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High School teen turns down $8M in ads on his popular Covid Tracker site

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
The $8M number is unverified. It's a claim that the guy has made to various media outlets. He's now also claiming he's given up an estimated $30m in advertising revenue, again by his own estimates: > One offer in particular would have contracted Schiffmann to keep up the site for $8 million, which he turned down, and he says he likely could have made over $30 million if he'd put up his own ads, but he says that's not the goal of the site. Obviously, someone with an $8 million advertising budget would rather just buy the site from him for a few million. Also, no one I've talked to had seen the website before these media stories. Something's up with the claims. In fact, his site doesn't appear to have been all that popular until all of the news articles about "Teen creates popular website" started circulating on March 3rd: https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ncov2019.live https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ncov2019.live If anything, it appears that the popularity was bootstrapped by getting media attention claiming the site was popular. I have no doubt he has a lot of traffic, especially after bootstrapping it with all of these media pieces about turning down $8m, but I think he's smartly realized that the reputation boost of having a popular website and multiple media pieces from large outlets is worth more in the long run than what he'd actually receive from legitimate advertising sources: > Instead, he cares more about the connections he's made from the project. "Now I know a ton of VCs and investors...if I started a company tomorrow, they'd at least read my business plan." I just hope he doesn't overplay his hand and lose people with increasingly exaggerated claims.
- onetimemanytime 6y ago
  Early March was also the time people really got scared of Covid so... As for the claims, yeah they are his claims and no doubt he's milking it for traffic. If he has anything close to 30m visitors a day, no doubt a lot of "cures" and related stuff can be sold. But it may short lived, all he has others can do it. >>"Now I know a ton of VCs and investors...if I started a company tomorrow, they'd at least read my business plan." I made $XX million in 4 months when I was 17 also opens doors. And the money is, essentially, FU money.

The $8M number is unverified. It's a claim that the guy has made to various media outlets. He's now also claiming he's given up an estimated $30m in advertising revenue, again by his own estimates: > One offer in particular would have contracted Schiffmann to keep up the site for $8 million, which he turned down, and he says he likely could have made over $30 million if he'd put up his own ads, but he says that's not the goal of the site. Obviously, someone with an $8 million advertising budget would rather just buy the site from him for a few million. Also, no one I've talked to had seen the website before these media stories. Something's up with the claims. In fact, his site doesn't appear to have been all that popular until all of the news articles about "Teen creates popular website" started circulating on March 3rd: https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ncov2019.live https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ncov2019.live If anything, it appears that the popularity was bootstrapped by getting media attention claiming the site was popular. I have no doubt he has a lot of traffic, especially after bootstrapping it with all of these media pieces about turning down $8m, but I think he's smartly realized that the reputation boost of having a popular website and multiple media pieces from large outlets is worth more in the long run than what he'd actually receive from legitimate advertising sources: > Instead, he cares more about the connections he's made from the project. "Now I know a ton of VCs and investors...if I started a company tomorrow, they'd at least read my business plan." I just hope he doesn't overplay his hand and lose people with increasingly exaggerated claims.

onetimemanytime 6y ago
Early March was also the time people really got scared of Covid so... As for the claims, yeah they are his claims and no doubt he's milking it for traffic. If he has anything close to 30m visitors a day, no doubt a lot of "cures" and related stuff can be sold. But it may short lived, all he has others can do it. >>"Now I know a ton of VCs and investors...if I started a company tomorrow, they'd at least read my business plan." I made $XX million in 4 months when I was 17 also opens doors. And the money is, essentially, FU money.