I wonder how much Quora paid for that fluff piece. The real question is: why is Quora not making money now? Quora has been going since 2009 with zero revenues, and has over 100 staff burning through investment money. If they could be making money already they would, and the lack of proper metrics is extremely suspicious.

It's highly likely that answers are not as monetizable as the company thinks. If they were, they'd be doing it already. I also think that founders that try to get rich off of the free labor of contributors have no future. I wrote an analysis of this company a while back, but it still stands: http://newslines.org/blog/why-quora-joined-y-combinator/

"That’s because Quora needs at least a few data points if it’s going to offer a good set of content to new users and keep them interested, instead of confused, as to what the purpose of the site is."

Oh, I think the "you must log in or else we'll hide the answers" establishes quite clearly what the purpose of the site is - and since that purpose is "monetize the ever-loving bejeebus out of people writing answers for free", that's why I close the tab when I hit a Quora result...

I am guessing the reason they aren't putting ads on Quora yet it would limit their ability to raise money. Uncertainty drives the theoretical value higher because while the average CPM on ads might be say $10, they can project because of their higher quality content that they will be able to charge $25 or $50 CPM or something like that. So, they can sell projections and vanity metrics instead of actual revenue to investors.

Also, not having ads means they are totally product focused, not focused on ad sales and driving up their ad rates. That helps them keep their team small so they don't burn through money hiring to build up and sell their own advertising system.

Last, not putting ads on their site insulates them from the ups and downs of the advertising market. If ad prices drop one quarter, their future projections have to change a lot because of the real numbers.

Long story short, I don't think if Quora put AdSense on their site that they would have been able to raise $161 million dollars.

Does Quora generate any revenue at all?

undefined