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When did they stop hosting .torrent files? Hosting only magnet links means they have nearly nil bandwidth costs (just some sparse HTML pages, by far the biggest

by tedks 12y ago

When did they stop hosting .torrent files? Hosting only magnet links means they have nearly nil bandwidth costs (just some sparse HTML pages, by far the biggest piece of content on a tpb results page are the ads) and require very little infrastructure. In contrast, they have banners on the results page, pop-ups when you interact on the results pages, and massive banners on the item pages. A good chunk of their clientèle hopefully runs adblock, and I also can't imagine the ads they're serving are very lucrative since few legitimate companies will want to do business with them, but I can't imagine that it balances out.

benologist 12y ago
You missed the affiliate links - they also peddle crapware for $$$, in addition to the ads and popups that might be blocked. Even if 1/2 their traffic is using adblockers that still leaves billions of ad impressions a month. There is no reason to believe their lies about how much servers cost, especially on a site like HN where many people have first hand experience of more elaborate hosting costs and advertising. 2009 = 1b pageviews/month https://gigaom.com/2009/07/19/the-pirate-bay-distributing-the-worlds-entertainment-for-3000-a-month/ https://gigaom.com/2009/07/19/the-pirate-bay-distributing-th... 2014 = 90th most popular website on the entire internet, which itself grew massively in that 5 years
- zanny 12y ago
  On the flipside, I cannot imagine clickthrough rates and impressions that lead to purchases is high on a site that markets itself as a place to pirate digital content even for those not using adblock. And the nature of the site can deter larger advertisers from using it. I'm not saying they made no money, but I doubt it would have been as lucrative as if those page views were dedicated to, say, www.wickerbaskets.com or something else.
  - benologist 12y ago
    They don't have any shortage of advertisers so there is obviously demand for the space = companies paying for it. There are also piracy-complementary services that seem to be popular in the ads like VPN and privacy stuff, seed boxes, torrent clients etc that people do pay for.
    - newaccountfool 12y ago
      I really don't think "shortage of advertisers" matters, you can sign up for a Juicy Ads[1] account and place those pop unders and CPM ads on my programming blog if I want, I don't have to communicate with the advertisers I just use an ad platform. [1] http://www.juicyads.com/ http://www.juicyads.com/
    - belorn 12y ago
      If we are talking about the current site, they only accept bitcoins as payment from advertisers. How big market do you think there is of advertisers that are willing to pay with bitcoins in order for advertisement space on a bittorent site?

by tedks 12y ago

benologist 12y ago

You missed the affiliate links - they also peddle crapware for $$$, in addition to the ads and popups that might be blocked. Even if 1/2 their traffic is using adblockers that still leaves billions of ad impressions a month. There is no reason to believe their lies about how much servers cost, especially on a site like HN where many people have first hand experience of more elaborate hosting costs and advertising. 2009 = 1b pageviews/month https://gigaom.com/2009/07/19/the-pirate-bay-distributing-the-worlds-entertainment-for-3000-a-month/ https://gigaom.com/2009/07/19/the-pirate-bay-distributing-th... 2014 = 90th most popular website on the entire internet, which itself grew massively in that 5 years

zanny 12y ago
On the flipside, I cannot imagine clickthrough rates and impressions that lead to purchases is high on a site that markets itself as a place to pirate digital content even for those not using adblock. And the nature of the site can deter larger advertisers from using it. I'm not saying they made no money, but I doubt it would have been as lucrative as if those page views were dedicated to, say, www.wickerbaskets.com or something else.
- benologist 12y ago
  They don't have any shortage of advertisers so there is obviously demand for the space = companies paying for it. There are also piracy-complementary services that seem to be popular in the ads like VPN and privacy stuff, seed boxes, torrent clients etc that people do pay for.
  - newaccountfool 12y ago
    I really don't think "shortage of advertisers" matters, you can sign up for a Juicy Ads[1] account and place those pop unders and CPM ads on my programming blog if I want, I don't have to communicate with the advertisers I just use an ad platform. [1] http://www.juicyads.com/ http://www.juicyads.com/
  - belorn 12y ago
    If we are talking about the current site, they only accept bitcoins as payment from advertisers. How big market do you think there is of advertisers that are willing to pay with bitcoins in order for advertisement space on a bittorent site?