How would you monetize 4chan?

[Skippy McGee]

Washington Post article today about Chris Poole (moot).

washingtonpost.com

At age 21, he gets 5 million visitors a month (imagine the pageviews) but is living at home with his mom and is $20k in debt because he keeps putting his server bills on credit cards.

 

[dogfighter]

Sell ads to NAMBLA

jk, they have been trying to monetize, mostly with porn ads. Don't know how it's been going but I'd think he'd make more selling tshirts or Guy Fawkes masks.

 

[cliqz]

You couldn't really advertise anything yourself except affiliate stuff. Mainstream CPM and CPC companies wouldn't touch that site.

But his obvious cash cow would be to sell ad space direct to buyers. People like us could pay him per click or he could sell CPM media branding packages.

 

[dschus]

T-shirt sales. With all the memes and jokes, people would eat this shit up.

 

[amanda11]

Flesh sticks, perhaps work at home ops for those basement dwellers

 

[alexb]

T-shirts relating to current memes. I don't think any affiliate offers would work, and nobody on that site would actually PAY for porn.

 

[amanda11]

I'll donate moot $20 -- fucking kid needs a haircut.

 

[Firelead]

Great article...The article mentioned he goes to conferences...I wonder what conferences he goes to?

 

[zany zoroaster]

Reading this article, I really appreciate how important it is that I went through and got a business degree, and that I participate in WF. All the ways to monetize/use 4chan seem pretty clear to me, as they probably do to just about everyone here.

 

[majorbta]

that was actually a pretty interesting article

 

[vinny lingo]

T-shirts, all the way.

BTW, did anyone catch this?

Moot -- and please lowercase the "m" -- is the mysterious founder of 4chan.org, one of the weirdest, vast-est, most disgusting-est sites online.

 

[loyolabenson]

I agree with the Tshirts. So much potential. Icanhazcheesburger should pay some royalties too. I'm pretty sure 4chan came up with the concept of lol cats.

 

[Nikko]

clean up his formatting and sell adspace to clever marketing wonks such as the fine denizens of this board. 5 million eyeballs a month of the stupidly gullible variety, and this cheesehead can't figure out how to make money? He doesn't deserve that site. In fact, he should just stop breathing my air right now.

 

[nickycakes]

clean up his formatting and sell adspace to clever marketing wonks such as the fine denizens of this board. 5 million eyeballs a month of the stupidly gullible variety, and this cheesehead can't figure out how to make money? He doesn't deserve that site. In fact, he should just stop breathing my air right now.

i wouldn't exactly call 4chan readers the "stupidly gullible variety". they may act like retards, but you'd be lucky to get a couple dating signups out of them.

 

[JamesH]

You think he wants your shitty acai berry ads and grant offers on his site? The dude has standards, which is why he isn't making any money right now.

 

[Cut]

Im pretty sure if he had ads everywhere. His members would revolt against his site.

 

[JamesH]

^ Which doesn't make sense to me. Look at Facebook. All of its users are bitching about ads, yet they're using a free fucking service. What the fuck do they expect? Dumb bitches expect to have their cake and eat it too. I guess we're the only people that will understand, since we know what the fucks up on the interwebs.

/end rant

 

[Nikko]

i wouldn't exactly call 4chan readers the "stupidly gullible variety". they may act like retards, but you'd be lucky to get a couple dating signups out of them.

Is there a Hello Kitty Dating site? Bet they'd sign up for that!

 

[HarveyJ]

You can't put the regular shit for desperate morons on 4chan.
Most chaners are fine with being single. They get their porn for free from torrents and LAN parties, and think that girlfriends that won't sit their watching anime and playing WoW with them instead of going out to a movie and maybe fucking in a park are a waste of time.
I say this from actual conversations I've had with people when I made the dumb mistake of going on a Scientology raid. The REALLY sad thing is that some of the chan girls are fucking hot.

Which leaves us with the question of what would work for channers, but also what would work for the outside world? (seriously, think outside the box with me on this one)

Internally, I'm thinking the best thing to do would just be to have 2 banners towards the top and the left, marketing things that chaners would probably get into.
So video gaming hardware, Japanese crap, maybe some game strategy guides, oh, and better ISP services for getting up to illegal shit.

For marketing to the outside world where people are tight arses? Most people have no fucking clue who Pedobear and Friends are.
A range of vinyl toys or plushies would probably sell quite well, just due to cuteness factor. From their, you go on a massive merch run ala Gloomy or HelloKitty, and from there you can launch the fashion line entirely on your own with the capital, instead of relying on CafePress or Zazzle.
Getting in on the porn angle, they need to get a paid site going, like Suicide Girls, but using hot chan girls as the models. "Support 4chan with your TITS or GTFO"... Chicks could donate self cam sets or some shit, and non channers could pay $10 a month or some shit.

What I find odd here is that 4chaners aren't all that stupid. Yeah, there are a lot, but there are also people like ****** and ****************** on there that do the marketing shtick, and could easily give moot advice on how to start making some money off of it.
Hell, moot himself could just explain the massive costs of keeping it running and ask people to buy stuff through his links by having a page of "Support 4chan: Buy shit here" or something.

 

[g1c9]

I figure he'd break even just asking for donations..

didn't RTFA. will now.