Ask HN: How does this AddThis.com make money?

[sam_in_nyc]

I don't get it... they offer a button that goes on a page so that users can share stuff easily. They claim to server 20b a month. It must cost a significant amount to run those servers.

How are they (and several competitors) possibly making money from this?

[tsetse-fly]

Is this some sort of ploy to get us to visit that site?

It's simple: if you're not selling anything, whether it's goods, services, or ads, then you're not making money. Not all sites on the Internet exist for profit.

[sam_in_nyc]

No, it's not a ploy to get you to visit a site that I'm not at all affiliated with. Rather, I included it in the hopes that people give it a look so that they can answer the question at hand: "how do they make money?"

There are actually three ways to make money. You can sell things, receive money for nothing (donations), or steal. I would have to agree with you that selling goods, services, or ads makes money. So, I wonder, what does AddThis.com sell, and to whom? Or are they just hemorrhaging money on the servers needed to serve (and track) 20b impressions a month?

[bemmu]

Seems difficult to make money with this, but here's a few ideas.

They could charge new link sharing sites for the privilege of being available in their widget, or for better placement.

They could start their own link sharing site / link aggregator based on the data they gather from the widgets, then of course also get prominent placement in the widget for the new site.

They could show a small ad in the widget.

[tdavis]

I don't think they do, unless they offer some premium plan I am unaware of. We use AddThis and honestly don't have much faith in them; it took over a week to reply to our e-mail informing them of a bug that was keeping us from logging into their analytics.