The man who monetizes data | Hacker News Reader

The man who monetizes data

mixergy.com

16 pointswebtickle20 comments

Interesting. I can't watch the video right now, but I hope it gets into the details of what they actually do.

http://revenuegrp.com/ is just a few pages of hand-wavey marketing speak. And the fact that "Payday Loans" is one of their key verticals doesn't inspire confidence.

Lead Gen. You sell the contact information for people who express an active interest in a high-margin good to the seller of such goods.

Oh. Well that's a lot less interesting. I'd much rather have a better way to market my services to users.

I couldn't get past the point where he's going on about doing lead-gen for payday loans.

I care about creating value far more than I care about making money. In my eyes, $500k earned by creating value is far sweeter than $5m acquired by helping loan sharks.

I'm not sure if this guy had anything interesting to say, but I'm canceling my wife's shopify account based on this interview. I'd recommended them on the basis that they were simple and not horrible... but I don't want a nickel going to this guy.

he can have his payday loans... but he can't have my dollars too.

"I'm canceling my wife's shopify account" ?!

I don't know your wife, but I'd certainly ask mine before closing her (hypothetical) business.

I'd be grateful if a mod could delete this exchange; it caused some distress to kw_ and certainly didn't add anything to the discussion. I can't seem to find a delete or edit link anymore.

It's really annoying that this horseshit comment continues to get moderated up.

thechangelog jumped to an unreasonable, and uninformed conclusion, that implies pretty horrible things about me. He knew literally nothing about the existing circumstances, yet felt free to accuse me of being the sort of person who would destroy my wife's work on a whim.

It's ridiculous that any intelligent person would up-arrow his attack on my character.

Fuck Alex for jumping to the worst possible conclusion, despite having no reason to do so.

And fuck each and every one of you who upvoted his baseless defamations.

Hint: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_that_broke_the_camels_bac...

Deleted comment

My mistake for making it personal, no harm intended.

Shopify sponsors the interviewer, I don't see any relation to the interviewee.

Based on the transcript, Shopify isn't even mentioned once within the actual interview.

Shopify is a company that handles large amounts of customer data.

They've sponsored a very positively spun interview on monetizing such data by spamming people via SMS, "sweepstakes", promoting payday loans and other activities that I consider deeply unethical (even if legal).

I'd think that if Shopify was a reputable firm, they wouldn't want their name within a mile of this scumbag. Particularly when he's being portrayed in a positive light.

the only thing i got out of it, is that basically relationships will help you jump start your business.

I appreciate your summary. I just can't take anybody seriously once they mention payday loans.

I think every big company has done "unethical" things like this in their past.

Then once they get big, they clean up their image.

It's like Google first few years of adwords they pretty much let anything go, then once they became a big player they cleaned up their image and banned all those ads.

Also, an interesting question: Are you citing the fact that nearly ever big company has done it to basically give it an ethical pass? i.e. It's the cost of doing business?

no I mean that there is a lot of unethical things for most companies, early in their history.

Whether it's using scrapers to steal content and spam competitor's users, or using high monetizing scammy offers to cash in.

Early on, when starting out, a lot of the companies we admire today, have resorted to doing anything in order to survive.

Right, but what is the lesson here? Do whatever it takes to succeed? I'm not picking on you, just wondering what to take from that fact.

If you think Google has really banned "all those ads," you're not looking close enough. They've made some effort, but plenty gets through.

Facebook did this as well, as did Zynga.

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