SN Foundry- Stacker Sports Month 2 Financials \ stacker news ~meta

SN Foundry- Stacker Sports Month 2 Financials

8943 sats \ 15 comments \ @grayruby 5 Feb meta

A peak behind the curtain for anyone interested.

Here are the financial details of the Sports territory for month two and cumulative.

Jan 6-Feb 5- Month 2 Territory Revenue: 2953 sats Territory Monthly Cost: 100,000 Territory gross profit/loss: (97,047)

Territory Posts: 77 Territory Revenue per day: 95.25 sats Territory Posts per day: 2.48 Territory Posting Fee: 21 sats

GrayRuby earn Jan6- Feb5: 106,224 sats Territory Rev+ GrayRuby earn: 109,177 Net Profit including GR earn: 9,177

Cumulative- Dec 5- Feb 5 Territory Revenue: 8678 sats Territory Cost: 200,000 sats Territory gross profit/loss: (191,322)

Territory Posts: 209 Territory revenue per day: 142.26 Territory Posts per day: 3.42 Territory Posting Fee: 21 sats

GrayRuby Cumulative earn: 223,368 Territory Rev+ GR cumulative earn: 232,046 Net Profit including GR earn: 32,046

Takeaways: Territories are still terribly unprofitable unless you include your own earn. It is difficult for me to assess what portion of my earn comes from interaction in the territory and what comes from interaction outside of the territory. Maybe 70-30 in territory I would guess.

A significant increase in posting fee may help the gross profit line but disincentivizes other stackers posting in the territory so is not something I want to test quite yet. I will be leaving it at 21 sats for this month and then reassess. May increase it next month as a test.

Ultimately the only way territories are going to be profitable are if: a) they come down significantly in price b) territory founders keep almost all of the revenue plus have other rev generating sources (charging for pinned posts, or boosted posts or selling ads or licensing) c) SN user base grows dramatically

Thoughts on a) Personally, I don't want to see a reduction in price until we finish the territory attrition phase (maybe after 6 months) and have some territories die off and others essentially become pseudo sub territories within other territories. I saw @jeff posting about crowdsourcing half the monthly territory fee from people who really wanted to see econ stick around. This might be a good idea in the interim for struggling territories that have built a decent following.

Thoughts on b) SN should earn some revenue from the territories and at this point because territory rev isn't a significant amount 50% is fine. Eventually this will need to come down. I think territories are analogous to franchises in the meat space world. Typically a franchisee would pay a franchise fee and then an ongoing royalty on the sales. Generally around 8%-12%. Territories should also have more ways to generate revenue. Options to charge for pin/promoted posts, a static bio instead of territory detail expand where you can possibly add a simple sponsorship link. For instance (stacker sports is brought to you by xyz, check out xyz for all your sports betting needs). This doesn't have to be an immediate thing and the community should have a say in whether we want these kinds of promotions on SN but some way to generate some sort of ad revenue without having the site/territories littered with ads might be helpful.

Thoughts on c) This is the most important one. I think SN and all of us stackers need to do a much better job of marketing. Maybe there needs to be specialized territory referral links that give new users 5 free posts and 100 sats or something like that but it is shocking to me that probably half of bitcoin twitter has no clue what SN is and marketing on Nostr has been a complete bust so far. People seem interested but then never follow through. I know once they join we will convert them, as SN is a great experience, but we need to get them to visit our frontier town. I expected territories to be a gateway for this but so far it hasn't happened. We should all be thinking about ways to get this done if we want SN to continue to grow towards being more like a reddit style platform than hackernews niche style platform. I know all of us don't want that but for long term viability it probably has to go that route. I will be creating a territory account on twitter and see if I have more luck there than I did on nostr. As much as I would prefer to stay nostr only, sometimes you have to meet the people where they are.

Anyways, that's the low down on the financials and my two sats on the first two months of territories

Cheers, GR

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198 sats \ 2 replies \ @kr 5 Feb

great post.

Thoughts on b) SN should earn some revenue from the territories and at this point because territory rev isn't a significant amount 50% is fine. Eventually this will need to come down. I think territories are analogous to franchises in the meat space world. Typically a franchisee would pay a franchise fee and then an ongoing royalty on the sales. Generally around 8%-12%.

one clarification here, Stacker News isn’t earning the remaining 50% of territory revenue.

The revenue is split equally between territory owners and creators (via the rewards pool).

840 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby OP 5 Feb

Good point. I had forgotten they went to rewards.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @oliverweiss 6 Feb

This is really good point which however makes it harder to track the actual territory revenue. Otherwise, @grayruby’s loss would be 97% in the second month which is like wow.

104 sats \ 2 replies \ @siggy47 5 Feb

Fantastic write-up. Your suggestions are very good, and you have laid out the reality for all of us to see. From a selfish perspective I see your notion of waiting for attrition, and then hope for territory fees to be lowered. But we have to deal with the fact that Stackers may be angry about paying for a few months, running out of sats, and then discovering the price has dropped.

471 sats \ 1 reply \ @grayruby OP 5 Feb

This is why I think territories should have enough runway to be tested and to eventually maybe find a home within another territory if having their own territory doesn't work. Maybe at some point we get the ability to have co-founders for territories and if I own health and you own fitness we can say it makes more sense to just combine them. Maybe.

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 5 Feb

Yes. Good point

133 sats \ 4 replies \ @Public_N_M_E 5 Feb

Lots to think about here.

Territorys as they stand are not a viable source of income. Do I think they should come down in price? Yeah, maybe even by half. 50ksats is soooo much easier to stomach, especially as the fiat cost increases. I feel as though the price of the territory almost doesn't matter really. Did we have a massive rush for territories when they were first announced? Yep, did a large percentage of them die off? Also yes and I don't think it's just the cost. Some owners I feel wanted set and forget territory to earn passive income. That's just not going to happen on a social network.

I do really like the idea of selling Pinned posts. Looking at the specific example of ~Music with the self promotion Sunday thread, the highest zapped artist will be able to rent the pin to put their work right at the forefront. There will be a rental fee (perhaps similar to the way boost works. 25k boost only really keeps it top for maybe a day, a pin can keep that there indefinitely, but I'd likely make it a week.) 1 week of advertising space for 25k. Rather than the boost function giving you ~1 day. Easily a better option.

How the pin rental works in other spaces, I've no idea. But I think pin rental is an excellent use of that function for revenue generation.

I was talking to @ekzyis the other day about refunding posters their posting fees. It's an interesting idea, I think if I were to increase the territory posting fees (which I may have to) to maintain the content creators using that space, I'd refund their posting fees. They're providing value to that space. But the non-content creators, such as just the odd link drop or something. No refund on that.

I saw it mentioned in another post where it was suggested that owners should be able to post for free. And I kinda don't hate that idea. Most of the posts in my Territory are mine, with various weekly themed stuff plus the daily. I'm making half back and sending half to rewards. But paying 100k to provide the space and then a fee per post to encourage engagement, that's something you may have not taken into account in your financials. The cost to you to post and comment plus the cost of zapping all the comments that your post brings. These costs are a touch more hidden.

I think the counter arguement of "if owners can post for free then what stops them spamming the territory?" Falls apart rapidly when you consider that people vote with their feet. Too much spam in the territory? Chat with the owner. Too much spam in the territory being posted from the owners account? Don't engage with that territory. They'll soon quit posting and move on, their territory will go silent, they'll probably not renew, and then it's open for a better owner to take it over and run it without the spam.

Anyways, that's just my thoughts on some stuff. TLDR pin rentals ✅. Owners don't pay posting fees ✅ perhaps drop territory cost to 50k per month ✅ (just to expand a touch further on that... I think the initial set up should be 100k but the renewal much less. Start up costs high, running costs sustainable. ✅

Cheers for listening.

102 sats \ 3 replies \ @grayruby OP 5 Feb

Excellent points.

50 sats \ 2 replies \ @Public_N_M_E 5 Feb

Cheers man. On a different note. I'm all up in your Nostr DMs again ;)

Just to elaborate on "the price of the territory doesn't matter" what I mean by that is that I feel the territories that will do well, will do well regardless of the price. So you could drop it and it wouldn't make a difference. But pricing out territories may have a detrimental effect on SNs overall usage.

69 sats \ 1 reply \ @grayruby OP 5 Feb

Responded. Glad you mentioned because for some reason damus doesn't show me a notification for DMs. I don't have that problem with primal for the stacker sports nostr account but my personal account has always been like that.

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @Public_N_M_E 5 Feb

No worries. I remember you saying so I figured I'd just tell you here.

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @Car 6 Feb

Myself and @k00b do SNL every week covering the top 5 posts on SN. Doing my part to get SN out to the masses. Others should consider targeting other social platforms or generating media content.

Also thanks for posting this. This would be a great breakdown to get from SN every month. Not sure if these Satalytics exist anywhere? Do you have a process to how you got those?

50 sats \ 1 reply \ @cryotosensei 5 Feb

Curious to know if there are any psychological costs and benefits to running a territory?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby OP 6 Feb

I guess that depends on the person and how you much time you have on your hands, if you approach them as a fun passion project or something that eventually needs to be profitable.

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @SaToSHiWoMaN 9 Feb outlawed

stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.