Hackaday Kickstarter to..... Buy hackaday????

[Smokey]

From what I can tell, the owner of hackaday wants to sell and wants like 500K USD, and the editors started a indiegogo to raise half a million dollars to buy it.  Am I the only one who's first, second, and third reactions are...... WTF???

http://hackaday.com/2013/07/15/were-going-to-buy-hackaday/

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/let-s-buy-hackaday

::edit::  It's indiegogo, not kickstarter.

[george graves]

The HAD crew are a cool bunch of guys - but this is just crazy.

Dave - I think you need to do a video on this.....

[sleemanj]

It's way to airy fairy. 

I'd want to see a draft trust constitution, as it is there is nothing to stop...

1. raise funds
2. buy HaD
3. sell HaD
4. profit

[mikeselectricstuff]

Where did they get the figure of $500K from?  Sounds like wishful thinking.
When one of my vids gets featured on HaD, I get maybe 5-8K extra views. The avarage article gets a couple of dozen comments, maybe 50-100  for something particularly interesting or controversial.
I'm sure Dave will have some idea of what they are likely to be getting from advertising, but I can't see it being worth anything like that figure.
 

[kaz911]

Where did they get the figure of $500K from?  Sounds like wishful thinking.
When one of my vids gets featured on HaD, I get maybe 5-8K extra views. The avarage article gets a couple of dozen comments, maybe 50-100  for something particularly interesting or controversial.
I'm sure Dave will have some idea of what they are likely to be getting from advertising, but I can't see it being worth anything like that figure.

The $500.000 is a number Jason (the owner) spat out as what he was willing to sell it for outright - it is listed on the site. And they say about $16000 / month in advertising  - then minus what the costs are (editors/hosting etc) .... So they might make $50.000 pa. in profits. 10 x profits = $500.000.

[EEVblog]

Where did they get the figure of $500K from?  Sounds like wishful thinking.
When one of my vids gets featured on HaD, I get maybe 5-8K extra views. The avarage article gets a couple of dozen comments, maybe 50-100  for something particularly interesting or controversial.
I'm sure Dave will have some idea of what they are likely to be getting from advertising, but I can't see it being worth anything like that figure.

The owner posted actual income adsense figures in a blog post about it. Which is of course against the terms and conditions of Adsense, you aren't allowed to say how much you earn.
http://hackaday.com/2013/07/01/hackaday-looking-for-a-good-home/
I think their estimate of a possible $90k/month from other ad sources is just wishful thinking. They are just taking a CPM figure and dreaming.

The site gets 6M page views a month (presumably not unique, likely just Wordpress stats). No biggie, this forum gets 4M a month.

The $500K figure is clearly 3 years worth of income. But that's not net profit, that's just income before all the expenses like the editors wages. I suspect they don't make much profit at all at current adsense income levels. So on that basis the $500K figure is very high if you were selling a regular bricks and mortar business, but this is the Internet...

[MacAttak]

So if I understand this correctly - he wants a half million $ for it. Investors / acquisition hunters agreed with Dave's paper napkin math and don't think it's worth nearly that much (and so aren't willing to pay it).

So he throws a hail-mary to the Internet crowdfunding world, hoping they will be suckers and donate that much to him? By wording it as a donation to keep a dying website alive, instead of more truthfully saying that you're donating cash to someone's personal bank account who is threatening to pull the plug on the website. Someone who (by his own admission in those posts) has already been made wealthy by previous web property sales.

It walks like a duck and quacks like a duck.

[Rasz]

I said in HAD comments and on slashdot they should just register hackperday.com and migrate away, that would be $500K cheaper.
I check hackperday.com one day later and someone already registered it

http://hackofday.com sounds good too

[EEVblog]

I said in HAD comments and on slashdot they should just register hackperday.com and migrate away, that would be $500K cheaper.

You still need some money to keep the editors afloat while the site picks up traffic, so you'd still need the crowd funding campaign for that.
Yes, I don't see big value in the hack-a-day brand as such. If the editors all suddenly resign and go to start hackperday.com then the hackaday owner is left holding the bag and either needs to do the work himself (which he said he doesn't have time for), find new editors to keep it going (again, no time for that), or simply let it stagnate and die.
It is possible for hackaday to die off within weeks if that happens. At a guess maybe half the regular crowd would find the new site and follow it.

[ivan747]

So that means the death of hack-a-day is quite feasible!? Time for someone to store a copy of the website before it gone! 

[EEVblog]

So that means the death of hack-a-day is quite feasible!? Time for someone to store a copy of the website before it gone! 

You'd be a fool to shut it down, just leave it there and let it generate revenue until that is less than the hosting fees. Then you switch it to a $10/month plan and keep it alive anyway.
The more I think about this, the more I'm inclined to think that it's just best if the editors left and started their own site, that would be crowd fund money better spent IMO.
Does the founder deserve the money by selling it? Yeah, I think so.
Is he asking too much? Yeah, I think so.
Problem is, the price he's put on it is aimed at the big corporate buyers, not crowd funded feel-good community spirit money.

[Rasz]

Yeah, there is barely anything to sell.
There in no original content, only news articles. What is left is brand (easily replaceable with hackofday.com for example) and userbase (80% will migrate as soon as you sneeze).

Owner is not the content, even editors are not the content, you can get monkeys to aggregate news. HAD is popular because it is convenient, there is no secret sauce.

[baljemmett]

So that means the death of hack-a-day is quite feasible!? Time for someone to store a copy of the website before it gone! 

I believe ArchiveTeam are already on it; their grabs usually get ingested into the Wayback Machine and can also be downloaded en masse from the Internet Archive, I believe.

[ivan747]

So that means the death of hack-a-day is quite feasible!? Time for someone to store a copy of the website before it gone! 

I believe ArchiveTeam are already on it; their grabs usually get ingested into the Wayback Machine and can also be downloaded en masse from the Internet Archive, I believe.

Thankfully 

I find the internet such a volatile interconnected memory. 

[4to20Milliamps]

They need to downsize and outsource if they're not making enough money to do what they want, the only real skill the editors have is changing the dates on articles and whatnot, anyone can do that.

 

[Rasz]

They need to downsize and outsource if they're not making enough money to do what they want, the only real skill the editors have is changing the dates on articles and whatnot, anyone can do that.

 

'they' have nothing to downsize and outsource because 'they' dont own anything, 'they' wanted 'us' to buy them nice cushy jobs (10K/month for aggregating news from email submissions). Its the owner of the site that wanted to cash out, he will be better off selling out to some big corp for couple of $mills.

[george graves]

Well apparently someone made an offer for it.  Wonder who picked it up.

Element 14?  It seems like something they would like to own.

[andersm]

Maybe they will become part of the Jamie & Adam/Tested.com family, like the Amp Hour wasn't?

[EEVblog]

Well apparently someone made an offer for it.  Wonder who picked it up.
Element 14?  It seems like something they would like to own.

http://hackaday.com/2013/07/20/well-thats-finally-over-with/

$450K was the top offer, with several lesser offers.
Would not surprise me if it was the likes of Element 14, RS Components, Jameco, or some such. But could be anyone really.
   
I don't think the crowd funded campaign stood a chance.

Given that this forum has similar stats to Hack-a-Day, does that mean I can cash out for a half mil too? 

[george graves]

"$450K was the top offer, with several lesser offers."

That's if you believe what the owner said.  He has every reason to pad the numbers.  Especially if the deal falls through and he needs to put it back on the market.

[EEVblog]

That's if you believe what the owner said.  He has every reason to pad the numbers.  Especially if the deal falls through and he needs to put it back on the market.

The bar has indeed been set.
I appreciate him being open with the numbers, but I can't see how the buyer would be too pleased with the value being disclosed?
And if he is unlucky Google could shut his account by revealing his Adsense income.

[Bored@Work]

Given that this forum has similar stats to Hack-a-Day, does that mean I can cash out for a half mil too? 

There is at least one way to find out 

[Rasz]

Given that this forum has similar stats to Hack-a-Day, does that mean I can cash out for a half mil too? 

There is at least one way to find out 

I know a guy who did it not once, but twice Both times during .com bubble, both times with same site type and almost same name, both times userbase migrated to a new site within 2-3 months because those were news sites with strong community driven forum. Corporations thought they were buying tons of eyeballs for news site while news readers came there for the forum in the first place and read news while browsing/waiting for new posts on that forum .

[tom66]

It doesn't look likely to succeed -- slightly longer than a day to go, but only $30k of $540k raised. And it is fixed funding.

[EEVblog]

It doesn't look likely to succeed -- slightly longer than a day to go, but only $30k of $540k raised. And it is fixed funding.

I believe they admitted that and deliberately shortened the campaign. Why they didn't just cancel though I don't know?

[Phroon]

I believe they admitted that and deliberately shortened the campaign. Why they didn't just cancel though I don't know?

In the Well that's finally over with post they say that "you can’t actually delete Indiegogo campaigns".

[ivan747]

Great news, guys! Hack a Day was acquired by SupplyFrame the guys behind Find Chips and that banner atop the forum 

My worst fear was that Element 14 would be offering a million bucks for it 

[EEVblog]

Great news, guys! Hack a Day was acquired by SupplyFrame the guys behind Find Chips and that banner atop the forum 

Yep, same great people who sponsor this forum.
I'm hard pressed to think of a better and more "impartial" company to buy it and keep it running.
I'm pretty sure they will change nothing, and won't rock the boat, just a few different ads.

My worst fear was that Element 14 would be offering a million bucks for it 

Element 14 would have ruined it.


Now, assuming they paid $450K for HAD, either they paid too much, or I'm not charging them enough 

[mikeselectricstuff]

I'm pretty sure they will change nothing, and won't rock the boat, just a few different ads.

That's a shame, it could really have used some improvements. The layout is terrible and the comment system is extremely basic.

I'm not sure about HAD. Some days I think it's just a bunch of losers with Arduinos and the even bigger losers who come there just to mock them, and other days it serves as a useful news aggregation service. Good luck to the new owners though, I'd love to see it thrive.

yeah, the ratio of good stuff to lame padding is pretty low. maybe 25% - I'm getting pretty tired of "fred made a breakout board" and "jim has started a project that might be interesting someday but doesn't actually do anything yet" and so-called finished projects that still have breadboards in them.
 

[EEVblog]

That's a shame, it could really have used some improvements. The layout is terrible and the comment system is extremely basic.

They will put money into improving things, I'm just saying they won't want to drastically change anything.

[andersm]

yeah, the ratio of good stuff to lame padding is pretty low. maybe 25% - I'm getting pretty tired of "fred made a breakout board" and "jim has started a project that might be interesting someday but doesn't actually do anything yet" and so-called finished projects that still have breadboards in them.

Forced content for the ad impression overlords. It's the bane of any aggregation site that promises daily updates.

[Smokey]

The worst part of the lame padding content is that when people really started complaining about it the editors got all pissy and pulled the "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything" card.  They even had a whole post dedicated to trying to keeping people from complaining about the lame content.  The problem with that is the people complaining were right.  An arduino case made out of the cardboard box your arduino came in is not an interesting hack.  There was one week where like 90% of the "hacks" were raspberry pi cases. 

[EEVblog]

The worst part of the lame padding content is that when people really started complaining about it the editors got all pissy and pulled the "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything" card.  They even had a whole post dedicated to trying to keeping people from complaining about the lame content.

Well I can understand this. Hacks don't magically appear out of thin air, and they don't need people complaining, they need people submitting.
The thing is always that you can't please everyone. The editors obviously wanted as many posts as possible, so that what they aimed for, and I'm sure many people liked that, regardless of how "lame" they were. You usually only ever hear from the people who are pissed off at something, but that does not mean they are the majority or are "right".

[Smokey]

Like I've said before, I think this site is a great resource for everyone from beginner to professional, and I appreciate all the effort Dave puts into making it work like that.  Stuff I first found out about here has ended up in shipping products.  Really.  I'm not just saying that because I was kind of called out for complaining too much by the guy that runs it

That being said, while you can't please everyone......
http://hackaday.com/2012/07/05/flimsy-pi-case-still-provides-a-level-of-protection/

really???

[MacAttak]

That being said, while you can't please everyone......
http://hackaday.com/2012/07/05/flimsy-pi-case-still-provides-a-level-of-protection/

really???

I know, right? They totally forgot the duct tape on it

[westfw]

 

the ratio of good stuff to lame padding is pretty low. maybe 25%

Unfortunately, that's unusually high for such a site !
At least, HAD got me to visit a lot more regularly than I visit many sites.

[george graves]

Ha!  There already is a "Hack-a-week" (as you might know?)

Cool guy doing a hack video each week.  Recently he's been doing some motorcycle stuff - but his channel is entertaining to watch.  I usually put it on in the back ground and turn around for the interesting stuff.  He's really into "hobby hacks" - so it's really basic stuff. 

www.hackaweek.com/?

It started when Hack-a-day was looking for a "hacker" to move to the most expensive part of LA, and made videos for them full time.....for $30k a year.   

So he took them up on the challenge - and did it independently.