Tumblr introduces highlighted posts for $1

http://staff.tumblr.com/post/16980189397/highlighted-posts

by jonathanmoore • 14 years ago

97 36 14 years ago

staff.tumblr.com

Here is a screenshot example of what a promoted posts looks like in the dashboard - http://cloud.jonathanmoore.com/Dsu4. Users have the option of choosing from several dozen feature options like "buy this", "very special posts", "super proud of this", etc.

Right now it appears to be limited to one highlighted post per day, and with all purchases on Tumblr they give you the option of donating an additional $1 to EFF, Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders.

enoptix• 14 years ago

Off-topic but what are you using to serve up images on your site like that? Is it a custom script or an OSS solution?

jonathanmoore3• 14 years ago

I am using CloudApp (http://getcloudapp.com/) to upload screenshots I take. Quite the handy tool.

pclark• 14 years ago

Say what you want about Tumblr but their visual design is gorgeous.

replicatorblog• 14 years ago

That is a really smart way to generate revenue. Traditional ad placements would be inconsistent with the experience. Of course your posts are essentially ads, but users can now unfollow people who get too spammy. Kind of plays on the Google model of letting people pay to highlight their offer, or in this case their content. Interested to see how it plays...

grizzlylazer• 14 years ago

It's about time tumblr started generating revenue

evanwalsh• 14 years ago

They have already been selling themes

unicornporn• 14 years ago

And the money they made from it probably didn't pay their unearthly Amazon bills.

liamcampbell• 14 years ago

Wow, this is a surprisingly non-terrible way to generate revenue. Good job, Tumblr. Ad placements and premium membership would have pissed off a good chunk of their users, but this is kind of a nice compromise.

jamesu• 14 years ago

One of the reasons i don't use tumblr is they dont seem to have a notable revenue stream. This sounds like a good step in the right direction.

spinchange3• 14 years ago

Honest question: Revenue streams of the host company are an important consideration in choosing a blog platform for you?

pavel_lishin3• 14 years ago

Seems reasonable. If they run out of money, where does your blog go?

pepijndevos• 14 years ago

If you plan to stick to the platform for a long while, they better have.

iamdave• 14 years ago

They've been selling premium themes for some time now.

kmfrk• 14 years ago

And there are the thousands upon thousands of dollars that will come in from people who just want to try it out for fun, since it's only a dollar. Wicked smart.

wmf2• 14 years ago

At Tumblr's scale, thousands upon thousands of dollars isn't worth worrying about.

antr• 14 years ago

My humble opinion:

Probably due to the novelty of this feature, income will spike and then fade away. Similar to any other startup article appearing on TC. This service will stop being used pretty fast.

The only way I see this service being successful going forward is by providing stats/analytics to users on post views, engagement, post virality, follower stats, etc. If this service is provided together with the $1 highlight feature, I do see a business going forward.

farrel• 14 years ago

Didn't Facebook attempt to sell 'Gifts' for $1 back in 2007? I recall they even got Susan Kare to design them.

jrockway• 14 years ago

Doesn't this make more sense, though? It's a combination of paying for advertising and paying for application features, both well-tested business models. Paying for random fake things that annoy your friends, however, is not as well-tested.

epikur• 14 years ago

The fonts look bad in chrome/win7, at least on my setup: http://i.imgur.com/eCGEL.png

artursapek• 14 years ago

That's what it does, just a little tag? That's pretty unimpressive.

DennisP• 14 years ago

This reminds me of a business that was very successful for one of my brother's in-laws.

It was a site where you could post free press releases. If you liked, you could buy one or more stars for your press release, and the more stars, the closer to the top it sorted.

He bootstrapped in the late 90's without investors, his only co-founder was his wife, he grew it organically and got very profitable, ended up hiring a couple dozen people, and ultimately had a very nice exit.

danso• 14 years ago

Just tried it out on my Tumblr. Wonder if it will have any impact on whatever post-ranking/call-outs they already do. Unfortunately, I tried it on a Friday afternoon, which is not a good time to ever post anything.

But I love the easy integration of donation to good causes. I'll be making a lot of $2 purchases out of impulse, it seems.

shortformblog• 14 years ago

A lot of users are complaining about it right now, but to me, it seems like a genius way to monetize the platform. When things calm down in a couple of weeks and it gets used in the way intended, this will probably look much smarter in hindsight.

Still would like them to figure out a way to help bloggers monetize their sites on the platform. That's the rub for bloggers trying to go "professional" through a Tumblr site — all the readers they get through the dashboard are difficult to monetize right now.

Once they figure that out, it's going to be huge.

Here was my cheeky attempt at using it: http://shortformblog.tumblr.com/post/16980898109/one-dollar

nedwin• 14 years ago

Tumblr's previous paid promotion system was massively effective. I'm glad they've brought it back in this new form.

bitsm• 14 years ago

Forrst has a similar system for promoting user posts as an advertising alternative, though Kyle (founder) uses credits (called acorns) and there are several ways to earn credits, outside of simply purchasing them.

It's a great idea: it's hard to get more "targeted" with ads than content that would have been posted within the community anyway.

If anecdotal evidence is any guide, it seems to have been received really well within Forrst, and the backlog was huge the last time I looked (not enough pageviews to match demand).

callmeed• 14 years ago

I just purchased a highlighted post to announce our new publishing platform for photographers (http://getbokeh.com).

I'll report back in a few days on the results.

FYI here's the post I highlighted: http://getbokeh.tumblr.com/post/16999137678/bokeh-now-in-pub...

masonlee• 14 years ago

Twitter should be paying attention to this experiment.

Tumblr introduces highlighted posts for $1

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