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Hmm, on the whole monetization thing, there are a lot of good services that people (myself, anyways) would not pay money for. Twitter, Gmail, others. Figuring o

by lidmith 16y ago

Hmm, on the whole monetization thing, there are a lot of good services that people (myself, anyways) would not pay money for. Twitter, Gmail, others. Figuring out how to monetize in a way other than "sell your product to your customer" is a real problem for such services. Btw, I have never clicked on a google ad. Not once. I also now have adblock installed. Monetizing useful but free services is a tough problem, not to be dismissed.

lidmith 16y ago
also, the picture was gross
- ahoyhere 16y ago
  It's nutella! Nutella is delicious! It's a chocolate hazel-nut spread. :)
  - lidmith 16y ago
    Hehe, I figured it wasn't actually feces, but the picture plus title put me off a bit :)
div 16y ago
I think what she's trying to get at is that you should try to focus more on ideas that have monetization baked in rather then the ones that just try to get popular and figure out how to make money afterwards. In that sense, figuring out how to monetize good but free services is a non-issue because you won't be building a good but free service.
- ahoyhere 16y ago
  Yes, you got it! There's also a good reason to believe that lots of people WOULD pay for something like Gmail. Remember people trying to sell off invites back in the early days? More importantly, having a direct line to the company controlling their email -- attached by money -- is a very appealing prospect for people who understand that free is dicey.
  - extension 16y ago
    They will pay if it's effortless and trivially cheap and the competition isn't free either. The app store(s) have proved this.
    - ahoyhere 16y ago
      Yes, people will push a meh product, not do any ground marketing, do a piss poor job of communicating, -- and, from the start, not solve a problem or reach out to their customers in the right way -- then they will fail to make sales, and they will blame the "well-known fact" that people don't pay for things. In the mean time, I'm making a lot of money selling things where there are tons of free alternatives. People don't pay for content? I made $40,000 writing & selling an ebook about rich web app performance. I'm hardly the only one. Lots of people would rather blame the market, blame the customer, or blame the economy than consider that maybe they didn't do due diligence. I'll be writing a lot more about that in the future.
ahoyhere 16y ago
The other trick here is that you are not Google. Nobody who is Google is going to read my post. They can afford to run at a loss -- because their goal, remember, is to have all of the information in the world. Therefore Gmail serves their ends, even if you never click an ad. It's a bad idea to look at a behemoth like Google, who operates on completely different physics, and decide to model yourself after them without knowing the full story.
- lidmith 16y ago
  While I understand that they do tailor their ads to the information in your email, it was my (perhaps naive) understanding that the particulars of your emails were not used outside of determining those ads. Am I wrong in this?
  - ahoyhere 16y ago
    I couldn't tell you, I don't know. But their public mission is to index all the world's information. That much we do know for sure, since they've said it themselves. They are also clearly trying to cover ALL the bases, to have everybody sucking at their proverbial info-teat. They want you to store your calendar, docs, contacts, phone, videos, status updates, internet reading, spreadsheets, etc., etc., all on their servers. Did you know they used Goog-411 to collect spoken phonemes to improve their auto-captioning of YouTube videos (so they can search them)? This is clever… and largely unknown… and slightly scary, since it shows on the kind of game they're playing. OK so this is totally off-topic. My point is, if you don't have the capital of Google, or their 30-level thinking, charge money! You can make a really good income. :)
    - mcantor 16y ago
      Did you know they used Goog-411 to collect spoken phonemes to improve their auto-captioning of YouTube videos (so they can search them)? Source?
      - ahoyhere 16y ago
edanm 16y ago
Gmail could probably cost money and have a big userbase (at least now, when so many people know about it and use it). But I think a lot of the community sites can't charge money. I don't see Twitter, Reddit, StackOverflow and other such community sites gaining nearly enough users that way.
- ahoyhere 16y ago
  I'm pretty sure that there's at least 100,000+ people who would gladly pay for premium Twitter services. The amount people pay for superior Twitter clients and other ecosystems is an example. Granted the network effect is still in effect, but it could be a killer freemium.
- skorgu 16y ago
  Stack Overflow is explicitly a rebellion against Expertsexchange which has a free option with lots of upsell.
dalore 16y ago
People do pay for gmail. It's called Google Apps. I guess the thinking is that your so impressed with gmail for personal use that when you do start up a company you will use them for your business.
ynniv 16y ago
Of course you would pay for GMail - if the price was right. If an ad-free version of GMail cost 1¢/year (a lifetime for a dollar!), you would pay for it. In fact, you would probably pay a lot more that that if Google wasn't offering their service for free. And someone could easily still sell a webmail product, if it were better than GMail.
- what 16y ago
  You can just mention death in all your emails to remove the ads. Google doesn't want to offend you by advertising coffins and funeral services for your deceased relative/friend. It's been a while since I've tried it, but it used to work.

by lidmith 16y ago

lidmith 16y ago

also, the picture was gross

ahoyhere 16y ago
It's nutella! Nutella is delicious! It's a chocolate hazel-nut spread. :)
- lidmith 16y ago
  Hehe, I figured it wasn't actually feces, but the picture plus title put me off a bit :)

div 16y ago

I think what she's trying to get at is that you should try to focus more on ideas that have monetization baked in rather then the ones that just try to get popular and figure out how to make money afterwards. In that sense, figuring out how to monetize good but free services is a non-issue because you won't be building a good but free service.

ahoyhere 16y ago
Yes, you got it! There's also a good reason to believe that lots of people WOULD pay for something like Gmail. Remember people trying to sell off invites back in the early days? More importantly, having a direct line to the company controlling their email -- attached by money -- is a very appealing prospect for people who understand that free is dicey.
- extension 16y ago
  They will pay if it's effortless and trivially cheap and the competition isn't free either. The app store(s) have proved this.
  - ahoyhere 16y ago
    Yes, people will push a meh product, not do any ground marketing, do a piss poor job of communicating, -- and, from the start, not solve a problem or reach out to their customers in the right way -- then they will fail to make sales, and they will blame the "well-known fact" that people don't pay for things. In the mean time, I'm making a lot of money selling things where there are tons of free alternatives. People don't pay for content? I made $40,000 writing & selling an ebook about rich web app performance. I'm hardly the only one. Lots of people would rather blame the market, blame the customer, or blame the economy than consider that maybe they didn't do due diligence. I'll be writing a lot more about that in the future.

ahoyhere 16y ago

The other trick here is that you are not Google. Nobody who is Google is going to read my post. They can afford to run at a loss -- because their goal, remember, is to have all of the information in the world. Therefore Gmail serves their ends, even if you never click an ad. It's a bad idea to look at a behemoth like Google, who operates on completely different physics, and decide to model yourself after them without knowing the full story.

lidmith 16y ago
While I understand that they do tailor their ads to the information in your email, it was my (perhaps naive) understanding that the particulars of your emails were not used outside of determining those ads. Am I wrong in this?
- ahoyhere 16y ago
  I couldn't tell you, I don't know. But their public mission is to index all the world's information. That much we do know for sure, since they've said it themselves. They are also clearly trying to cover ALL the bases, to have everybody sucking at their proverbial info-teat. They want you to store your calendar, docs, contacts, phone, videos, status updates, internet reading, spreadsheets, etc., etc., all on their servers. Did you know they used Goog-411 to collect spoken phonemes to improve their auto-captioning of YouTube videos (so they can search them)? This is clever… and largely unknown… and slightly scary, since it shows on the kind of game they're playing. OK so this is totally off-topic. My point is, if you don't have the capital of Google, or their 30-level thinking, charge money! You can make a really good income. :)
  - mcantor 16y ago
    Did you know they used Goog-411 to collect spoken phonemes to improve their auto-captioning of YouTube videos (so they can search them)? Source?
    - ahoyhere 16y ago

edanm 16y ago

Gmail could probably cost money and have a big userbase (at least now, when so many people know about it and use it). But I think a lot of the community sites can't charge money. I don't see Twitter, Reddit, StackOverflow and other such community sites gaining nearly enough users that way.

ahoyhere 16y ago
I'm pretty sure that there's at least 100,000+ people who would gladly pay for premium Twitter services. The amount people pay for superior Twitter clients and other ecosystems is an example. Granted the network effect is still in effect, but it could be a killer freemium.
skorgu 16y ago
Stack Overflow is explicitly a rebellion against Expertsexchange which has a free option with lots of upsell.

dalore 16y ago

People do pay for gmail. It's called Google Apps. I guess the thinking is that your so impressed with gmail for personal use that when you do start up a company you will use them for your business.

ynniv 16y ago

Of course you would pay for GMail - if the price was right. If an ad-free version of GMail cost 1¢/year (a lifetime for a dollar!), you would pay for it. In fact, you would probably pay a lot more that that if Google wasn't offering their service for free. And someone could easily still sell a webmail product, if it were better than GMail.

what 16y ago
You can just mention death in all your emails to remove the ads. Google doesn't want to offend you by advertising coffins and funeral services for your deceased relative/friend. It's been a while since I've tried it, but it used to work.