Hacker News Reader

Comment by VikingCoder | Hacker News Reader

Jeez, I'd be pretty happy with $1 million in revenue.

I guess if that doesn't cover the expenses to create the kind of content that gets you $1 million in revenue, then the numbers are wrong, but I find that hard to believe.

View on HN

We paid our authors, columnists, and bloggers. And paid a staff of 2.5 full-time employees and a salesperson. Add benefits, insurance, rent, hosting costs, and taxes--and you're not looking at a lot of profit left over.

That's the sad thing: you're saying that it still turns a net profit after paying all of its staff and costs, and yet that's apparently not enough to keep it running.

It will turn a minimal profit this year, but we could find no way to project a profit for next year or the year after.

Personally I would do like RailsCasts.com and ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com (now ChannelAwesome.com), two sites I frequent, did... offer pro accounts.

Pro accounts could:

1) remove all advertising from the site. 2) have access to content early like drafts of upcoming articles 3) have access to revised or updates to articles 4) allow people to recommend articles

the list could go on, you'll probably think of a thousand things that I couldn't since I'm not in marketing.

At first, I was wondering why not just sell the business? Who knows, you might have tried? After thinking about it some more, since it's your baby--why take the chance of letting some with more money than taste/knowlege blow it up? I understand your decision to close it down. I hope you keep talking about the efficacy of Internet advertising--the real truth. I'll follow you on Twitter.

$1 million is what a medium-sized bakery turns over.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com