Ask HN: How on earth does Posterous make money?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3259507

by marcamillion • 15 years ago

21 8 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Their FAQ says this:

It's Free Yes, we're free. There are no hidden fees for storage or bandwidth, and no forced advertisements on your Posterous Spaces. We never collect your credit card information or ask for any trial periods.

In short - there are no hidden costs, no strings attached, and no reason not to start posting today!

So how do they make money? They have been around for a long time, and they are still hiring.

Is there something genius happening behind the scenes that allows them to continue growing off of cash flows? They don't seem to be constantly raising money, although they did raise $10.1M over 4 rounds, but could their burn be so low that they can do that every time they run out of money?

The reason I am asking is because they host both my personal and company blog. I am concerned they might just lock-up shop one day, because they run out of money, or they are selling my info someway because there is no such thing as a free lunch.

So where are they getting their lunch money, aside from investors? What am I missing?

dantiberian• 15 years ago

>The company does have revenue, such as this early deal with Coca Cola for a branded site, but has stood firm in keeping the “nickel and dime” consumer fees out of the product. [...]

>Later this year Posterous will launch a pro version of the service for bigger brands, and allow things like Javascript and site monetization for a fee, they say.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/18/posterous-revenue-coca-...

And from http://kahlil.posterous.com/how-posterous-makes-money in January 2010

>So I asked Posterous co-founder Sachin Agarwal how Posterous will actually make money. His answer was simple. Charge for business and commercial use of Posterous. What about consumers? Agarwal says that Posterous will remain free for consumers, but will just charge for businesses, which reminds me a lot of how people imagine Twitter making money.

Their business model could easily have changed from this by now though.

marcamillion2• 15 years ago

I guess the question is, why do they go through such great lengths to hide it.

Almost as if making money is somehow a bad thing.

Hiding it makes me, as a user, nervous.

steventruong• 15 years ago

I don't think they're intentionally hiding it or going out of their way to do so. At least, I don't see it like that. The quotes you pulled were probably part of a sales pitch to get users on board and is probably representative of how they actually do things. The way they make money base on what dantiberian posted has no bearing on the pitch they're making (assuming all of these are true).

If they make money by charging brands, what does that have to do with you as a consumer? I don't think they're hiding it, I think its just a separate approach.

petervandijck• 15 years ago

Because they're still figuring it out.

If they: X is our business model, it can decrease the perceived value of their company in the next round, because now you can calculate how much they're worth.

anthony_franco• 15 years ago

I know they were using Viglink for a while to monetize their affiliate links. Not sure if it's still in place though since there was some backlash regarding it.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1309849

I believe that's how Cloudflare also monetizes their traffic, with a Viglink-type service.

peter_severin• 15 years ago

I'm worried about Posterous too. I've noticed that search function has been broken on all Posterous websites for at least a week. There's no fix in sight. I didn't expect this from them at all.

Edit: looks like the search was finally fixed.