Startups that are actually making money...not on advertising...

Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by mojombo on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @02:40AM (#407375)

I'm not sure what your popularity metric is, but here at GitHub we're making plenty of money on subscriptions for private code hosting without a single advertisement on the site. We've also never taken any outside money. GitHub was designed from the very first line of code to make money off of recurring fees for premium features while bringing in traffic, goodwill, and buzz by making everything free for open source. So far so good!

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by ryanwaggoner on Monday December 22, 2008 @11:02PM (#407254)

Someone asked a similar question awhile back: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=375417

Some of the better comments:

Some startups and annual revenue numbers (unsourced): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=375896

Someone who modeled 37signals revenue: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=375771

Nextproof and bigfolio.com http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=375575

Hope that helps!

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by jedc on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @06:07AM (#407464)

I'm the guy who modeled 37signals revenue. You can download a spreadsheet with all my calculations if you follow the link above... I would appreciate any feedback from those who have experience in the area to improve my assumptions.

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by davidw on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @05:12AM (#407441)

I like patio11's thing: http://www.bingocardcreator.com

Well, I don't really "like" it, as I could hardly care less about bingo cards, but it's a nice reminder that there is money even in what seems like really weird niches.

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by patio11 on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @05:49AM (#407458)

Just released my annual report, incidentally, if you care to read it.

http://kalzumeus.com/2008/12/21/bingo-card-creator-year-2008...

Highlights:

* $20.7k in sales from 1/1/2008 to 12/21/2008

* $10k in profit, which is about 62% YOY growth (did I hear something about a recession?)

* Works out to about $100 an hour. (It is a part-time thing at the moment.)

* Taking myself full-time in 2009, hopefully. (Got another product in the works.)

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by axod on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @08:42AM (#407535)

Why do you rule out depending on advertising? :/ Is income from advertising not real money?...

FWIW Mibbit makes real money, all from advertising at the moment. Premium paid accounts are planned, but it's a lot more work than just putting some useful adverts up.

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by sabat on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @10:30AM (#407623)

It's real money but whether it's going to be stable is yet to be seen. That's why the curiosity.

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by axod on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @10:31AM (#407626)

Is anything stable? I haven't seen a good reason why online advertising would be hit harder than say subscription based saas.

Fair enough to only consider one though :)

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by catch23 on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @12:44PM (#407833)

advertising seems more stable than subscription based. At least according to the Economist, advertising spend changes little during recessionary periods.

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by jamesb43 on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @02:14PM (#407956)

I work in advertising, and we are seeing several clients greatly reduce their spend.

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by axod on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @02:54PM (#408007)

What sort of advertising? I can see "brand awareness" advertising being reduced, but why reduce any 'results based' advertising? There's not real reason to reduce advertising that yields a positive ROI - which is easily measurable these days usually.

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by sabat on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @10:57PM (#408479)

I'm not sure if advertising is stable or not, but there's been a lot of talk about how it's going to collapse (and how Google is going to be worth $2/share, doom-and-gloom). I think that's the reason for this guy's question.

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by smysore on Wednesday December 24, 2008 @10:58PM (#409388)

this girl's question

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by TimothyFitz on Monday December 22, 2008 @11:23PM (#407271)

Micropayments + virtual goods & streaming music rights: http://imvu.com

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by sabat on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @10:34AM (#407629)

Interesting work. Looks like your value prop vs. SL is that your world is more straightforward and simpler (in a good way). I.e. most people going to SL really just want to chat and goof around and don't need the complexity.

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by speby on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @01:06AM (#407335)

Poll Everywhere - http://polleverywhere.com

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by thinkcomp on Monday December 22, 2008 @11:26PM (#407274)

I'm selling software and books, both on-line and the old fashioned way.

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by critke on Monday December 22, 2008 @11:13PM (#407260)

yep - good 'ol subscriptions at http://uploadthingy.com - just started 2 new thingys too....

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by bisi on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @01:49AM (#407354)

I think what you are doing with the Thingys is brilliant .. Keep it up !

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by dshah on Tuesday December 30, 2008 @12:49AM (#413983)

We've been making revenues for a while at HubSpot (http://www.HubSpot.com). Business model is simple: monthly subscription for access to software that meets a need (internet marketing).

We've never sold advertising before (though we do have decent traffic on http://grader.com).

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by reidman on Monday December 22, 2008 @10:39PM (#407230)

We just sell merchandise -- t-shirts, posters, etc. We were thinking about doing advertising stuff, but since we're a video game site, we decided to just give our users what they wanted (swag) rather than what they go out of their way to block (ads). It's been working exceptionally well, though that's largely attributable to the talent of our designers.

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by Mistone on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @11:50AM (#407751)

off the main topic but I'd love to stock some gamer hoodies on our retail site, ping me if you'd like to partner or have any leads (hasan {at} hoodiepeople.com)

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by fallentimes on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @01:44AM (#407348)

http://ticketstumbler.com

http://draftmix.com

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by oneplusone on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @10:52AM (#407653)

http://www.freshbooks.com

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by Mistone on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @11:48AM (#407740)

likely a bit diff from the core web app focus on HN, but we are a startup online retail site, launched in late September, smack dab in the midst of the big meltdown and fared pretty well in the 4th quarter. December provides a natural lift for retail, so Jan numbers will be very interesting but overall we did much better then projected and seem to be gaining decent traction in our niche: www.hoodiepeople.com

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by smysore on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @12:12AM (#407299)

thanks - these comments help. economy is terrible (cant just say you have a great idea and you want to postpone thinking about money) and ad based revenue models arent really getting a lot of love these days...makes sense to look at examples of successful startups that dont depend on ads to see what they did right

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by markessien on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @04:13AM (#407419)

You're buying into the hype. Think for yourself, don't listen to the news about the 'terrible economy'. This is just a way to push the blame from yourself to external factors.

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by mattmaroon on Monday December 22, 2008 @10:40PM (#407232)

Zynga FTW there.

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by fallentimes on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @11:21AM (#407698)

Any idea on specific numbers?

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by foodawg on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @10:38AM (#407636)

Etsy http://www.etsy.com

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Re:Startups that are actually making money...not on advertis... by dguido on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @03:09AM (#407390)

http://theladders.com

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