Ask HN: Could HN make it as a business?

[pringle]

Curious as a thought exercise -- how would/how well could HN be monetized?

I think PG recently mentioned it gets about 60k visitors a day. How well do you think it could be monetized, based on its audience/traffic?

[oziumjinx]

Here's a revenue model: Offer users with certain karma levels discounts from startups that provide services. The more karma you have, the higher discount you may be able to receive from a variety of startups/services. When a user cashes in their karma for the service, HN gets a recurring affiliate fee based on the total fees paid to said startup. And of course users with lower karma can still get some kind of discount from the services. Once those users karma reaches a new higher level, another discount kicks in.

To personalize this a bit, show a simple survey link on the main nav bar that lets users select the types of services they are intereted in. This would then be used to populate a sidebar with dinky ads or other promotions from startups/events.

Here's another one: Have events/conferences sponsor specific threads in HN...Whichever comment receives the most points get a discount or free pass. Once again, affiliate fees on other users signing up for the event kicks back to HN.

And another: create an automated newsletter that sends you a roundup of the days highest voted stories (with topic personlization if you want [ie, only send me Ask HN or 'seeking feedback' type stories]). Sell a few ads in the sidebar to startups on a budget.

If HN is averaging 60k uniques/day, that newsletter could grow pretty quickly. Sell of small banners at a decent CPM and it should make some money. And then of course layer on a taxonomy binding ad server that shows ads relevant to the topic(s) that are displayed in the newsletter based on the users preferences.

[lhorie]

You could use the site as a way to promote the existence of your venture capital firm to highly intelligent people who are actually interested in start-ups.

Oh wait, it does that already.

[pringle]

That's a good point, but I meant this more in terms of taking YC out of the picture and just looking at the site alone.

[lhorie]

Hmm, you mean, look at HN as a Digg/Reddit/Slashdot look-alike? The "aggregator site model" is pretty simple to describe, really: screw quality, get moar users, ads, profit. It clearly works as a business model, but whether that plays to the strengths of HN is a completely different matter.

[pringle]

I guess what sets HN apart is the premium it places on quality rather than growth/traffic. And that it caters to a specific niche rather than a bunch of disparate, mainstream topics. So the question is if it could still do well given those differences.

[lhorie]

If your revenue comes from ads, then almost by definition, small community == small revenue.

Imho, leveraging pg's experience in start-ups and the community here seems like a better way of exploring monetization options.

Look at it this way: of the following ways of monetizing, one could argue that the more niche-specific, the more potential the model has:

- ads (target: just about everyone)

- sell a book/magazine about running a startup (target: people interested in start-ups)

- fund start-ups that came about partially thanks to HN (target: people doing start-ups)

[Zev]

And that it caters to a specific niche.. and ..but I meant this more in terms of taking YC.. go against one another.

[apollo]

I think HN could charge a lot for a job board. I think this is the site with the highest concentration of people I would want to hire.

[oziumjinx]

Turn the "Seeking feedback on my startup" into a premium service. Startups submit their site and mini-pitch/boilerplate. Users go visit the site but the site could be framed with a dinky toolbar at the top that is used for usability/feedback review. Mocking up their website, writing notes, giving feedback, etc. All that data is aggregated into a nice dashboard that the startup can review. They could even filter by a users karma to ween out the crap if someone isnt giving constructive criticism. They could also vote on who gives them the best feedback, which would add to that users karma (redeemable for prizes or services from other startups).

So, the startup pays some amount, lets say, $500 for the feedback service. HN guarantees that they will receive 100 pieces of feedback using this tool (which of course would be using node.js, closure, haskel, [insert any trending technology here]). Once the 100 pieces of feedback are received, the 'sponsored link' gets removed and another goes in its place. The startup could also request feedback only from users with certain karma levels (which would cost more money).

HN shows a maximum of 1 sponsored review link at the top of the site, or mixed in somewhere, at a time. I dont think it would be too tough to get 100 feedback notes in a single day (with 60k users that love checking out new startups).

Let's say only one is shown each day, thats $15,000 per month in revenue for that service. That'll buy a lot of ramen.

[sabj]

The question is how "much" monetization, right...? I think because it's a very tightly targeted group, there is a fair amount of room - whether for some of the more innovative offerings below, or just B2B things for startups - but it seems like scalability would be a difficulty, in terms of 'growing' the business. (Plus, the business aspects in that sense could corrode some of the real motivations for HN).

HN _does_ serve a business purpose and I think it provides Y Combinator with -great- ROI : )

[icey]

Reddit has significantly more traffic and is having a tough time with it:

http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/reddit-needs-help.html

[pringle]

I think that's a pretty fair example. But reddit is much less lean of an operation than HN.

Would Reddit be considered more successful if it was a leaner organization? They say in that post that revenues aren't great, but I wonder if that has more to do with the size/nature of the reddit operation.

If it isn't, then my questions is: are they just not doing a good job of monetizing, or is it just very difficult to monetize that kind of site?

[csbartus]

Currently there are two ways to monetize: subscription fees or ads.

The first is not viable the second is already 'built in' by discussing and recommending various services and products on HN

[coryl]

Premium membership is a viable way of making money. I don't think any of this user group would like ads though. I think they'd be willing to pay for some sort of premium status. There is the potential for commercial gain here as upvoted stories get lots of traffic from smart people with good income.