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Comment by staunch | Hacker News Reader

From someone that spent years sysadmining very high traffic systems: Well done sir. Well done.

Been using Reddit since launch. Somewhat nervous that the new people running Reddit will get overrun by the corporate overlords now that they see the "hockey stick" traffic charts.

I can see some bean counter doing the math:

  Slap 4 teeth whitening ads on every page
  = 4 ad impressions
  * 1.2 billion page views
  = 4.8 billion ad impressions
  * $0.30 - $0.50 eCPM
  = $17 - $28 million/year.

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I've said it before, so I apologize for repeating myself, but it shocks me (shocks!) that reddit doesn't append affiliate IDs to all of the outbound links to amazon that are generated.

I've probably made well over $100 in purchases just in the last few months via links I've seen on reddit. ("Can you recommend a good book on welding/bicycles/iOS dev/etc.")

Hopefully they don't do what you're suggesting, because I think if they did, the users would leave almost immediately (and probably flood HN).

Last time I saw this suggested, the more-or-less official response was along the lines of "we thought about it, but we'd be unable to convince everyone that those types of links aren't being tampered with (ranking-wise)" from which I inferred that the trust of their community was (is) worth more than that revenue stream.

Ads are one thing. Manipulating user content for profit is seedy

As long as they are being sent to the same endpoint I don't see the problem.

How is this manipulating user content?

What are you talking about? Altering the link the user submits isn't manipulating user content? Especially when they incentivize sponsored ads from users that use affiliate links specifically?

How is it NOT?

Well, it's not altering the intention, at least. The link still leads to the product that the user intended. As long as they aren't actively removing existing affiliate codes I don't see a problem with that approach.

Reddit can't live off nothing forever, they are going to have to find a way to monetize in line with corporate overlord expectations for a site of its traffic level or eventually be replaced by drones.

Personally, I'd be quite happy if they pulled user affiliate codes from links and replaced them with their own.

Every sane person knows that a site like reddit has to be paid for somehow & this seems like a relatively unintrusive way to do so.

Metafilter does this, and their user base has no problem with it.

One of the problems with Reddit is that the vast majority of users are anti-ads and anti-corporation making any form of commercialism (even if it means more employees or a better site) nearly impossible.

And yet tons of them shell out $4 a month for Gold, so it's clearly not impossible to monetize.

I still don't think it's enough though.

$0.30 - $0.50 eCPM? On Reddit?

You high. They'd be extremely lucky to get $0.03 eCPM.

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