How to monetize communities like IH?

Thank you all for the ideas and thoughts. Much appreciated!

How "niche" will it be? If it is "very niche", you can run self-service ads or give ways for users to promote stuff , and also use just plain old ads. Unfortunately FB &G have sucked the air (ad income) out of all the communities on the net, so you have to be creative. AFAIK IH has been bought by Stripe so they don't need money (it's a good way for Stripe to reach wannapreneurs)

An "unintrusive" but valuable service could be careers/job board, where you can cater to employers seeking employees with entrepreneurial skills for specific types of roles. StackOverflow did this really well.

"Hacker News" was not monetised for a reason, monetisation of any URL submission community like HN would be at the expense of its users i.e. users may feel that the platform is profiting out of their efforts and would move on to next 'open/free' platform; regardless of how the platform can manage it's expenses.

Since such community platforms have strong focus towards the context, they would just ignore the non-context ads e.g. Reddit unlike a social media platform like Facebook, where non-context ads converts well.

But that's not the whole story, HN was indirectly monetised with great success. It brought in loads of talented Engineers into YCombinator's incubator program, served to market YC programs to entrepreneurial hubs around the world, Serving as a platform to launch YC incubated startups, Even brings in fresh talent to YC startups and I would even go to the extent of claiming YC couldn't have become what it is today without HN.

So, indirect monetisation could serve well for a community platform like HN. I've been testing this with my own problem validation community platform - https://needgap.com, I've been getting entrepreneurs from there to my startup coaching service at - https://hitstartup.com.

Would you be able to monetise it through sponsored posts?

If you've got a real niche, like say, sneakers. Then I don't think the community would mind seeing adverts for the latest Air Jordans.

I think it's just about being niche / targeted and the frequency.

I would gladly pay to have access to a community, if the content is worth it. An example is https://app.thewatercooler.io, a place for managers to exchange and learn together. It's basically a discourse forum with a monthly fee, and it works really well.

I wouldn't recommend going down the ads or sponsored route, I think it kills the experience. Also if it's a niche, you probably wouldn't have enough users to generate a sustainable income from ads.

Honestly, worry about that after the fact.

With that said, you can go the classic route of ads or sponsored posts, referrals, sell tshirts. There really is no right or wrong answer, as it is so dependent on the community itself, the topic it is about, etc. Like any business, it’s really about understanding your users, the value you are delivering to them, and how you can combine it all into a package that doesn’t turn them off.