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20after4HNSource author
Business & incomeExperience excerpt · English

I worked at deviantArt from 2009 to 2013

I worked at deviantArt from 2009 to 2013. It was my dream job. At the time deviantArt made money a few ways. In no particular order, because I don't know which were profitable or which represented a larger portion of revenue: - Subscriptions (users could pay for a few extra features and to disable ads on the site) - DeviantArt branded merch. - Prints and products with users' art printed on them - Sponsored Contests. These promoted movies or other media properties, or software of interest to artists. Often the prizes included Wacom tablets and Adobe Photoshop licenses. During my time there a significant problem we were dealing with was due to deviantArt's stance on adult content. Anything was allowed as long as it wasn't outright pornography. In practice that meant that nudes were allowed but sexual acts were not. This had consequences for deviantArt's revenue. It meant that we could not run ads from the "reputable" ad networks and were forced to deal with seedier outfits that often (e.g. constantly) included malware in the display ads, exposing users to all sorts of nasty stuff. …

Original discussionThe Downfall of DeviantArt237 source comments · at import
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neomHN

imo once the suicide girls and the suzi9mm stuff started to be "the thing" - and we allowed a bunch of people from that crew into GD, things started to change really quickly. Honestly, I hated it so much, it made me really upset. I have no issue with that style of art, but it really took over the narrative for a while, and that was silly, and I'm still surprised some 20+ years later it was allowed to happen.

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sphHN

> This had consequences for deviantArt's revenue. It meant that we could not run ads from the "reputable" ad networks Advertising: perhaps the best and most effective involuntary ally of the Puritan movement. It is a shame that the Internet that we have created depends pretty much solely on that form of revenue.

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scotty79HN

> It meant that we could not run ads from the "reputable" ad networks [...] It's funny how significant percent of Facebook ads I see are an outright scam, phishing etc. It's been like that for years.

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20after4HN

For what it's worth, I really think DeviantArt should have focused much more on the other revenue sources and abandoned display ads. I'm not sure how that would have turned out but I suspect it might have been good for the company. The sponsorships were far more aligned with the interests of deviantArt's users and I think it was a significant source of revenue that could have been expanded with the right focus and execution. I'm pretty sure that sponsorships amounted to $60k to $150k per deal which usually ran for 1 or 2 weeks with a sponsored art contest, judging and awarding prizes, it wasn't a lot of administrative work for deviantArt AFAIK.

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