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Ask HN: How does this AddThis.com make money?

5 points by sam_in_nyc ↗ HN
I don't get it... they offer a button that goes on a page so that users can share stuff easily. They claim to server 20b a month. It must cost a significant amount to run those servers.

How are they (and several competitors) possibly making money from this?

12 comments

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tsetse-fly
Is this some sort of ploy to get us to visit that site?

It's simple: if you're not selling anything, whether it's goods, services, or ads, then you're not making money. Not all sites on the Internet exist for profit.

sam_in_nyc
No, it's not a ploy to get you to visit a site that I'm not at all affiliated with. Rather, I included it in the hopes that people give it a look so that they can answer the question at hand: "how do they make money?"

There are actually three ways to make money. You can sell things, receive money for nothing (donations), or steal. I would have to agree with you that selling goods, services, or ads makes money. So, I wonder, what does AddThis.com sell, and to whom? Or are they just hemorrhaging money on the servers needed to serve (and track) 20b impressions a month?

tsetse-fly
They don't sell anything to anyone. The site was acquired and is operated by Clearspring, who has received $36M in funding.

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/addthis

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/clearspring

fizx
Someone still has to (indirectly?) be making money from this. My guess is that this is a great source of general web analytics data, which someone will pay to have.
tsetse-fly
Yes, the idea seems to be that they'll gather and monetize the data though I don't think that's sustainable. No one has to make money on this, they could fail while blowing all of their VC money.

All of these widget companies seem like a bit of a scam to me. Do you really need $36M to create a bunch of crappy widgets? I've never even seen a widget from RockYou/Slide/Widgetbox/Clearspring on any of the sites I visit.

sam_in_nyc
So AddThis makes out as the real winner.. they got eaten up by a bigger fish, funded by that sweet VC money, without ever having to prove themselves.

I couldn't agree more with how much money is spent on the lamest things... $36M for widgets. Then again, back in the 90's, people would pay thousands to have a counter installed on their page.

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tdavis
I don't think they do, unless they offer some premium plan I am unaware of. We use AddThis and honestly don't have much faith in them; it took over a week to reply to our e-mail informing them of a bug that was keeping us from logging into their analytics.
bemmu
Seems difficult to make money with this, but here's a few ideas.

They could charge new link sharing sites for the privilege of being available in their widget, or for better placement.

They could start their own link sharing site / link aggregator based on the data they gather from the widgets, then of course also get prominent placement in the widget for the new site.

They could show a small ad in the widget.