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Please, take a moment to imagine what your professional lives would be like without Stack Overflow. Stack Overflow is a commercial operation that needs to make some money in order to stay alive and provide us with this wonderful service. The ridiculous "Collectives" idea has crashed and burnt (as it was obviously always going to do), because the new commercial owners of the property don't understand the community.

But, without a solid revenue stream, Stack Overflow will eventually become too expensive to run on a commercial basis and it will be shut down. Not only that, based on past experience (e.g., JavaBlackBelt) we will lose access to all the content we have painstakingly curated over the years.

I'm left wondering if Stack Overflow's new owners could gain anything from the wisdom of the community? What ideas do we have for generating revenue that could satisfy them and keep them commercially interested? This community has within its folds businessmen, entrepreneurs, inventors, scientists, sometimes even programmers: creatives and thinkers.

Me? I'd charge for entrance. Free if you read fewer than, say, 5 answers a day. Pay per answer or subscription. Companies always pay. You could even have a second tick that a reader could apply to an answer to say that it helped them and then share a portion of the revenue with the original questioner and the answerer.

So, how would you try to generate revenue if you were Stack Overflow?

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    Yea, and we could add lootboxes for new skins! We also need StackOverflowImmortal, because everyone has phones!
    – Cerbrus
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 9:17
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    "Me? I'd charge for entrance. Free if you read fewer than, say, 5 answers a day. Pay per answer or subscription." amazing ideas if we don't want people to use SO. However, it doesn't mesh well with the whole "high quality repository" thing we want to have. After all, if a high quality repository is not used, then is it really high quality and does it matter?
    – VLAZ
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 9:27
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    @Cerbrus so THAT is why the responsive UI is being kicked off, so everybody can use SO on their phones!
    – VLAZ
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 9:28
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    @Cerbrus if those lootboxes don't contain hats, I'm out. All good lootboxes in games contain hats.
    – Thom A
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 9:30
  • 3
    It seems like dumb question, but are you sure that Stack Overflow is really struggling that much for revenue? According to this blog post they "booked $70m in revenue last year [2018]"; I would be very surprised if that figure has substantially dropped since then, and in truth would have expected it to have grown.
    – Thom A
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 9:35
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    In my understanding, the value of a site is proportional to the number of visitors. And you want to prevent people to visit it ...
    – Damien
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 9:48
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    "The ridiculous "Collectives" idea has crashed and burnt (as it was obviously always going to do) because the new commercial owners of the property don't understand the community." isn't it too quick to jump to that conclusion?
    – Andrew T.
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 9:50
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    "Pay per answer or subscription." If you read an answer like "I have a new question...?", "I have the same problem. Did you find a solution?", "Thanks! The second answer solved my problem.", "Have a look at this great [article](dead link). It will answer all your questions!", how much would you have to pay?
    – Jeanne Dark
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 9:53
  • 2
    It can be done, but do you have an idea where you find moderators to make sure everything on the site is properly, 100% curated? Cause to Jeanne's point, if I'm paying for answers, they better be damn good
    – Patrice
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 10:54
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    If I did have to pay for answers (I would have no intention of ever do so mind), would the user/SO also therefore be responsible for any damages that code I paid to copy caused, such as security vulnerabilities it has? And let's not even get onto the fact that there would need to be a huge licence change on the site, as cc by-sa does not work on pay-walled content by definition.
    – Thom A
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 11:14
  • 2
    A corporation sitting on top of the site trying to make money off people's unpaid contributions may be a necessary evil, but I'm certainly not inclined to try and help it make money better.
    – khelwood
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 11:19
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    The millisecond Stack Exchange charges for content is a millisecond after I start to replace my 1.5K answers with garbage. I provided answers for free, I wouldn’t pay $0.0 for some of the garage answers I see in the review queue, let alone actual money for them
    – Security Hound
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 12:01
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    A donate button
    – TylerH
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 13:31
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    "SO will eventually become too expensive to run on a commercial basis and it will be shut down" - yes that's why the company was bought not too long ago, because the new investors are morons that buy a sinking ship :) No all signs point towards the fact that Stack is doing just fine financially and has growth potential. I'll give you that the investors will want their money back though, so we'll definitely see more SO-related products to come out to pull more income from the brand name. It is out of our hands entirely, I am not even going to bother thinking about it.
    – Gimby
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 13:44
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    "there would be fewer crap questions if the user paid to post them." There sure would be, as no one would be stupid enough to pay to volunteer their time to help someone.
    – Cerbrus
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 13:44

3 Answers 3

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Thanks, but no thanks.

Once upon a time there was a Q/A site called Experts Exchange (it is still here, but it is basically obsolete) that had answers behind the similar paywall.

Then Stack Overflow was created as a free alternative for Experts Exchange and became huge success.

Being free was and is the cornerstone of Stack Overflow's success. Changing that would be the fastest way to kill the site.

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  • I'm not sure why you'd thank someone for an idea that hasn't been thought through at all.
    – Cerbrus
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 9:25
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    @Cerbrus It is an expression... "thanks" because yes, SO needs revenue to stay alive, but "no thanks" because putting up a paywall is extremely bad idea.
    – Dalija Prasnikar Mod
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 9:27
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    Also "Thanks, but no thanks" is often used to emphasise how much you don't approve of the suggestion.
    – Dalija Prasnikar Mod
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 9:30
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    Yea, I know the expression. I myself would've answered with "Yea, nope!" methinks :D
    – Cerbrus
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 9:53
  • I wouldn't say it would kill the site at this point, the existing database is too valuable for that to happen. I'm kind of worried that enough people would in fact be willing to pay for access to it at this point.
    – Gimby
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 10:16
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    @Gimby While current database still holds the value, I think that most people would just plain stop contributing at once. Also current content can be freely copied with attribution, so I have no doubts that sites like Codidact would have more incentive to plainly scrape the site in such case. So it is highly questionable that SO could ever put a price tag on existing content anyway.
    – Dalija Prasnikar Mod
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 10:45
  • You totally missed the point. That was just one idea. I'm asking for others, not for extensive criticism of my own idea. It was really just there to contribute an idea.
    – Software Engineer
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 11:34
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    Well, you should probably put that idea into an answer if you wanted to separate the general discussion from your particular idea
    – Dalija Prasnikar Mod
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 11:47
  • Yes. This. 100% this.
    – Travis J
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 19:54
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The art of all Free to Play games is micro-transactions so, clearly, what Stack Overflow needs are these. There are a wealth of ways we can do this. Here's a few ideas:

  • Buy packs of votes for when you run out 🃏
  • Buy packs of flags when you run out 🏴
  • Buy another run in a review queue after you've already completed your daily quest.🏃‍♀️
  • The ability to buy privileges rather than earning them via reputation. 💸
  • Profile Customisations; such as animated gif profile pictures, background images 🖼️
  • Lootboxes/Gacha, which have different tiers of "loots" from common to legendary. 🎁
    • Small bags of reptatution (as these are the currency in the Stack Overflow game) [Common] - [Ultra Rare] (higher rarity have more coins reputation) 💰
    • Vote and Flag packs [common] 🚩
    • Review Queue reruns [rare] 🏃
    • Get out of jail free cards: allows you to post a question/answer (cards are typed) when have reached your current limit (even when you are question/answer banned)[ultra Rare] 🥷
    • Profile Customisations [rare] - [legendary] 🏝️
    • Hats. Cause hats. Everyone loves hats. [common] - [legendary] 🎩
  • Online trading cards. Collect them all! 🎴

Lootboxes can also be bought with coins reputation as well, and earned by completing your daily/weekly quests such as:

  • Comment on 50 answers this week
  • Upvote 3 questions with a negative score today
  • Answer a question which already has a solution, and have your answer marked as the solution

And, of course, don't forget about the Season Pass, which lasts for the current quarter. Some Season Pass benefit ideas:

  • Double coins reputation from upvotes (+20)
  • Free downvotes
  • Vote and Flag limits are doubled
  • Each Quarter has a special rewards tracker where you can earn special one off items, such as special hats, animated profile icons, and backgrounds.
  • Can reveal the name of one downvoter a day on any of your posts, and the option to buy more.

OK, silliness done. In truth, I really don't see that we need to do anything at this point. Stack Overflow are trying ideas, and that's great. Yes some aren't working but that's not a "bad" thing in entirety as it helps Stack Overflow understand the expectations of the huge community it has. Trial and error is good.

According to a blog post from 2019 Stack Overflow has a lot of revenue coming in:

The company has been growing, too. Today we are profitable. We have almost 300 amazing employees worldwide and booked $70m in revenue last year. We have talent, advertising, and software products.

It is unlikely, in my opinion, that SO's revenue has dropped significantly in the last couple of years. In fact, if I am honest, due to the global pandemic I would have expected it to have gone up and traffic has been higher.

So what do we, as users need to do? Exactly what we have been the last few years; keep contributing as we have been. Curate the bad content, vote up the good. Make Stack Overflow a site full of great content that is helpful and useful to future users, and where they can easily identify what is really helpful. If you do have an idea, hit up Meta with a / tag and we'll talk about it.

And as for Stack Overflow, what do they do? They keep on doing what they are; working on new ideas, and asking for our feedback on when they do. Despite that some of our feedback can be pretty negative, the ones that get the most upvotes are constructive, and this helps drive the site(s) in a direction that hopefully works for both the company and the users.

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    A suggestion to add more emojis in the joke part, to better convey that it is a joke.
    – E_net4
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 11:25
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    The following would be money-spinners: 1) Pay to have your contributions be exempt from moderation/curation. 2) Pay to reveal downvoters' names.
    – Jeanne Dark
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 12:13
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    You forget the essential pay2win component: instant unban after question ban has been reached, downvote immunity for an hour, and for the big rollers, ban a user of your choice for a day/week/month/year with escalating cost (they can pay to unban, but then you can pay to ban again). That's where the big money is.
    – Erik A
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 12:14
  • @ErikA That's part of the Season Pass.
    – Thom A
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 12:21
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    Your lootboxes could also contain ownership of a random high-scoring answer.
    – Cerbrus
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 12:56
  • In my experience, SO is always used as the poster-child for gamification. If games have evolved into revenue-generating engines using these techniques then in order to keep its crown surely SO must follow suit?
    – Software Engineer
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 13:37
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    "SO is always used as the poster-child for gamification" Then people are painting Stack Overflow with the wrong colour, @SoftwareEngineer . Stack Overflow isn't a game...
    – Thom A
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 13:38
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    I hope my choice of emoticons is acceptable to you, @E_net4 .
    – Thom A
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 14:36
  • Stack overflow is a psychological experiment in what happens when people realize that they have no value and only their questions do. A lot of folks seem to get upset.
    – user4581301
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 15:13
  • @user4581301 you mean about what happens when people realize the true nature of capitalism? :)
    – Oleg Valter is with Ukraine
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 18:25
  • I hadn't noticed how close the above joke comment got to the other joke comment below. Clearly I need to work on my material delivery. Pacing was way off.
    – user4581301
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 18:37
  • Reputation is never given; it is earned by convincing other users that you know what you're talking about. Is that still true when we buy bags of it???
    – idk wut to put here
    Commented Sep 23, 2021 at 0:01
5

I am going to ignore discussing the suggestion made in the question and instead focus on:

So, how would you try to generate revenue if you were SO?

Here is the thing, I am not. Nor do I want to presume I know enough to throw ideas here.

The question is very broad because it is hypothetical without a good basis. First of all, we do not even have evidence Stack Exchange is struggling for money. Second, the theoretical "how to get profit" also depends on many factors we do not know. What the focus of the company is, what their expenses currently look like, what their strategy is, etc. We can come up with anything at all but I feel it would be highly presumptuous to expect that any suggestion would even be close to what SE Inc. even wants to do.

If Stack Exchange officially asked for ideas, then I would consider trying to come up with any. And/or entertain other people's. As of right now, we

  1. Do not know whether to crowdsource the idea generation for how to make the company profitable.
  2. Do not need to crowdsource the idea generation for how to make the company profitable.
  3. Do not have enough information for how to crowdsource the idea generation for how to make the company profitable.

Therefore, we do not have the means to have a productive discussion on this topic.

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    Then we need to revolt and seize the means of production. Band with our brothers, the Markup-Leninist's, and form a better world from the ashes of the old. You have nothing to lose except your toolchains.
    – user4581301
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 15:22
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    Sorry, Markup-Leninists were shot as traitors. LaTex-Marxists are currently in power.
    – Oleg Valter is with Ukraine
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 18:28

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