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by TeMPOraL
2442 days ago
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Individual donations, subscriptions, being treated as a goodwill or marketing expense by a company doing working in some tangentially related space (the way YCombinator keeps HN running), are some ideas free of the problems of advertising. Here the core advertising-related problem is third party advertising. Were Reddit the co. to have some other business of their own that they advertised on Reddit in order to fund the site, there would still be ads, but they wouldn't interfere with the site itself. Here however, Reddit has to be neutered so that it appeals to generic advertisers - any content or communities that they, the third parties may find objectionable must go. It's hard to a site as Reddit to pivot from the status quo to any of the more reasonable business models, because they were started with third-party advertisements in mind from the get go. The fatal disease was transmitted at birth, but it's only now that it closes on to the terminal stage. Once you get people used to free, it's hard to start charging money, and Reddit the company doesn't have any other business that could fund the site pro bono. |
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You can leave your core offering free/ad-encumbered, but add additional services (ideally, replicate your complements)
For example, YouTube started off as free / ad sponsored, but look at the incredible revenue streams they have added:
• Patreon-like subscription model
• Merch integration with spring-tee
• Music / Premium / TV subscription <--- this is most likely the largest revenue stream after ads.
Now Reddit could be similar by adding:
• Paid feeds for sexual content (r/sexsells), trading, crypto, art, etc.
• Sponsored "TV mode" streams for major news / sports outlets
• Verified status subscription?
• Ability to post longer, Reddit hosted, videos behind a paywall with a preview.
I'm just spitballing ideas which certainly have their complexities and challenges, but free user-generated content is a great way to acquire users for fractions of a penny.
That userbase is reddit's competitive advantage when building any number of additional services.