20 ms·

How ThatHigh solved the chicken and egg problem and grew to 1 million pageviews

110 points by il 16y ago

jayzee 16y ago
I am more curious to know how much traffic it takes for a site like this to become profitable ads? Anybody has any details? ps: I guess quite a few of us have such "Oh that would be a fun site" ideas... I just don't know what traffic will make it worth the effort.
- oldstrangers 16y ago
  From my experience, 500,000 pageviews a month will turn a decent profit. Absolute minimum seems to be 100,000 a month, which is extremely easy to obtain these days.
  - patrickaljord 16y ago
    How much can you make with 100,000?
    - symptic 16y ago
      100,000 at $1 CPM = 100,000 * .001 = $100 If you are just throwing up a generic banner ad network, it's probably close to $.10-.25 CPM. Then multiply by how many ad units displayed per page (networks usually don't allow any more than 2-3). So: 100,000 * .00025 = $25; x3 = $75 Very rough estimates. With a site with such a particular niche, he can probably get a higher CPM. I also count 7 ads on the home page.
    - iaskwhy 16y ago
      My numbers from January: 159k pageviews (137k with ads, one per page at the bottom), $84 in Adsense.
      - maneesh 16y ago
        Hrm, my January numbers: Page Impressions, 12900; AdSense, $340
        iaskwhy 16y ago
        Well, it's public how numbers vary so much. Mine's a niche music site so I don't think I should expect much more than what it's doing right now. I could easily improve the banners placement though, I just think it isn't worth it.
  - SeamusBrady 16y ago
    OK - I'll bite :) Could you qualify why you think it is easy to get 100,000 pageviews a month? I am intrigued.
    - oldstrangers 16y ago
      I consider 100,000 pageviews a month easy because I can achieve that number organically (without paying for traffic) within a few months. My niche is probably a bit easier than some others, though. I also consider it easy in comparison to the fact that it took me 2 1/2 years to get to 600,000 a month when I first started. I could probably do 600,000 organically in half the time now.
- covercash 16y ago
  From his reddit AMA: My rent is $1050 / month, I live with two friends. Adsense pays me per click, but when I charge advertisers, I charge them CPM. August - 150k uniques Sept. - 100k uniques Nov. - 140k uniques organic = ~20% referral = ~30% direct = ~50% I don't get direct advertisers often, but when I do, I charge them anywhere from $2 - $5 CPM (obviously it depends on the company) Edit: I forgot to mention, the AMA title was "I run ThatHigh and it pays my rent in SF" so I guess it's safe to say that he makes at least $1050/mo from the site.
bherms 16y ago
This is great info for people looking to do sites in the chicken/egg category.. I'm actually sitting here working on an idea that a friend and I will be launching by Monday that will face many of these same problems and it's awesome to hear from someone who has been successful facing the same problems we envisioned having.
DanielBMarkham 16y ago
This was a good article, all except for the last little bit: Sometimes, driving traffic simply demands ingenuity, creativity, and hustle. Be more creative than your competitors, work harder than them, and test faster than them. Go where your competitors dare not because they are too complacent, too conventional, too risk-averse. There are literally thousands of diverse traffic sources out there…go explore them! Not trying to rag on the author, but the problem here, is that this is just a _platitude_. It can mean anything. Therefore it really means nothing. Until and unless specific examples are given, it's just saying that in order to be better you need to be better. All-in-all, though, it was a great article. My takeaway was that sticky sites beat plain content sites, but only if you bust your ass getting people participating, and there are no hard and fast rules for that. Do whatever it takes. That's not necessarily a happy piece of information to have, but it's direct and useful.
- il 16y ago
  I agree. But isn't it considered de rigeur to end a case study with a trite, meaningless yet upbeat platitude? You know, "Here's how this guy is successful, now go forth and be successful like him, because YOU CAN DO IT!" In any case, I welcome any and all suggestions for an alternate ending.
  - StavrosK 16y ago
    I prefer "These are some suggestions about what you can do in a similar situation, if you have any other please post comments, thanks for reading."
  - DanielBMarkham 16y ago
    I think it's probably a "designed" fault. (Hey, it's not a bug, it's a feature!) The problem, like you say, is that you have to wrap it up at the end. This works as good as anything. But for a novice, it can look as if the "wrapping up" part is where the real summary goes, and that's not true at all. In fact, by summarizing, you miss out on all the good stuff. So perhaps you're stuck. I'd like to see somebody talk to a dozen of these guys and ask them questions along the lines of "so, when you realized that you were going to have to be a sock puppet for the rest of your natural life, when and how did you finally figure out to do X?" The dry-erase marking, for example. Great idea. But why that and not door-hanging, or radio ads, or wearing a sandwich board on main street? Why did they choose those particular ad-hoc things that finally made a breakthrough? I don't believe it's all random. Somebody had some hunches in there somewhere. There are a million random things you can do to try to drive traffic. Somehow some folks pick better things than others.
baby 16y ago
I've read a similar article which was on the frontpage of HN not so long ago. And it was better. Why would you use ThatHigh as an example to illustrate this ? I think this site did poorly. And just looking at how much fan they have on their facebook can pretty much prove my point (I got like 95k fans on my page just by liking something with my facebook account. Never did anything else than that to promote my website)
- il 16y ago
  The traffic numbers are legit and not inflated, if that's what you're wondering about. Honestly, I don't know that many people who have built a community site of similar traffic level that quickly, especially without doing any SEO. If you can put me in touch with others who have accomplished something like this, I would love to write about them too.
  - WalterGR 16y ago
    Honestly, I don't know that many people who have built a community site of similar traffic level that quickly Maybe I missed it, but did you mention the site's age anywhere in the article?
  - baby 16y ago
    The thing is. I don't see a big traffic on this "community site". I call that a fair traffic that will maybe not last.
- endlessvoid94 16y ago
  Would you mind sharing your techniques? I'd be more than happy to learn :-)
Rariel 16y ago
Very interesting. It's funny, I'm actually launching a site with the chicken/egg problem and I thought of some of the same ideas (fake users or at least having your friends create 2-3 accounts each and chalking up my campus quad). I'm glad to hear that these ideas have resulted in lots of hits. I will report back on my progress with chalking for those interested. I'm planning to hit the 3 major universities in my area and I think this could have major impact. We'll see!
guynamedloren 16y ago
@endlessvoid94 - Good work solving the chicken/egg problem. I noticed you're a UIUC alum (couldn't help but make the connection between your mentionong of chalking the quad in the article and the actual THATHIGH.COM chalk I saw everywhere last year). I would love to hear your thoughts on entrepreneurship in CU and what prompted you to move out west. Just sent you a tweet.
widgetycrank 16y ago
That was a nice read, though I wonder if there are legal issues with mining the web for content. For reddit they were just submitting links, so they probably wouldn't have gotten into much trouble.
covercash 16y ago
The owner did a pretty interesting AMA over on reddit about a month ago. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ev2zb/i_run_thathighcom_and_it_pays_my_rent_in_san/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ev2zb/i_run_thathighco...
devinfoley 16y ago
I am familiar with the site because I saw it on Reddit. When I saw the headline on HN, my initial thought was "Wow, those stoners actually figured out which came first, the chicken or the egg!"
rmc 16y ago
They talk about how SEO wasn't important for them, which makes sense, since very few of their target audience or current users are going to search for "funny stories of people getting high" or similar.
kgtm 16y ago
Fake it till you make it. Seed your community with users and content, appear full of life. And they will come.

110 points by il 16y ago

I am more curious to know how much traffic it takes for a site like this to become profitable ads? Anybody has any details? ps: I guess quite a few of us have such "Oh that would be a fun site" ideas... I just don't know what traffic will make it worth the effort.

oldstrangers 16y ago
From my experience, 500,000 pageviews a month will turn a decent profit. Absolute minimum seems to be 100,000 a month, which is extremely easy to obtain these days.
- patrickaljord 16y ago
  How much can you make with 100,000?
  - symptic 16y ago
    100,000 at $1 CPM = 100,000 * .001 = $100 If you are just throwing up a generic banner ad network, it's probably close to $.10-.25 CPM. Then multiply by how many ad units displayed per page (networks usually don't allow any more than 2-3). So: 100,000 * .00025 = $25; x3 = $75 Very rough estimates. With a site with such a particular niche, he can probably get a higher CPM. I also count 7 ads on the home page.
  - iaskwhy 16y ago
    My numbers from January: 159k pageviews (137k with ads, one per page at the bottom), $84 in Adsense.
    - maneesh 16y ago
      Hrm, my January numbers: Page Impressions, 12900; AdSense, $340
      - iaskwhy 16y ago
        Well, it's public how numbers vary so much. Mine's a niche music site so I don't think I should expect much more than what it's doing right now. I could easily improve the banners placement though, I just think it isn't worth it.
- SeamusBrady 16y ago
  OK - I'll bite :) Could you qualify why you think it is easy to get 100,000 pageviews a month? I am intrigued.
  - oldstrangers 16y ago
    I consider 100,000 pageviews a month easy because I can achieve that number organically (without paying for traffic) within a few months. My niche is probably a bit easier than some others, though. I also consider it easy in comparison to the fact that it took me 2 1/2 years to get to 600,000 a month when I first started. I could probably do 600,000 organically in half the time now.
covercash 16y ago
From his reddit AMA: My rent is $1050 / month, I live with two friends. Adsense pays me per click, but when I charge advertisers, I charge them CPM. August - 150k uniques Sept. - 100k uniques Nov. - 140k uniques organic = ~20% referral = ~30% direct = ~50% I don't get direct advertisers often, but when I do, I charge them anywhere from $2 - $5 CPM (obviously it depends on the company) Edit: I forgot to mention, the AMA title was "I run ThatHigh and it pays my rent in SF" so I guess it's safe to say that he makes at least $1050/mo from the site.

bherms 16y ago

This is great info for people looking to do sites in the chicken/egg category.. I'm actually sitting here working on an idea that a friend and I will be launching by Monday that will face many of these same problems and it's awesome to hear from someone who has been successful facing the same problems we envisioned having.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

This was a good article, all except for the last little bit: Sometimes, driving traffic simply demands ingenuity, creativity, and hustle. Be more creative than your competitors, work harder than them, and test faster than them. Go where your competitors dare not because they are too complacent, too conventional, too risk-averse. There are literally thousands of diverse traffic sources out there…go explore them! Not trying to rag on the author, but the problem here, is that this is just a _platitude_. It can mean anything. Therefore it really means nothing. Until and unless specific examples are given, it's just saying that in order to be better you need to be better. All-in-all, though, it was a great article. My takeaway was that sticky sites beat plain content sites, but only if you bust your ass getting people participating, and there are no hard and fast rules for that. Do whatever it takes. That's not necessarily a happy piece of information to have, but it's direct and useful.

il 16y ago
I agree. But isn't it considered de rigeur to end a case study with a trite, meaningless yet upbeat platitude? You know, "Here's how this guy is successful, now go forth and be successful like him, because YOU CAN DO IT!" In any case, I welcome any and all suggestions for an alternate ending.
- StavrosK 16y ago
  I prefer "These are some suggestions about what you can do in a similar situation, if you have any other please post comments, thanks for reading."
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  I think it's probably a "designed" fault. (Hey, it's not a bug, it's a feature!) The problem, like you say, is that you have to wrap it up at the end. This works as good as anything. But for a novice, it can look as if the "wrapping up" part is where the real summary goes, and that's not true at all. In fact, by summarizing, you miss out on all the good stuff. So perhaps you're stuck. I'd like to see somebody talk to a dozen of these guys and ask them questions along the lines of "so, when you realized that you were going to have to be a sock puppet for the rest of your natural life, when and how did you finally figure out to do X?" The dry-erase marking, for example. Great idea. But why that and not door-hanging, or radio ads, or wearing a sandwich board on main street? Why did they choose those particular ad-hoc things that finally made a breakthrough? I don't believe it's all random. Somebody had some hunches in there somewhere. There are a million random things you can do to try to drive traffic. Somehow some folks pick better things than others.

baby 16y ago

I've read a similar article which was on the frontpage of HN not so long ago. And it was better. Why would you use ThatHigh as an example to illustrate this ? I think this site did poorly. And just looking at how much fan they have on their facebook can pretty much prove my point (I got like 95k fans on my page just by liking something with my facebook account. Never did anything else than that to promote my website)

il 16y ago
The traffic numbers are legit and not inflated, if that's what you're wondering about. Honestly, I don't know that many people who have built a community site of similar traffic level that quickly, especially without doing any SEO. If you can put me in touch with others who have accomplished something like this, I would love to write about them too.
- WalterGR 16y ago
  Honestly, I don't know that many people who have built a community site of similar traffic level that quickly Maybe I missed it, but did you mention the site's age anywhere in the article?
- baby 16y ago
  The thing is. I don't see a big traffic on this "community site". I call that a fair traffic that will maybe not last.
endlessvoid94 16y ago
Would you mind sharing your techniques? I'd be more than happy to learn :-)

Rariel 16y ago

Very interesting. It's funny, I'm actually launching a site with the chicken/egg problem and I thought of some of the same ideas (fake users or at least having your friends create 2-3 accounts each and chalking up my campus quad). I'm glad to hear that these ideas have resulted in lots of hits. I will report back on my progress with chalking for those interested. I'm planning to hit the 3 major universities in my area and I think this could have major impact. We'll see!

guynamedloren 16y ago

@endlessvoid94 - Good work solving the chicken/egg problem. I noticed you're a UIUC alum (couldn't help but make the connection between your mentionong of chalking the quad in the article and the actual THATHIGH.COM chalk I saw everywhere last year). I would love to hear your thoughts on entrepreneurship in CU and what prompted you to move out west. Just sent you a tweet.

widgetycrank 16y ago

That was a nice read, though I wonder if there are legal issues with mining the web for content. For reddit they were just submitting links, so they probably wouldn't have gotten into much trouble.

covercash 16y ago

The owner did a pretty interesting AMA over on reddit about a month ago. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ev2zb/i_run_thathighcom_and_it_pays_my_rent_in_san/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ev2zb/i_run_thathighco...

devinfoley 16y ago

I am familiar with the site because I saw it on Reddit. When I saw the headline on HN, my initial thought was "Wow, those stoners actually figured out which came first, the chicken or the egg!"

rmc 16y ago

They talk about how SEO wasn't important for them, which makes sense, since very few of their target audience or current users are going to search for "funny stories of people getting high" or similar.

kgtm 16y ago

Fake it till you make it. Seed your community with users and content, appear full of life. And they will come.