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What is Stack Overflow's business model?

How do Stack Overflow, Meta Stack Overflow, etc. stay up?

Someone has got to pay for the infrastructure and people's wages. So how do these sites make money? Is it purely through advertising?

(I'm not looking to copy it! :) I'm just amazed that such a great system works for free!)

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You don't think that Jon Skeet really got that rep without a little payola, do you? – nb69307 Jul 2 '10 at 18:55
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Seriously - why vote a question down that asks a perfectly reasonable question? – Wikis Jul 2 '10 at 19:06
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@Mark: If A then B if-and-only-if if not B then not A. If only perfectly reasonable questions do not get downvotes, the fact that you're getting downvotes implies your question is not perfectly reasonable. Programmers are supposed to be good at logic. – XMLbog Jul 2 '10 at 19:10
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I use FF, I see adds. Those two aren't mutually exclusive. – jjnguy♦ Jul 2 '10 at 19:12
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Justin - I said FF + adblock. The Proposer - I think my question is reasonable because it is a genuine question about the policy of this site. And I find your response unnecessarily rude. And illogical - you're using a circular argument: "it is because it is". That's funny. – Wikis Jul 2 '10 at 19:16
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-1...may God have mercy on your soul. – Miyagi Coder Jul 2 '10 at 19:28
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I find the question perfectly fine, although it may well be a duplicate. – Pekka 웃 Jul 2 '10 at 19:34
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@Mark: how is it that you find it acceptable to announce that you are circumventing a site's revenue stream (by using Adblock)? – Ether Jul 2 '10 at 19:41
This is pretty much the same question: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/8208/… -- but considering it's almost a year old, and lots of things have happened since then, I don't know if this should really be closed because of that. – balpha♦ Jul 2 '10 at 19:44
Hi Ether - I didn't say I used Adblock, I said it was possible. – Wikis Jul 2 '10 at 19:53
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Thanks to the responders so far, the people who voted up my question so that it is no longer on -2, and especially the moderators for removing an offensive comment. This comment is not part of the question - I just wanted to say thanks. – Wikis Jul 2 '10 at 19:55
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@Mark it wasn't necessarily the moderators who removed the comments, it could have been the author himself. While I felt the downvotes to this question unjustified, in general, downvotes are viewed as an expression of disagreement on Meta. A perfectly fine proposal can attract a lot of downvotes if people simply don't agree with it. They shouldn't be taken too seriously here. – Pekka 웃 Jul 2 '10 at 20:00
Sigh... it is starting again. If you're voting down please say why - I'm still trying to learn. – Wikis Jul 2 '10 at 20:27
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@mmyers yeah. I was somehow hoping Welbog had removed them himself, but I may have been wrong. Anyway.... – Pekka 웃 Jul 2 '10 at 21:52
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marked as duplicate by Anna Lear♦ Aug 12 '12 at 6:31

This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.

3 Answers

up vote 29 down vote accepted

Ads, jobs listings, careers. Do a search for money on meta and you'll see lots of relevant questions.

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Thank you for a real answer - good one. – Wikis Jul 2 '10 at 19:17
up vote 2 down vote

Volume.

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Um... can you elaborate? – Wikis Jul 2 '10 at 19:21
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@Mark: They play music really, really loud. Then people give them money to turn it down. – mmyers♦ Jul 2 '10 at 19:32
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(Maybe I should have clicked the link.) – mmyers♦ Jul 2 '10 at 19:32
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Sadly the video on the link does not play outside the US. – Wikis Jul 2 '10 at 19:58
Please will u be more descriptive?? – Ranjit Singh Dec 18 '12 at 10:20
please elaborate ... – Ranjit Singh Dec 18 '12 at 10:22
up vote 1 down vote

People will pay money to have their advertisements on popular websites. The amount of traffic in the stacks probably makes the advertisement expense relatively expensive. Its the same reason some games are free.

I'm sure there are many other little bits of money coming in/out, but personally I think advertisements is the biggest source of revenue for a free website like this

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