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Ask HN - How do Quora, Reddit and SO monetize?
I mean they provide a great service, but surely display ads can't be their monetizing strategy.
Will each of them eventually have to revert to an Experts-Exchange styled business model?
Or am I missing something very obvious? :)
- beerglass 14y agoTry posting it on Quora for a direct response from founders
- debacle 14y agoReddit displays ads and sponsored stories (which lately have become almost indistinguishable from regular stories). Reddit Gold probably makes them more than either of the above, but I'm just pontificating here. SO can probably monetize pretty well with ads - their demographic is much more targetted. I think they also have a paid jobs posting service. Again, just speculating. I don't know the financials of either of these companies.
- shiftpgdn 14y agoSponsored stories? I haven't seen anything about that on reddit.
- jc4p 14y agoThere are per-subreddit (and sometimes general) sponsored stories on the top of each page, separated by the rest of the actual page by a big box. Example: http://i.imgur.com/LvkN5.png http://i.imgur.com/LvkN5.png
- mapleoin 14y agoReddit Gold probably makes them more than either of the above, but I'm just pontificating here. I think you're misusing the verb to pontificate. Maybe you wanted to say guessing instead? SO can probably monetize pretty well with ads - their demographic is much more targetted. Here you're mildly pontificating when you're telling SO what they should do to monetize their service.
- polshaw 14y agoInterestingly(?) I haven't seen an add on reddit in a long time. And that is without adblock. There used to be Amazon ads fairly regularly a while back, but now all I see are pictures of burgers, adverts for subreddits, flash games and 'thanks for not using ad-block'. I wonder why they haven't ditched it or done something about it. (I totally agree with your suspicion that reddit gold earns them more).
- m0shen 14y agoYou probably have. The links that appear in the top bar of the site are (usually) paid. Not all ads on the site take the form of a square image on the right.
- jarrettcoggin 14y agoI'm not sure about Quora, but Reddit has Reddit Gold (monthly subscription, $4/month I think) and Ads (I'm not sure of anything else), and SO has the jobs platform where businesses are charged to post employment opportunities ($350 for 30-day listing) and again, I'm not sure of any other monetization strategies for SO.
- tomgallard 14y agoStackOverflow makes money off their jobs board: http://careers.stackoverflow.com/ http://careers.stackoverflow.com/ whether it is enough to support the rest of the company- I'm not sure.
- why-el 14y agoAnd the ads obviously.
- artie_effim 14y agoYou know, and this got me off the Facebook: "If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold." I'll wager dollars to doughnuts that all those sites are selling user data to Madison Ave et al.
- cbg0 14y agoYou'd lose a lot of doughnuts.
- christonog 14y agoSo what about credit cards and bank accounts that have no annual fees (essentially free to use)? I suppose your money is the product being sold (in terms of interest) in this case.
- pavel_lishin 14y agoStores have to pay to use Visa, etc. So you're still paying for that credit card via slightly higher prices.
- nicknyc10k 14y agoAs noted, I think employment opportunities are one way to potentially get some cash. the bigger opportunity is being able to quantify knowledge and expertise in a subject. All these sites can verify and demonstrate a given understanding and communication of concepts, experience and expertise. Seems like the way to drive revenue would be to provide a potential employer or current employer with a skills evaluation or the ability to find expertise. Plus, all have the ability to connect people who would pay for access to individuals with info or knowledge. Similar to Gerson Lehrman Group.
- sk55 14y agoInteresting. "Recently GLG has created Hightable (formerly known as G+),[26] a professional question-and-answer website, edited and organized by its community of users to compete with Quora[27] and to attract more experts to their platform." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerson_Lehrman_Group http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerson_Lehrman_Group
- relaxman 14y agohttp://www.ted.com/talks/gary_kovacs_tracking_the_trackers.html http://www.ted.com/talks/gary_kovacs_tracking_the_trackers.h...
- adambyrtek 14y agoDo you have any context for this link?
- zumbojo 14y agoIn the case of Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange, see Jeff Atwood's (slightly dated - IIRC job candidates are no longer charged) answer to "What is Stack Overflow's business model?": http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/79435/what-is-stack-overflows-business-model/79448#79448 http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/79435/what-is-stack-... And their Careers 2.0 employer page: http://careers.stackoverflow.com/employer http://careers.stackoverflow.com/employer
- raldi 14y agoI think Craigslist is a good model: Stay lean, and find one or two small areas of the site that people are willing to pay for, then use that to fund the rest of it for free.
- tszming 14y agoAmazon's affiliate program http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/26964/auto-inserting-stack-overflow-affiliate-into-all-amazon-book-links http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/26964/auto-inserting...
- ThomPete 14y agoIt's interesting that no one have answered how Quora makes money. They dont seem to have one yet. But here are possible avenue they could explore. http://www.quora.com/What-could-Quoras-long-term-business-plan-be http://www.quora.com/What-could-Quoras-long-term-business-pl...
- brennenbyrne 14y agoThey have your eyeballs, now they just need someone to pay for them.
- japhyr 14y agoI read someone's estimate of SO's revenue a couple years back. Does anyone know if this was a reasonable estimate or not? http://blog.olegkokorin.com/2010/03/04/stackoverflow-revenue-estimated/ http://blog.olegkokorin.com/2010/03/04/stackoverflow-revenue...