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NO BOOK EXCHANGE HAS EVER REALLY SUCCEEDED. I did a variation of this my freshman year, by actually buying about $10k of books from students on campus and then

by brianr 18y ago

NO BOOK EXCHANGE HAS EVER REALLY SUCCEEDED. I did a variation of this my freshman year, by actually buying about $10k of books from students on campus and then selling them on Amazon. We made about $3k all told... I guess the author is right that it didn't "really succeed" and become a huge business, but I definitely learned a ton. (And notably, Chegg is in this space and seems to be doing well enough to get Kleiner Perkins to join their $25m series B.) THERE IS NO MONEY IN T-SHIRTS. Nonsense. There's a lot of competition, but plenty of people are making tons of money. Anything where you plan to make your money exclusively from ads Bashing ad-supported business seems to be popular these days, but somehow those people are overlooking the fact that Google made $21B last year doing just this. Making significant money from ads requires getting to scale, but if you have the drive and the right mindset, getting there isn't as hard as you might think.

Raphael 18y ago
Google is an ad broker. A better comparison would be MySpace, which displays ads.
- brianr 18y ago
  Most of Google's revenue comes from AdWords, the ads they run next to their search results, not from AdSense, their content network. From their 2008 Q4 earnings report ( http://investor.google.com/releases/2008Q4_google_earnings.html http://investor.google.com/releases/2008Q4_google_earnings.h... ), Google-owned sites generated $3.81B while partner sites generated $1.69B.
  - t0pj 18y ago
    Google-owned sites generated $3.81B while partner sites generated $1.69B. I think the act of comparing the amount Google makes from AdWords to AdSense is moot -- Both of these channels are very successful. Both of these numbers end with a capital "B". So question: Do I become an ad broker and take on Google or simply utilize Google to display ads on my property and make some coin? At this point, I don't care how much Google is making off of me as a percentage, but I do care how much money I actually do put in my own pocket.

by brianr 18y ago

Raphael 18y ago

Google is an ad broker. A better comparison would be MySpace, which displays ads.

brianr 18y ago
Most of Google's revenue comes from AdWords, the ads they run next to their search results, not from AdSense, their content network. From their 2008 Q4 earnings report ( http://investor.google.com/releases/2008Q4_google_earnings.html http://investor.google.com/releases/2008Q4_google_earnings.h... ), Google-owned sites generated $3.81B while partner sites generated $1.69B.
- t0pj 18y ago
  Google-owned sites generated $3.81B while partner sites generated $1.69B. I think the act of comparing the amount Google makes from AdWords to AdSense is moot -- Both of these channels are very successful. Both of these numbers end with a capital "B". So question: Do I become an ad broker and take on Google or simply utilize Google to display ads on my property and make some coin? At this point, I don't care how much Google is making off of me as a percentage, but I do care how much money I actually do put in my own pocket.