| "Once you get people used to free, it's hard to start charging money" 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. |