So do Digg-type sites have a revenue model yet?

I was considering making a niche digg-type site, but was wondering whether this sort of site can be profitable. I remember a while back whether or not digg could turn its popularity into money was in question. Has this been resolved yet? Is there a consensus that these sites can make money? Or are they like forums which are said to be hard to monetize?

 

The revenue so far seems to come from PPC ads. I suppose you could offer
premium features and availability to paid members, but that's unlikely to get
people excited enough to pay up.

I would use the site to build an email list, and then promote products to it.

 

I think by getting emails, they have a business model. They need to utilize those emails and market to them.

I would think Adsense/Contextual would be low-profit, as most of the users are savvy, unless it gets massives amount of traffic like Digg.

 

How would tech savvy users be any more amenable to email marketing than PPC marketing?

 

Web savvy aren't really going to click on Adsense/Contextual. Email marketing works with everyone, web savvy or not. I'm web savvy for sure, and yet, I still purchase things from email marketing, but I RARELY click on Adsense.

 

This seems counter intuitive...I usually consider email marketing the most spammy of all. Or are you talking about a newsletters, which I suppose are less spammy?

 

I would bet newsletters and actual offers from an opt-in list would be very profitable, especially if it's going to be a specific topic and not general like Digg.

 

If you optin to a special newsletter, maybe in exchange of something, that certainly isn't spammy. But make sure the users really want to receive it! Don't just send it to anyone who registers for your site. That's a big no no.

 

I don't think you will ever see a big site slinging stuff by email. Could you imagine myspace spamming their 50 billion members? The negative press and blog posts from it would be suicide.

 

The other model (that worked so successfully for Blue Mountain) is to build
an enormous user base, and then sell the company - so the user details go
along with it.

That's part of the reason the mighty G bought out YouTube.

 

This "model" strikes me as being very bubble 2.0 dependent.

 

How about just coming up with separate services along side of the existing free service. I mean, look at Google.......

 

Since I've got one Digg-like site... I think I can answer:

Business Model ?
Revenues based (99%) in Advertising: PPC and Sitewide (as usual).
for niche markets you can always get some Referral Income.

PM and will talk.