Speaking as somebody who has been involved in tech sales for a long time, 'communicating' is not the main problem. You need a monetization model that channels users into paths that oblige them to pay for content. And it needs to work at scale.
$120 a year for a subscription might seem iniquitous to HN readers. From the business point of view you need over 1500 subscription to pay for a single dev working at non-large-city rate, e.g., in Richmond Virginia. That's just to run the website, not to generate content. It's a big hill to climb.
My estimate assumes a $150/year salary + benefits, $120 subscription, and 20% customer acquisition cost for each subscription.
My point was more about software engineers having trouble grasping effort/production costs involved in media outside of their immediate domain, despite having the power to dramatically affect revenue calculations in other domains.
This! I doubt whoever is running the website for the Richmond Times-Dispatch is making more than $75k/year. They're probably also maintaining sites for others papers in their group, and maybe even working on sites for local businesses too.
Pick your salary. With benefits and overhead it's not going to be far off even in Richmond assuming you can find the right person. Most big media outlets work in more expensive markets.
My point is that you have to make real money to support these businesses, which means figuring out a monetization strategy that results in 10s or even hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
$120 a year for a subscription might seem iniquitous to HN readers. From the business point of view you need over 1500 subscription to pay for a single dev working at non-large-city rate, e.g., in Richmond Virginia. That's just to run the website, not to generate content. It's a big hill to climb.
My estimate assumes a $150/year salary + benefits, $120 subscription, and 20% customer acquisition cost for each subscription.
150000 / (120 * (1 - .20))