Poll: Best Revenue Model Focus For Our Startup

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=462919

by jasonlbaptiste • 17 years ago

4 5 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

russell• 17 years ago

I've been collecting a number of blogs about website monetization and the consensus seems to be advertising for social networking sites, but can work very well for information destination sites. Socialites care only about their friends and ignore advertising. Information gatherers are open to anything that helps them in their search. If they are buying, they will go to sellers.

Advertising is probably worth while as a supplementary income stream, but I wouldn't make it the primary focus, if you have a good freemium model. Just get your feet wet and let advertising prove itself. (I voted for freemium.)

jasonlbaptiste• 17 years ago

theres tons of info out there. Andrew Chen has a lot of great articles. You should post your compilation when you're ready here.

We can throw ads on there just to see, but im a believer in if you do something do it right. Advertising to us is more than just embed adsense.

I think our reason for leaning towards freemium boils down to our focus on being a utility more than a novelty.

zhyder• 17 years ago

What features do you plan to differentiate the premium version with?

chris11• 17 years ago

People are asking to give you money for features, so make that your primary focus. If someone is offering an unsolicited idea that they offer to pay for, I'm sure that feature will be worth your time to implement.

How much work would it be to set up your site with some ad network? It may not be worthwhile for you optimizing the ads you are selling, but it will at least give you some money from the free accounts.

jwt• 17 years ago

Advertising and premium accounts need not be exclusive. You could try both with a freemium model (see Chris Anderson's recent WSJ piece). Place ads on the free version and take them away in the premium (as well as adding other features of course)

Poll: Best Revenue Model Focus For Our Startup

Related Stories