Hacker News Reader

trg2on Dot-Com IPO Insanity Returns With Coupons.com

When a company like this goes public, do they have to include in their filing specifically which channels are driving revenue? For example, do they mention what % of Coupons.com revenue is from SEO vs. SEM vs. Email Marketing vs. Direct traffic - or does Wall Street just understand all that as one big "Internet" channel?

trg2on Poll: What impact do payment fees have on your margin?

It's interesting to see how these fees affect everyone. I have a digital product, and while there were small fixed costs for the creation of the product up front, there's almost no variable cost going forward. I suppose incremental Amazon S3 usage, but the product is a 5 hour video course and the incremental monthly cost there per user is negligible (for now).

So, like others have mentioned, I'm paying a standard PayPal rake of ~3%, but don't really feel it because the product has been profitable for years and doesn't have any real variable cost.

trg2on An Engineer’s guide to Stock Options

You are not nice.

trg2on Amazon Prime Air

Am I in the minority in thinking this is fantastic marketing? If you were Amazon, why wouldn't you leverage an interesting R&D project on the eve of your biggest day of the year? Regardless of how pie-in-the-sky this might be, I don't understand all the cynicism.

trg2on Google SEO Starter Guide [pdf]

I have an online SEO training class, but frequently refer people back to this doc before they get started. This is a great refresher, thanks for sharing.

Edit: SEO checklist is http://www.clickminded.com/seo-checklist/

trg2on Startup School 2013 Videos Now Online

Balaji, you were far and away my favorite talk at Startup School. I took CS184 on Coursera and it was more valuable than my entire undergraduate education. Thank you.

trg2on A bachelor’s degree could cost $10,000 total. Here’s how

Link to the non print-friendly version: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/26/a...

trg2on Fucking Sue Me (2011)

Color

trg2on The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam

While the OP did run into some interesting problems that many of us in Internet Marketing face, I was very thrown off by the direction this post took. There was a pretty substantial lack of understanding of cookie tracking and first-click/last-click attribution.

The affiliates didn't do anything wrong here, which was ironic, because I've met affiliate marketers at conferences in Vegas, and there's PLENTY of shady stuff that some of them do. That said, none of that is taking place here.

Ranking for "name of company I'm an affiliate for" discount code is practically step 1 on the affiliate SEO checklist. This post was almost comically misleading, to be candid.

trg2on Patent US8296192 – Method for making money on the internet

Is this funny or sad? I'm more confused after actually reading it.

trg2on Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

This was really an incredible writeup, and I personally can agree with many of the long term trends. Loved the Dan Pink citation as well.

trg2on Edward Snowden: Saving Us from the United Stasi of America

Absolutely incredible. Thank you for breaking this down.

trg2on Ask HN: Passive income ideas?

Ramit Sethi has a great post from last year on why passive income is largely a myth for most people:

http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/how-i-traveled-for...

trg2on Stanford's new course on building a startup

Just enrolled. It looks like this is the second time the class has been offered. Has anyone on HN already taken the course? What did you think?

trg2on How 10 Instructors Earned $1.6 Million on Udemy in One Year

Udemy helped me launch a side project that now has more than 1,300 paid users across 3 different platforms. I've been super happy with these guys.

trg2on Towards the end of poverty

Loved this article. There's so much doom and gloom out there, and yeah, there's plenty more we could be doing and need to fix. That said, it's nice to stop every now and then and realize what's really going on here: we're living in the god damn golden age.

trg2on Andrew Mason at YC

Love this guy. Accounting issues aside, concept to IPO to goodbye letter was such an interesting journey to watch unfold. Can't wait to see what happens at YC and the new startup. Welcome to the bay, Andrew.

trg2on Tailgating YC

fascinating read - thanks for posting, took guts.

trg2on Startup Index: First Round Capital

My feedback is similar to what others have said - this is a great idea, but the ranking system seems a bit skewed towards sites that are fundamentally sound in SEO over anything else.

trg2on Women, Tech Conferences and the Bullshit Surrounding It

I've seen Rae speak at multiple conferences and she's freaking awesome. Couldn't agree more with this article - gender quotas for panels are a.) a slippery slope and b.) detract from both the quality of the conference and the accomplishments of the speakers that have made it there without them

trg2on The Rejection Book: Good luck, bad luck, who knows?

Thoughtful, well-written and super inspiring. Nice post Joseph.

trg2on Bitcoin Tops $50USD on MtGox

Are bitcoins in a position to have a crash as tumultuous as last time, or is the currency more stable now overall?

trg2on Use a VPN or Your Google Searches Are Public

When Google first came out and said they would default to secure search, the SEO industry got pretty heated. They initially said it would affect queries "in the single digits". This number has grown much higher, with most people reporting 20-60% of traffic showing up in their analytics as "not provided".

While most SEOs said this was monopolistic behavior by Google, attempting to take more market share from other ad networks (when you can't extract the keyword from the referring URL, it's harder to provide relevant ads), this is an example of secure search actually being quite useful.

That said, it makes us all the more reliant on Google for more and more. There's definitely no easy answer here.

trg2on Anonymous posts over 4000 U.S. bank executive credentials

Chrome gives a malware warning when you visit this site - watch out!

trg2on Co-Founders: They're A Wonderful Thing. Indulge at Your Own Risk.

I met one of you guys on the Muni, going down Market, my first day in San Francisco. Can't remember what your name was. Hope you're able to patch things up and keep going, because it sounded like such a bad ass idea.

trg2on Skrillex Quest

This is incredible!

trg2on The Pendulum Swings, Again

Those who lived through that period and paid attention are probably well aware of the ridiculous notion that information flows should be controlled in order to protect the children or whatever the fig-leaf of the day is. Ask the Iranian and the Chinese people how they like their firewalls.

Well played, sir.

trg2on How Apple's Obsession with Google Is Hurting Apple

Totally agree. I work at an eBay Inc. company, and I feel like we announce both a new partnership and a new lawsuit with Google every week. Welcome to the valley.

trg2on $21,243 in 8 Days: Why AppSumo is Going to Keep Crushing It

Not sure if I'm allowed to talk about commission percentages, so I will refrain. However, I can reiterate that the commission rate is extremely high, but has proven to be well worth it.

trg2on New York Times Set to Sell About.com for $270 Million to Answers.com

About.com is the "for dummies" books of search results. Mediocre information on a wide vaiety of topics. It's kind of like a unisex salon in a one-horse town. You don't want to go, but it's there, so many do by default.

Quora, please, please send Answers / About to a spot in the late 90's graveyard next to Pets.com.