So far, if you can somehow convert the time spent on news.ycombinator.com into dollars, how profitable has visiting and/or contributing to this site has been for you?<p>Examples: I got a hired from a $100k job posted here. I found a technology which saved me weeks of work and thousands of dollars. I though I would need to buy this $2k software but this site showed me a cheaper alternative.<p>Things like that.
In the sense that I have become smarter and wiser from blog links and Ask/Show discussions, very valuable - in terms of $ I would est $10k in savings from not pursuing bad ideas (no market demand, etc).<p>As an aside, HNews is valuable in terms of time spent and money saved or earned. Whereas FB is a black hole and LinkedIn has some value, and twitter the most.
- Learned a lot about enterpreneurship, startups & hacking (would have otherwise taken me 3-4+ years)<p>- Started blogging because of HN<p>- Started and made money on MVPFor1k thanks to HN & it's members ($5-10k)<p>- Got some freelance work while I was in high-school<p>....<p>- Met a good friend a couple years ago on HN that later on became my first customer, and a powerful testimonial.<p>- Acquired some customers because of it ($10-20k value)<p>- Got into a seed incubator because of it ($20k+ value)
I got a couple of good sugestions for my project. Other than that its a social media to me. Why shoudl I try to value it in terms of money? I like ideas, talks about those ideas. Thats good enough for me.