"We have 3,000,000 users, now what?" startup asks | Hacker News Reader

"We have 3,000,000 users, now what?" startup asks

insidefacebook.com

12 pointsjoshwa12 comments

Ugh, Booze Mail. Success is success, but man, how depressing is it that this is popular? It's the "According to Jim" of web apps.

Time to "monetize them eyeballs!"

The only thing possible is just branding and text links. The conversion rate will be horrible, why would any one click on a link under neath an icon of a martini glass? The liquor companies would probably pay to have their name associated with the booze but that's most likely pittances.

300k daily usage is insane, but at the same time, it's just Facebook. Has there been any actual success (money-wise) with Facebook apps?

Yes.

http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/smincomebig.png

My app (http://apps.facebook.com/themafia) is currently doing around 9K a month a revenue, and it's not even that successful by Facebook app standards.

So the disconnect for me is: if you're able to produce a 6-figure annual revenue, why is it so hard for a company (with Rifkin and Park nonetheless) with 300,000 daily users to accomplish similar track records?

They have staff to pay, office space to rent, and VC money so that they won't need ads until the achieve the kind of returns their investors require. These companies are go big or go home, 6 figure annual revenue would pay for like one employee.

My only expense is my time and hosting costs.

i mean to say, does the monetization just not scale?

Is that mostly on CPM or CPC/CPA ads? Curious about what kinds of CTR's you're getting on canvas-page ads...

Ask them.

Facebook is like a money printing machine for developers. I know several apps that are making thousands a day.

Do you think the advertisers are getting their money's worth? In other words, is this thousands of dollars a day sustainable or should facebook apps ebay themselves while they still can?

This is a question that you can ask of any web 2.0 company. I don't see why Facebook apps would be significantly less monetizable than any other app.

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