Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

>Dr. Dobb's, we had close to $3 million in revenue, almost all of it from advertising

Is that actual quote from the site? Since now it just says: "Dr. Dobb's, we had healthy profits and revenue, almost all of it from advertising"

I'm just curious how they would manage to spend $3 MILLION in 4 years and how it wouldn't be profitable to run a website that was ONLY $1 million revenue.

I've never even heard of the site until now, so I have no idea what they are doing, but it really seems odd that money was an issue if you are raking in millions.



It's mostly before my time, but they used to be a prominent tech journal, started in the late 70s and were fairly popular in the 90s.

In my head I picture them as a small company, not just "some website". $1m in revenue doesn't make for a very large company. I'm curious how they morphed in size over time and what their expenses were.


As I said I have no idea what they did and maybe I'm just being naive, but $1 million per year seems like plenty to keep a website online.


$1 million per year is plenty to just keep a website online. It's not that much if you also want to pay people a decent wage to produce world class content to put on the site.

I'm guessing the choices they faced was between a slow multi-year slide along:

cut costs->lower quality content->less viewers->less money->cut costs...

and simply seeing the writing on the wall and calling it quits before they hit rock bottom. I guess a third option would be to take The New Republic route and throw out everything the current audience loved about the magazine and try to create a new, entirely different product, with the same name but focusing a potentially more profitable market. But I respecting for not wanting to go that route either.


Rather than repeat the same information, see my response to this question asked earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8759328


That still doesn't answer how to managed to spend $4 million a year




Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: