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/26/snapchat-series-f/ http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/26/snapchat-series-f/

coke12 10y ago
Look at how fast they're monetizing: https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/snapchat-2015-rev.png?w=1250&h=524 https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/snapcha... (from the article). I'm sure the first half of 2016 has been insane.
rhizome 10y ago
they are going to have to get _significantly_ more aggressive with advertising Only if their monetization plan is being led by someone from a news site. Snapchat being what it is, they would be smarter to sell less for more. That is, if you don't have (much) advertising and a lot of demand, the little real estate you do cede to monetization is more valuable. They don't have to do takeovers.

notahacker 10y ago

Can you imagine Reddit's community responding to an equivalent of the Nike filter in a way which helped rather than harmed the brand? For the most part, I can't.

downandout 10y ago

Every consumer site wants user generated content for free but is not willing to share a tiny bit of the revs. I don't think there will be much revenue to share. It's too easy to get around this. Link to your own page, and redirect to your affiliate offer. Anyone that takes affiliate marketing on Reddit seriously will be doing this, so I doubt this will generate much revenue for Reddit.

dack 10y ago
They aren't editing links that already have an affiliate though, it only adds an affiliate if the link doesn't already have one.
- downandout 10y ago
  You're right. I only read the announcement, which implied that they would be rewriting all links. I didn't see until just now that this was addressed in the comments.

zippergz 10y ago

> Every consumer site wants user generated content for free but is not willing to share a tiny bit of the revs. As a user, I feel that I get value from participating on Reddit (as I do here). If I didn't, I wouldn't participate. I'm not looking to get paid.

mwfunk 10y ago
Not only that, but I would think if Reddit participants did get paid, surely the quality (such as it is) would go way down as everyone would be even more incentivized towards producing clickbait comments and stories. I'm actually amazed that Reddit continues to even exist given how much traffic it gets every day and how little income it must get from what (relatively) few ads it serves. I don't know what this massive cashflow is that people think they're entitled to tap into.

Grue3 10y ago

>Reddit should look at Snapchat I don't think Reddit should take advice from the company that has never been profitable (not that Reddit had been profitable, mind you). And affiliate links are actually known to be profitable, there are countless of sites that exist solely off affiliate links. "Nike filter", you must be kidding me. Nobody wants to put goddamn ads on their photos.

maccard 10y ago
> "Nike filter", you must be kidding me. Nobody wants to put goddamn ads on their photos. Plenty of people want to put certain kinds of ads on their photos, and are happy to do so!

brown9-2 10y ago

Reddit should look at Snapchat: today they have a Nike filter live. This is smart monetization and gives more bucks than this affiliate hack. So Reddit should offer a photo filter feature? This comparison is hard to comprehend since their features are so different.

Bromskloss 10y ago

> Nike filter live What is that?

salemh 10y ago

I was never bothered by the Pinterest: Affiliate links are added if none are present.

CM30 10y ago

There are sites that do this. For example, Tsu did this as a social network. Digitalpoint was a forum that used to do stuff like this with ad revenue sharing, and other forums installed the add on for it too. The problem is twofold: 1. If you're massively successful, then revenue sharing creates huge incentives for spam. Hence you often get people posting links to their content all over the place (especially on rival sites), at which point your brand gets seen as sleazy and your domain often added to a lot of blocklists. You also get a lot of low quality users signing up to post junk in the hope x amount of people click their ads or affiliate links. Digitalpoint got flooded with one liners and gibberish from people in poorer countries and ended up losing most of its more respected users in the process. 2. Revenue sharing often breaks down to a very, very limited amount of money for anyone using the site. Social networks and forums are not the best for ad clickthrough rates or affiliate links, This varies based on how exactly the users are paid (per discussion, per post, per video/image, etc), but it generally isn't enough for anyone to live on unless either got really low expenses or the site itself is ridiculously massive. That's why new sites don't do it.