DanLivesHere

Agreed, with an addition:

Contracts exist for when things go wrong.

When you sign a contract, things are going right. You and the other party are friends, everyone loves each other, etc. The day you sign the contract, you don't need it. The temptation to not worry about it is huge.

But the day you need the contract, you'll wish you had worried about it.

I know Jimmy, didn't know the others.

How can you help?

Totally misleading headline. Not OPs fault -- the problem is in the post. 171k unique visitors is not 170k users.

Take my project, a daily email newsletter (http://dlewis.net/nik if you're interested). It's about a year old, and I've had about 500k uniques over that period. I have 5,000 subscribers.

I'm one of Corkboard's 171,000 people but I'm not a user of Corkboard. I tried it for a few minutes and left, not coming back since. And honestly, if you're not capturing people, that traffic is not all that valuable.

This isn't to say that you aren't capturing people; hopefully, you are. Just that you shouldn't conflate a visitor with a user. Visitors visit; users stay.

My first startup totally misunderstood the concept in reverse fashion -- we miscast the definition of "customer," and therefore thought our LTV was tiny when it was actually huge, and focused our acquisition paths incorrectly.

That's why I think about ideas in these terms so much.

I wrote it, with two subscribe links, for what it's worth.

The content is basic as per his MBA Monday's theme. He tackles one basic concept each Monday.

I have a daily email "learn something new every day" newsletter, at http://dlewis.net/nik -- facts like carrot used to be purple, Abraham Lincoln created the Secret Service on the day he was shot, there's an island of hyper-poisonous snakes off the coast of Brazil.

4,000 subscribers. Contact info off the URL :)

Yeah, but your drama is way off.

They claim 500MM active users. Assume that's a total lie, and it's 50MM. Assume their valuation is 100 billion (twice the Goldman round).

Let's also assume that they hit a P/E ratio of, oh, 10. (Google's at 22, Apple 19, Yahoo 18, so 10 is really low.)

So to hit a 100b valuation, they'd need to earn 10b annually, or $200/user.

$200/user is on the high end, but reasonable, at least as far as U.S. users are concerned.

(For what it's worth: Twitter would have been a good example, I think.)

Where are you getting $5k/user/year?

Thanks. All great points.

I actually (half-)jokingly linked to my Amazon Wishlist today. I'll report back if someone buys me that Macbook in there.

That's the opposite direction of where I'd like to go :)

I'm not sure that I follow.

Thanks. I have one planned for the day before Mother's Day, how should I best reach you?

About 20% of my readership comes from an informal deal with Mental Floss, so I assume that their demographics match mine well.

I try and measure as much as I can, but I'm a part-time one-man band.

That speaks to my "Related Reading" idea in the OP. It's actually pretty easy to do, too. Definitely going to consider it highly, even though it won't work every day.

Thanks (x2)! Hadn't heard of Kehalim -- will look closely at it.

I have some intro text in each email, a personal message from me type of thing. I could definitely use that space (and have) to promote things. The question, I guess, is sourcing those deals.

Honestly, "a little blog post and paragraph" is a lot more than I'd offer. But you should look into http://hackernewsletter.com

I've considered it a few times, but I don't really like asking my readers to become my advertisers. (Among other things.)

But I grant that I may be overly stupid here.

Depends. I don't typically target the links toward anything, because my readership is so varied in interest that I'd only get a few (less than 5) sales on a book, and that's maybe $2-3 total.

I can link to virtually anything on Amazon and tee it up in a way which I'll get, say, 100-200 clicks. If I talk it up, I can get 400, maybe more. (I have one today which is at ~350 and there's a lot of time left on it.) Because of how Amazon's affiliate tools work, I can get 2-3c/click on those (at scale), even if the clicker doesn't buy the item. But I can't do that more than once a week, if that.

Thanks for the mention :) I publish an issue daily. It's a passion (and sometimes a headache)... so much neat stuff out there, need a way to share it. Glad to have other HN ppl reading :)

Right now, I don't monetize much. I occasionally add in an Amazon affiliate link.

I acquire subscribers in many ways, but I've bought very little. I spent $20 on a reddit ad which netted me (I think) 3 subscribers -- that's 100% of my marketing budget to date. The most effective ways: * I syndicate posts to certain blogs, asking the blogger to plug the newsletter in exchange for letting him or her run the whole post for free. * Word of mouth and asking readers to tell their friends about it. * Links to individual issues, which have on them subscription boxes and links to the archives.

I'd be glad to. I don't really use my blog. I could do it as an HN post, but that'd be a bit too self-serving....

I think you need to do a lot of lists. I'm serious. There are a LOT of tiny startups out there and you can hit upon 10 at once this way, while also building good content.

I'm going to be self-serving here, but it makes it easier to articulate my idea and point. I have a small, "lifestyle startup"/hobby -- a daily email newsletter where I share awesome/true facts like how Abraham Lincoln created the Secret Service the day he was fatally shot. (Really -- http://dlewis.net/nik is the subscribe URL, the archives are linked thereto, and it's in the archives.) There are a LOT of small, wannabe thrillist/daily candy email newsletters out there. Featuring one is stupid, but writing about this emerging/cottage industry is interesting.

Basically: "Ten Interesting Email Newsletters" is a great post, potentially, as is "Ten Ways To Manage Your Business Connections" (hashable? cloudcontacts? cardmunch?), as is "Ten Sports Startups" and ... well, you get the idea.

I am waiting for the day that a potential candidate "fundraises" using the Kickstarter method -- e.g. "If I can raise a $1MM warchest by X date, I'll run."

(a) Who cares?

(b) See (a).

It's a loss for the Mint, which sells coins at face value to the Fed. The Mint is taxpayer funded, so there really was a $20MM loss of taxpayer money in 2009.

I have an email newsletter (http://dlewis.net/nik) and I don't think it's Mailchimp's (my ESP) fault that there's no audio/video support. (They allow for a pseudo-embed of YouTube videos.)

The fact is that most email clients wouldn't support it, and the user experience for the recipients would, therefore, suck.

Hootsuite has been doing this for a while with a + icon. Good to see Twitter itself doing it.