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How do you plan to make a living on this website? (And if the answer is "we'll generate revenue with x after we get traction", then how do you plan to make a l

by apowell 16y ago

How do you plan to make a living on this website? (And if the answer is "we'll generate revenue with x after we get traction", then how do you plan to make a living in the meantime?) Why would I use this instead of just sharing links on Facebook or Twitter? PS - Great domain name. Care to share how you got it?

coryl 16y ago
Advertising, maybe a service like Viglink. We live at home with our parents right now :( We're applying to programs like YC, Techstars, etc. As for the domain, we contacted the owner and bought it off him :D
- apowell 16y ago
  You have a cool concept, and I "get it" a little more now that I've read your recent comments on this page. However, it still seems like a longshot. Perhaps you're okay with that. It's either going to catch on and you'll have to monetize very quickly in order to keep up with your ballooning costs (or get funded and kick the problem a bit further down the road), or it'll fizzle out. I'm having trouble seeing any middle ground. Have you figured out how much traffic you'll need to be viable on advertising income? Are you aware of how many hundreds of thousands (or millions) of visitors it'll take each month to make a reasonable living that way?
  - coryl 16y ago
    Interesting thoughts. What makes you think we'd have a lot of costs? We hotlink and embed most of the content from other sites, so really, even our bandwidth costs are low. I'm not sure its really a longshot at all. Its obvious people love sharing stuff, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter are simply evidence of the market for posting cool links.
    - apowell 16y ago
      First, I hope you're receiving these comments in the spirit I intend them. They're meant to be constructive, and I'll be rooting for your success. You'll have eventually have significant costs because to be viable you need generate 20M+ pageviews/month to make a good living with the sort of CPM rates I expect a site like this to get. With realtime updates and active chat threads, you'll need a bit of server horsepower to keep things moving. I think it's a longshot because you're entering a market that relies on massive network effects to create a few dominant players, and becoming a dominant player is tough. Plus, there are already "close enough" sites that people are happy using. Due to network effects, you're going to have a tough time pulling people over to your service when their friends are on Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/etc. To summarize, you're entering a competitive space and your revenue plan sounds shaky. On the other hand, no one ever accused me of being a visionary.
      - coryl 16y ago
        I'm receiving your comments well, I appreciate it :) I'm not defensive or anything, I enjoy reading peoples thoughts. I tend not to worry about huge costs so early into the project. We can find a way to monetize if we ever get that big. I think your thoughts about the network effect are interesting but pessimistic. We can actually use Facebook, Twitter APIs to our advantage, we don't need to "pull" users from the necessarily, I think that our specific product offering is complimentary rather than competitive. Who knows if we'll be successful in the end, I just like to take things one day at a time :) Thanks for your thoughts, they're very strategic, but at a level I'm not really prepared to start thinking about yet. Right now the focus is on practicality and applicability.

by apowell 16y ago

coryl 16y ago

Advertising, maybe a service like Viglink. We live at home with our parents right now :( We're applying to programs like YC, Techstars, etc. As for the domain, we contacted the owner and bought it off him :D

apowell 16y ago
You have a cool concept, and I "get it" a little more now that I've read your recent comments on this page. However, it still seems like a longshot. Perhaps you're okay with that. It's either going to catch on and you'll have to monetize very quickly in order to keep up with your ballooning costs (or get funded and kick the problem a bit further down the road), or it'll fizzle out. I'm having trouble seeing any middle ground. Have you figured out how much traffic you'll need to be viable on advertising income? Are you aware of how many hundreds of thousands (or millions) of visitors it'll take each month to make a reasonable living that way?
- coryl 16y ago
  Interesting thoughts. What makes you think we'd have a lot of costs? We hotlink and embed most of the content from other sites, so really, even our bandwidth costs are low. I'm not sure its really a longshot at all. Its obvious people love sharing stuff, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter are simply evidence of the market for posting cool links.
  - apowell 16y ago
    First, I hope you're receiving these comments in the spirit I intend them. They're meant to be constructive, and I'll be rooting for your success. You'll have eventually have significant costs because to be viable you need generate 20M+ pageviews/month to make a good living with the sort of CPM rates I expect a site like this to get. With realtime updates and active chat threads, you'll need a bit of server horsepower to keep things moving. I think it's a longshot because you're entering a market that relies on massive network effects to create a few dominant players, and becoming a dominant player is tough. Plus, there are already "close enough" sites that people are happy using. Due to network effects, you're going to have a tough time pulling people over to your service when their friends are on Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/etc. To summarize, you're entering a competitive space and your revenue plan sounds shaky. On the other hand, no one ever accused me of being a visionary.
    - coryl 16y ago
      I'm receiving your comments well, I appreciate it :) I'm not defensive or anything, I enjoy reading peoples thoughts. I tend not to worry about huge costs so early into the project. We can find a way to monetize if we ever get that big. I think your thoughts about the network effect are interesting but pessimistic. We can actually use Facebook, Twitter APIs to our advantage, we don't need to "pull" users from the necessarily, I think that our specific product offering is complimentary rather than competitive. Who knows if we'll be successful in the end, I just like to take things one day at a time :) Thanks for your thoughts, they're very strategic, but at a level I'm not really prepared to start thinking about yet. Right now the focus is on practicality and applicability.