Hacker News Reader

Comment by vxNsr | Hacker News Reader

This is why I’m curious to see how LTT will be able to properly monetize their new review unit, for most ppl it’s not interesting to see HOW the widgets were reviewed, they just want to see the results. If the results exist in any form other than the video most people who don’t have time for a video will just skip to going to the webpage that contains the results. And in the case of a gdocs page there’s no ad revenue to monetize those people… so this kinda creates a situation that calls for either gatekeeping like consumer reports or forcing everyone to watch a video and not creating these nice lists which is semi anti-consumer.

View on HN

They've already stated it's going to have a pretty robust website with good search engine to filter through their test results and blog posts. Then they'll take certain tests and make videos on top of that for the main channel, otherwise they'll be pretty independent business units.

Got it, so it’ll be very different. Monetization will likely be affiliate links and ads, though I wonder if they’ll give float plane subscribers an ad free experience.

Also curious if they’ll be able to keep the firewall between marketing and review that it appears wirecutter has failed to do.

That's been his stance, a lot of the information and planning for the "Lab" have been exposed via their live Friday shows (WAN Show). They just got their power supply testing stuff, too. Linus seems to be really hedging on doing this right, and I'm cautiously optimistic.

Regardless, bless that man.

He gets some flack because his style looks like common, over the top, yt clickbait. But despite the occasional antics there’s a lot of substance behind his content. Other yt celebs are buying Lamborghinis and paying for stupid stunts. Linus just bought a $100k PSU tester.

No way he’d be as successful and be able to do things like this without it sadly. He definitely plays into it as well which I find funny. The community at first was a hit harsh on him for it but they know that’s how they’re able to afford everything.

Those thumbnails and clickbait titles definitely work.

I’m just worried “doing this right” for us means a poor return on investment for him which means it won’t survive very long.

We'll see, he's got his money invested in a lot of different areas, so I'm sure he'll be fine if this venture doesn't work for him. One thing I've noticed is that what he does largely is just based on what _he_ wants. The backpack he had built because he _wanted_ it, the screwdriver was designed because he _wanted_ it. The Lab is being built up because he wants an obscene amount of random testing just done for everything. It certainly seems to drive him, and it's a better motivator than doing something just because "he needs to for more money", ya know?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com