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It seems like most startups aren't even thinking about running a long-term business...their main goal is to get bought out by bigger companies.

I saw a show about startups on msnbc the other day. They were all trying to get funding at some sort of demo day. When none of them got funding, many talked as if that was it it..they lost.


Yeah, like we should be listening to Amazon.

They won't allow non-pro merchants to collect sales tax and they charge 3% to collect taxes on pro-merchants.


"I dislike the whole anti-counterfeit programs because companies want you to spend $2000 for a leather bag with their name on it, but the bag is only really worth $20. They're not even complaining that you're not willing to pay for it (like pirating a movie), they're complaining because you're unwilling to spend a massively unreasonable amount on it."

This just isn't true. Many times, the $20 bag uses inferior materials and doesn't go through the quality checks of the bigger companies. It's also about brand name. Some brands are worth more than others.

"There's no reason to target the counterfeitters as they're not hurting your business model. They're selling to people who know they're getting ripped off, but Gucci and what not are selling it to rich idiots who don't know they're getting ripped off."

It does hurt their business model. There are many people selling counterfeits as the original. If the company does nothing about it, people will not only expect to get it at the cheaper price in the future, but will complain if the quality sucks or it falls apart after a few weeks of use, which will hurt the companies image.


You can make money with amazon affiliates, but it's such a small percentage of the sale. It's much better to come up with your own product or dropship something.

You take on more responsibility but you can also make more money.


not only that, but Amazon is pretty much the only company whose affiliate program cookie lasts a mere 24 hours. All other companies give you at least a month.


Wow, I hadn't done the affiliate thing with Amazon for a while and missed that change. That's a big deal and I bet it immediately cut the commissions people were getting by 10-20%.


I think the change was more like 50-60%. A lot of people shop on Amazon for other things, if you had a 30 day cookie like it used to be, you were more or less guaranteed a sale in that 30 days.


I did some analysis[1] on this for 2 merchants we send traffic to, admittedly it's not in exactly the same space the buying trends would probably be similar. The merchant with a longer history of data has 59% in the first 24 hours meaning you would be missing out on 41% of sales.

This is a trend I have noticed with affiliate programs, the closer a company comes to market saturation in a space the worse the terms get. It makes sense has had the blog post not provided links there is a good chance people will head over to amazon anyway.

[1]https://www.affclicks.com/blog/commission-percentage-and-coo...


In fairness, if they add stuff to their basket, the affiliate tag sticks with the item for 90 days, if I remember correctly. I certainly often add stuff to my basket and wait with the purchase for a few days or weeks, so it works for that use case.


I think this is a very important point which would invalidate a lot of the critics about affiliate links, in my opinion.

I was under the impression from years ago that the Amazon cookie was actually pretty long-lived and, for that reason, I always kind of think twice before clicking a link that I see is an affiliate link. (e.g. if I just want to check what book is linked, without thinking that the particular post "deserves" the affiliate money quite yet)


hmm, something happened to my post and there's a funny number next to it.

I suppose you would rather have bullets?


It was probably down-voted because it asserts the fallacy that bullets are some sort of acceptable substitute for pepper spray. We'd rather have neither.

Non-lethal weapons are a hotly debated topic in the area of civil liberties. When you start looking in to the effects of non-lethal weapons on police behavior [1], the root of the issue becomes more clear. The two decision paths stemming from the question of "Should I shoot this person, likely resulting in the end of their life?" are much more clearly deliniated than when the weapon is non-lethal.

1 - http://www.google.com/search?q=effects+of+non-lethal+weapons...


You are only telling one side of the story...just like all of the OWS propaganda.


I suppose you would rather have bullets?


Actually I'd rather have the police hand me $100 million. I think you'll agree, my false dichotomy is better.


Can people please stop posting this?

Yes, I see the passive-aggressive reviews from OWS supporters. Rather than trying to make a difference, we have people taking the lazy way out and writing this garbage.


I wouldn't want to find out.

If customs seizes your stuff, you could get in trouble with the law or lose money.


Dojo has already lost the battle.

I used it for awhile and it is a cool framework. However, Jquery has it beat in terms of documentation (code and usage) and community support (I can find pretty much any component I need with Jquery).


You should take another look at the link - its all about ROR and Sinatra, not Dojo Toolkit.


How does this invalidate my point?

The link title includes "Dojo" and I was stating my opinion. I see the Dojo fanbois have downvoted me.


The people who realize that this isn't Dojo, the JS framework, and is instead Dojo, the Ruby Deployment Tool... they're the ones who downvoted you.


well, it's not my fault.

It's the fault of the person that named a ruby development tool "Dojo" when it's clear there was already a javascript framework with the same name.

so..maybe they should be downvoting themselves? (like I have your responses)


An equally compelling argument could be made that it is the fault of whomever didn't bother to read the article.


I think that's the shittiest argument I've ever seen.

You didn't even open the link before just leaving a negative comment about it.

It takes a lot of work to write web apps, and when people say negative things about them, it hurts.


I would bet that you would have gotten a much different response if your comment indicated that you read the article at all, rather than constructing a post based entirely on your interpretation of the OP's (lame) title.


he doesn't mean Dojo as a framework


"Because FLOSS enables much of this software as a service (SaaS), then it becomes the root cause of the reduction in jobs."

Rather than hiring more developers to create the SaaS, a business now is able to just get free OSS and hire less developers (and less experienced developers).

How is this not putting developers out of a job?


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