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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 3 Apr 2019
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      I think I’ve been unconsciously negatively prioritizing traffic growth on ribbonfarm. The marginal cost of traffic (overages on my hosting plan) is not worth the marginal value of new readers. It’s a kind of stock buyback. Growth without a good idea driving it is a net liability.

      4 replies 1 retweet 46 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 3 Apr 2019
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      Growth for the sake of growth is the editorial ideology of a cancer blog. I wouldn’t mind growth, but only if it is also a genuine evolution in what we do on the blog. If we run out of new ideas, developing deeper conversations with old readers beats courting new ones.

      3 replies 1 retweet 24 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 3 Apr 2019
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      In a way, an idea space has a “capacity” of the number of minds that can usefully connect within it in a live conversation. Something analogous to Dunbar’s number but higher. Like 150,000 instead of 150. But it’s not infinite. At some point more minds don’t add more new thoughts.

      1 reply 0 retweets 17 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 3 Apr 2019
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      Right now we’re hovering around the half-a-million visitors per year mark (whatever the hell that means; I never really understood web analytics). If the next scaling step is say 1 million, it needs a different *kind* of meta idea-space that can hold that many minds.

      1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 3 Apr 2019
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      Operationally the blog just about breaks even. Hosting+paying non-editor writers = affiliate income. Editors aren’t paid. We average about $145/mo in hosting ($95/mo if paid annually plus $50 average overage). The next traffic tier works out to about $240/mo with no overages...

      3 replies 0 retweets 10 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 3 Apr 2019
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      So one interesting way to calibrate the growth challenge is: it’s only not a vanity project OR a grifting operation if the *idea* driving 1m uniques/year *naturally* adds the additional revenue without overt “monetization” tactics

      1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 3 Apr 2019
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      I mean it’s obvious how to grow revenue in a mercenary way. Forced product placement of affiliate links, reviewing high-value things like TVs, “premium” [mediocte] subscription content, saying yes to the dozen sploggy people who email me every week wanting to place shady ads...

      10:06 PM - 3 Apr 2019
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