[proee]

Why is Stack Exchange considered a failure? Don't they have a ton of exchange sites (if not thousands). $100/month x 1k = $100k Month in revenue.

Seems they would be quite happy with that sort of recurring revenue...

[alanl]

I think a lot of the sites were dead or dying. I'm Looking forward to seeing the new more open model. I think it could produce some useful Q&A sites.

[icey]

AFAIK they haven't actually started charging for Stack Exchange sites yet.

[proee]

So why not flip the switch then?

[dustingetz]

hardly any SE sites have a community worth paying for, which is kind of the whole point

[proee]

Well there's plenty of sites owners (with credit cards) that might assume otherwise. It depends on the target audience, but if it was for say doctors or lawyers 1/10th the traffic or even 1/100th the traffic of a typical programming site would be a success.

Maybe they did a survey among all the sites to come to your conclusion, but it seems odd they never tried go paid.

[loikujhygthj]

The people that could afford a site aren't the people that answer questions for free.

The main problem was that there was no way of charging the people who asked questions - who were the only ones likely to want to pay.