5 ms·

Students Read Hacker Monthly For Free

91 points by bearwithclaws 16y ago

ashconnor 16y ago
American students only? If not could the form be modifier to accept *.ac.uk email addresses.
- bearwithclaws 16y ago
  Worldwide. Apology for my ignorance for not knowing the *.ac.uk for students in UK. I've did a slight modification to the form.
  - kingsidharth 16y ago
    My school (yes I am in High School) doesn't have a .edu address, so entered my personal one. Acceptable?
    - bearwithclaws 16y ago
      Yes.
  - ugh 16y ago
    Universities in Germany and probably many other countries don’t have special e-mail addresses. I guess you will either have to verify manually (if there is indeed some kind of college or university behind the address) or just not accept those submissions.
    - bearwithclaws 16y ago
      Guess I will verify manually (I could always google).
      - SZW 16y ago
        That would help. Many German universities have rudimentary English versions, which makes things easier, too. I suppose it's enough to search the university's name and "email", though. I found some email adresses of my university that way, anyway. Thanks for doing this - I (and the other students, I bet) appreciate it a lot.
manvsmachine 16y ago
The form was broken for me; it wouldn't accept a graduation year of 2010.
- bearwithclaws 16y ago
  Fixed.
ajaimk 16y ago
I LOVE YOU GUYS!!! Thanks a lot. I've actually been saving money for a subscription but this is awesome...
dgraunke 16y ago
Awesome, thank you!
mattew 16y ago
This is great. I am not a student but plan to subscribe. Now I feel even better about my subscription.
rewolverine 16y ago
Thanks for this. You may want to add emails as .ac.* since in India too we have ac.in domains.
- bearwithclaws 16y ago
  Done.
dreur 16y ago
You should add some share button on your homepage :) Would make it easier to share this awesome mag
Scriptor 16y ago
Awesome! Is there any way we can have access to the previous issues as well?
- bearwithclaws 16y ago
  Drop me an email: cheng.soon at hackermonthly
k3dz 16y ago
"students can't afford $29 a year" seriously? a dinner at a half decent restaurant would cost more
- _delirium 16y ago
  From a commercial perspective, it's probably at least true that [most] students won't pay $29 a year for a magazine, affordable or not. Whether that matters depends on whether you think there's a benefit in them reading it free, or if it's fine if they just don't read it.
- nickbarnwell 16y ago
  Thus why most students aren't eating dinner at a half-decent restaurant. Certainly $29 a year is affordable, but that's also nearly two months of a 20GB Heroku DB addon or a month and a half of an MediaTemple GridServe instance. At the moment every penny I make from work is being put straight into my own startup, and I'm sure it is the same for many other students that are reading HN.
- fiblye 16y ago
  $29 is enough for a week's worth of meals from the nearby Chinese restaurant. When I have to choose between entertainment and food, I'm going with the latter; some other people will get the food and acquire the entertainment through "cheaper" means as well. One way to get loyal customers is to reward them immediately without asking for anything.
apsurd 16y ago
Just curious; I never got these "for students" type of promotions. Everyone does it. Amazon, fogbugz, local pizza shops, and a ton of others I'm sure. Maybe I shoudn't say "I don't get it", because I guess I do. The student label is pretty convenient and as everyone seems to understand it; "students are broke" because they have to pay for school and cannot work full time? Is that it? A lot of people legitimately struggle to pay for things and are "broke". While it is true that being a student is a good thing, it does not entail that not being a student, (or maybe just specifically not being a student at a qualifying university that gives out .edu addresses or something) is a bad thing. I guess my point is people struggle in all sorts of ways, and I would be happy to see a company say something more like "Free for people in need", "Pay what you can", or something like that. Ok so I'm not the best marketer but that would be nice in my book. An open, honest, and truly unbiased form of helping out. =) P.S. I guess I should put my money where my mouth is. I'll incorporate that into my side projects and hopefully I can refine it enough to share my results (and promotions) here with HN.
- necubi 16y ago
  The answer (in general, though not in this particular case because the product is free) is price discrimination[0]. The basic idea is that by segmenting their customers roughly by ability to pay (students and seniors will on average pay less for your product than others) you can charge higher prices to everybody else. Otherwise, you would have to reduce your prices across the board in order to maximize profits. [0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - Locke1689 16y ago
    Ah, but students aren't just poor -- they're a tricker state, one which I'd refer to as "probabilistically temporary poor." Consider that people who read Hacker News are probably intellectually curious and are probably more likely to be computer science majors. It's also pretty likely that these students are bright and will grab decent jobs after graduation. After having exprienced the quality of Hacker Monthly, they will probably wish to continue. While they would no longer get the student discount, they now longer need it since they have acquired decent jobs. Since digital distribution costs practically nothing, the only cost to the distributer is marginal, but with the benefit that the students will probably become paying members in the future.
patrickaljord 16y ago
What's the point in reading HN on paper? I would hate to type all those links manually after reading them.
raptrex 16y ago
I signed up, am I suppose to get a confirmation email?
ld50 16y ago
i've been working on an extended digital version of hackermonthly that i should mention here for all you HM subscribers. it's a 100% digital interactive magazine (click through it!) that on a daily basis takes the 30 "most interesting" posts from hackernews and puts them all on a single "front page". as a bonus i've included not just a few dozen comments but HUNDREDS of comments (for your reading pleasure). the "front page" subscription service costs only $.99 a month and gives you a daily "front page" in a digital, interactive, and browser-friendly format (ipad & kindle too!). i've also put together a "more page" subscription service that gives you access to not just the top 30 stories but ALL STORIES -- in 30 page increments. if you act now, each additional 30-story "More" page can be accessed for the ridiculously low price of $.25/page. but that's not all. if you're a student and respond to this post in the next 30 minutes, you'll get daily access to not just the "front page", not just a "more" page, but EVERY PAGE in the entire hackernoobs archive for just $1.99/month. limited supply, so hurry! act now!
jasonkester 16y ago
This type of promotion is a great idea if you run a service that businesspeople pay money for. Especially if said service is tons better than the entrenched Enterprise Thing in its niche. Roughly 100% of the students you give free licenses to will one day be sitting in a room full of people wearing ties, trying to, for example, get WebEx to work at all so that they can get on with the big call. It's costing them $1000 per minute to have the Director of Finance messing with the computer, and if Bright Kid chimes in saying "why don't we just use this simple conference thing we used in school. It always just works", then you've more than paid for the free license you gave that kid all those years ago. It costs you nothing to do. It gains you goodwill, marketing, future sales, and a ton of other side benefits. If you sell stuff to businesses, absolutely do this.
rb2k_ 16y ago
Was there ever any sort of eMail confirmation? So far, I've put in my data and nothing happened after that O_o

91 points by bearwithclaws 16y ago

ashconnor 16y ago

American students only? If not could the form be modifier to accept *.ac.uk email addresses.

bearwithclaws 16y ago
Worldwide. Apology for my ignorance for not knowing the *.ac.uk for students in UK. I've did a slight modification to the form.
- kingsidharth 16y ago
  My school (yes I am in High School) doesn't have a .edu address, so entered my personal one. Acceptable?
  - bearwithclaws 16y ago
    Yes.
- ugh 16y ago
  Universities in Germany and probably many other countries don’t have special e-mail addresses. I guess you will either have to verify manually (if there is indeed some kind of college or university behind the address) or just not accept those submissions.
  - bearwithclaws 16y ago
    Guess I will verify manually (I could always google).
    - SZW 16y ago
      That would help. Many German universities have rudimentary English versions, which makes things easier, too. I suppose it's enough to search the university's name and "email", though. I found some email adresses of my university that way, anyway. Thanks for doing this - I (and the other students, I bet) appreciate it a lot.

manvsmachine 16y ago

The form was broken for me; it wouldn't accept a graduation year of 2010.

bearwithclaws 16y ago
Fixed.

ajaimk 16y ago

I LOVE YOU GUYS!!! Thanks a lot. I've actually been saving money for a subscription but this is awesome...

dgraunke 16y ago

Awesome, thank you!

mattew 16y ago

This is great. I am not a student but plan to subscribe. Now I feel even better about my subscription.

rewolverine 16y ago

Thanks for this. You may want to add emails as .ac.* since in India too we have ac.in domains.

bearwithclaws 16y ago
Done.

dreur 16y ago

You should add some share button on your homepage :) Would make it easier to share this awesome mag

Scriptor 16y ago

Awesome! Is there any way we can have access to the previous issues as well?

bearwithclaws 16y ago
Drop me an email: cheng.soon at hackermonthly

k3dz 16y ago

"students can't afford $29 a year" seriously? a dinner at a half decent restaurant would cost more

_delirium 16y ago
From a commercial perspective, it's probably at least true that [most] students won't pay $29 a year for a magazine, affordable or not. Whether that matters depends on whether you think there's a benefit in them reading it free, or if it's fine if they just don't read it.
nickbarnwell 16y ago
Thus why most students aren't eating dinner at a half-decent restaurant. Certainly $29 a year is affordable, but that's also nearly two months of a 20GB Heroku DB addon or a month and a half of an MediaTemple GridServe instance. At the moment every penny I make from work is being put straight into my own startup, and I'm sure it is the same for many other students that are reading HN.
fiblye 16y ago
$29 is enough for a week's worth of meals from the nearby Chinese restaurant. When I have to choose between entertainment and food, I'm going with the latter; some other people will get the food and acquire the entertainment through "cheaper" means as well. One way to get loyal customers is to reward them immediately without asking for anything.

apsurd 16y ago

Just curious; I never got these "for students" type of promotions. Everyone does it. Amazon, fogbugz, local pizza shops, and a ton of others I'm sure. Maybe I shoudn't say "I don't get it", because I guess I do. The student label is pretty convenient and as everyone seems to understand it; "students are broke" because they have to pay for school and cannot work full time? Is that it? A lot of people legitimately struggle to pay for things and are "broke". While it is true that being a student is a good thing, it does not entail that not being a student, (or maybe just specifically not being a student at a qualifying university that gives out .edu addresses or something) is a bad thing. I guess my point is people struggle in all sorts of ways, and I would be happy to see a company say something more like "Free for people in need", "Pay what you can", or something like that. Ok so I'm not the best marketer but that would be nice in my book. An open, honest, and truly unbiased form of helping out. =) P.S. I guess I should put my money where my mouth is. I'll incorporate that into my side projects and hopefully I can refine it enough to share my results (and promotions) here with HN.

necubi 16y ago
The answer (in general, though not in this particular case because the product is free) is price discrimination[0]. The basic idea is that by segmenting their customers roughly by ability to pay (students and seniors will on average pay less for your product than others) you can charge higher prices to everybody else. Otherwise, you would have to reduce your prices across the board in order to maximize profits. [0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- Locke1689 16y ago
  Ah, but students aren't just poor -- they're a tricker state, one which I'd refer to as "probabilistically temporary poor." Consider that people who read Hacker News are probably intellectually curious and are probably more likely to be computer science majors. It's also pretty likely that these students are bright and will grab decent jobs after graduation. After having exprienced the quality of Hacker Monthly, they will probably wish to continue. While they would no longer get the student discount, they now longer need it since they have acquired decent jobs. Since digital distribution costs practically nothing, the only cost to the distributer is marginal, but with the benefit that the students will probably become paying members in the future.

patrickaljord 16y ago

What's the point in reading HN on paper? I would hate to type all those links manually after reading them.

raptrex 16y ago

I signed up, am I suppose to get a confirmation email?

ld50 16y ago

i've been working on an extended digital version of hackermonthly that i should mention here for all you HM subscribers. it's a 100% digital interactive magazine (click through it!) that on a daily basis takes the 30 "most interesting" posts from hackernews and puts them all on a single "front page". as a bonus i've included not just a few dozen comments but HUNDREDS of comments (for your reading pleasure). the "front page" subscription service costs only $.99 a month and gives you a daily "front page" in a digital, interactive, and browser-friendly format (ipad & kindle too!). i've also put together a "more page" subscription service that gives you access to not just the top 30 stories but ALL STORIES -- in 30 page increments. if you act now, each additional 30-story "More" page can be accessed for the ridiculously low price of $.25/page. but that's not all. if you're a student and respond to this post in the next 30 minutes, you'll get daily access to not just the "front page", not just a "more" page, but EVERY PAGE in the entire hackernoobs archive for just $1.99/month. limited supply, so hurry! act now!

jasonkester 16y ago

This type of promotion is a great idea if you run a service that businesspeople pay money for. Especially if said service is tons better than the entrenched Enterprise Thing in its niche. Roughly 100% of the students you give free licenses to will one day be sitting in a room full of people wearing ties, trying to, for example, get WebEx to work at all so that they can get on with the big call. It's costing them $1000 per minute to have the Director of Finance messing with the computer, and if Bright Kid chimes in saying "why don't we just use this simple conference thing we used in school. It always just works", then you've more than paid for the free license you gave that kid all those years ago. It costs you nothing to do. It gains you goodwill, marketing, future sales, and a ton of other side benefits. If you sell stuff to businesses, absolutely do this.

rb2k_ 16y ago

Was there ever any sort of eMail confirmation? So far, I've put in my data and nothing happened after that O_o