Ask HN: I'm building a Medium alternative. Would you pay to host your blog here?

2 points by rolandtshen 6 years ago | 8 comments

Hey all,

I've been building https://imprint.to, a social blogging platform meant to address issues with Medium. The goals are to...

1. Make content accessible to readers. No paywall, and your content will be discovered by the right audiences. 2. Keep content online, permanently, at the same hyperlink. 3. Let writers own their content. Allow custom domains, provide analytics, and let writers monetize freely. We'll also never tamper with blogs or posts.

I've been thinking about two ways to sustainably monetize the platform.

Option 1: Ads or sponsored posts. Pros: Low barrier for writers to start a blog, meaning more content on the platform. Cons: Ads worsen the quality of news feeds and compromise users' data.

Option 2: charge $5/mo to bloggers for blog hosting. Pros: Recurring revenue helps fulfill the promise that their content will be online forever (like Svbtle/Posthaven). May select for higher quality posts, as paid users might be putting more effort into their blogs. Cons: Less content on the platform, which indirectly hurts the community aspect.

What do you think? Would you pay $5/mo for these features? Or do the network effects created by a free/ad model work better?

detaro 6 years ago |

Lots of paid blog hosting services around, so clearly some people do pay for that. (And FWIW while I'm not in the target market, a service like this is something I'd recommend over Medium). You frame it as a "Medium alternative" - what makes it that compared to other blogging services?

rolandtshen 6 years ago | |

Most blogging services let you build and host a blog for a monthly fee.

But they don't include the community aspect. I want to preserve the audience that Medium provides writers out of the box, meaning writers on Imprint get both a reliable place to host, but also a good place to find readers.

d33lio 6 years ago |

Likely no. I think most people here would rather go through the effort of setting up a static page on Netlify or otherwise. Even if your service is top notch, the features you're describing would definitely eventually require an increase in pricing.

rolandtshen 6 years ago | |

Thanks for the feedback. For you, would the social aspect with natural traffic coming in make the price worth it?

d33lio 6 years ago | | |

Sort of, but since it's on a platform is it really "natural" traffic?

Think about it, why do you think FinancialSamurai was always just a decent looking WordPress page and never a Medium or FaceBook blog?

waldohatesyou 6 years ago |

As someone trying to practice my writing via blogging myself, I'd be pretty interested in Option 2.

rolandtshen 6 years ago | |

Great to hear! Would sponsored ads on the main feed, but not on your personal blog, be a turn off?

waldohatesyou 6 years ago | | |

Yikes, I missed this! I would say that sponsored ads would be a turn-off, I would personally prefer to pay a subscription in a manner akin to write.as.