Quora will be soon releasing its IPO, the famous Q&A website valuation is $4 Billion, investing with such a big valuation requires some knowledge about the company. Here in this article, we will explain Quora’s business model and answer the question of how does Quora make money.
Initially, Quora doesn’t have its revenue model, it was totally dependent on angel investors. But Quora’s business strategy made them a favorite of investors, they were expecting future profits from Quora.
Until 2016, Quora doesn’t have any revenue model, they were totally dependent on funding. After 2016, they adopted an Ad and Subscription revenue model, in the first year they earned $20 Million.
At the time of its launch, Quora was valued at $86 million, however, in 2022 its valuation has increased 46x to $4 Billion.
You might be thinking about why its valuation increased 46x, what is their revenue model, and how does Quora make money.
Let’s find out in this article…
What is Quora? What is Quora?
Quora is a website on which many people can discuss relevant topics in the form of questions and answers. Quora has 400,000+ spaces and topics on which people communicate as a community.
Quora is very different from other social media platforms, as many people who answer on Quora are founders, CEOs, managers, or experts in their field.
Because of this approach, Quora can answer questions that even Google can’t answer.
Quora’s founder Adam, has also said that he wants Quora as a platform, where anyone can get an answer to what they are looking for, a timeless platform.
But as you know Quora wasn’t earning till 2016, after that only Quora adopted a revenue model. Till 2016, funding was their only source of income for them but now they have adopted a revenue model.
Let’s see how does Quora make money.
How Does Quora Make Money? How Does Quora Make Money?
Quora has three primary sources of income – advertising, subscription, and funding. Quora helps businesses run an ad campaign on their platform and charge money from users in the form of subscriptions who don’t want to see ads on their Quora page.
1. Advertising 1. Advertising
Quora has 300 million unique monthly visitors and on average Quora has 2.1 million visitors on its site every day. For comparison, apple.com has 2.76 million visitors per day.
Quora’s reach is also in many big markets of the world, like India, USA, UK, Canada & Australia. Around ~40% of the user are from India, and 20% are from the US.
This makes Quora one of the favorite platforms for advertisers to run their marketing campaigns. Plus, Quora runs contextual ads, which also increases the chance of users buying the service or product running on ads.
How does Quora make money from advertising –
- Quora runs marketing campaigns for advertisers on their page or questions, which has many views.
- One can start a marketing campaign on Quora for $25 or CPC for $0.01 per click.
- For running Ads on Quora you need a Quora business account.
- Quora also give a percentage of revenue from their ads to the Quora writers according to their views.
- Quora runs contextual ads, which help businesses to sell products to their target audience.
This is the business model in which very big companies like Google, Facebook, Instagram etc run.
2. Subscription 2. Subscription
Quora also offers a subscription to its users, in which a user can pay monthly or annual against some exclusive services. People usually subscribe to these subscriptions to get some exclusive benefits, which a normal user or a free user isn’t getting.
Currently, Quora offers two subscriptions –
- Quora Plus Subscription – $6.99/Month or $3.99/Month (Annual Plan)
- Quora Space Subscription – 40% of the revenue
Quora plus subscription is a premium subscription for Quora users who don’t want ads on their platform plus, they can also access premium content on Quora.
Quora charge $6.99/Month for giving such benefits, however, if you billed annually, you’ll be charged $3.99/Month, and the total cost will be $47.88 for a year.
Another subscription that Quora offers is a Quora space subscription. This is the subscription that is specially designed for Quora Space Owner. Any user can create a space on Quora, and charge its user for a subscription.
Quora space owners can put free and paid content both on their space.
But if you are offering paid subscriptions to your Quora Space Subscribers, and if you are generating revenue, you have to give 40% of that revenue to Quora. For example, if a Quora space owner is earning $5,000 as revenue, he will only get $3,000, the rest of $2,000 will be deducted by Quora.
This’s how does Quora make money from Quora space owners.
This business model is called the subscription model, on which companies like Netflix, and Amazon Prime run.
Related: How to Make Money from Quora?
3. Funding 3. Funding
Before 2016, Quora was entirely dependent on the Investor’s funds, as there was no revenue model for Quora. But after 2016 also Quora wasn’t able to generate good revenue due to various reasons.
That’s why it still Quora raises funds with funding rounds, recently Quora announced that it will soon become a public company, and it is ready to launch its IPO at a very high valuation of $4 billion.
Funding isn’t part of their revenue model, but funding will stick to the company unless they become completely profitable with its operation.
So these were the three ways of how does Quora make money
Quora’s History Quora’s History
Quora was founded in 2009 by Adam D’Angelo (CEO) and Charlie Cheever, its headquarters is in Mountain View, California. Quora first became public in 2010, initially, they weren’t getting many visitors but the site became popular in 2014.
After graduating from Harvard in 2003, Cheever (Co-founder of Quora) joined Amazon, and later in 2006, he was recruited by Facebook as an engineering manager.
At Facebook, Cheever met Adam D’ Angelo (Co-founder of Quora), In 2006, Adam was promoted in Facebook, as Facebook’s CTO.
Adam is bored working at Facebook, as he wasn’t much interested in the platform becoming bigger day by day. At that time, there were websites similar to future Quora like Yahoo Answers. But Adam saw a big problem in Yahoo Answers, there was a lot of spam on the platform, as Yahoo wasn’t verifying users.
Eventually, Adam departed from Facebook and hire Cheever for working in Quora. The duo started working on Quora in 2009, they both work passionately to create a knowledge base of genuine, high-quality answers.
In January 2010, Quora was available for testing to selected groups. As Adam and Cheever were both reputed personalities, many Silicon valley powerhouses contributed to the platform by providing high-quality answers.
Quora was featured in many big publications and it has created a lot of media buzz.
Soon after the three months of release, Quora got its first funding of $11 million at an $83 million valuation. Later in June 2010, Quora was available to the general public, which means now anyone can access the site.
Over the years, Quora was doing well, their engineers were adding new features almost every week. As a result, just after two years of its launch, its valuation has increased to $400 million.
But in 2014, the co-founder of Quora, Cheever stepped back from regular operations, and move to an advisory role.
After that, Investors were raising questions about the revenue of Quora or its revenue model. Therefore, In 2016, Quora first time adopted the Ad revenue model, and it was the first time, Ads were running on the platform.
In 2017, Quora got its unicorn status after raising $85 million at a valuation of $1.8 billion.
In the last few years, Quora has introduced many new features and has available its app and website for many languages. It recently achieved a remarkable record of 300 million visitors per month.
Later in 2021, Yahoo Answer got shut down, on the other hand, Quora will be soon releasing its IPO in 2022, however, the date isn’t confirmed.
Today, Quora’s valuation is $4 billion and it is employing 300+ people, Quora is operating fully remotely, and its employees are working across the globe.
Quora vs Google: Human vs AI Quora vs Google: Human vs AI
Quora and Google both are doing the same thing, they are giving answers to questions asked by users. Here, you might be thinking, why anyone will use Quora if Google is available to everyone and Google is so big then Quora.
But Quora isn’t Google, the key difference between both of them is Humans vs AI.
While Google ranks websites using an AI-powered algorithm, which uses many SEO factors to rank content.
But Quora has a different model.
On Quora, answers are ranked by upvotes and downvotes of humans, Quora is influenced by human behavior, while Google isn’t.
That’s why Quora users love searching on Quora instead of Google, this is the reason why investors are willing to invest in Quora.
Quora has another form of knowledge base, that isn’t available on other platforms.
Quora Revenue 2022 Quora Revenue 2022
Quora is a private company, that’s why they haven’t shared its revenues publicly. The last time they shared their revenue information was in 2018, which was $20 million. Since then, no newer figures have been shared.
According to Crunchbase, Quora has raised $226 million from its four rounds of funding. There are many notable investors who have invested in Quora –
- Benchmark
- Tiger Global Management
- Founders Fund
- SV Angel
- Matrix Partner and many others
Frequently Asked Question Frequently Asked Question
1. Should I Invest in Quora? 1. Should I Invest in Quora?
As Quora is yet to release its IPO, they haven’t made much of the information public. Last time, their revenue was public in 2018, and its revenue was $20 million. Their revenue doesn’t justify their valuation, however, their recent revenue is yet to release.
A company should be profitable enough for investing, if a business isn’t profitable, its valuation will soon decrease, and no business can entirely run on funding.
2. How to make money from Quora?
2. How to make money from Quora?
There are three ways a user can make money from Quora –
1. Quora partner program
2. Affiliate marketing on Quora
3. Quora space subscription program
Quora partner program: If you are a Quora writer, and you write actively on Quora, then you can get an invitation from Quora to join the partner program. If you joined this program, you can get paid for your work if it gets viral.
Affiliate marketing: You can do affiliate marketing on Quora, as Quora is a trusted website Google ranks it well. If you don’t have your own website you can use Quora to affiliate products or services.
Quora space subscription: You can create a space on Quora, where you can put the content yourself, and charge users to access that space. You can also put a free subscription or charge people for viewing your content.
Read more about how to make money on Quora (click here)
3. Is Quora Safe? 3. Is Quora Safe?
Quora is an open site, anyone can make an account on Quora, therefore you should not post any sensitive information on Quora.
Just like any other platform, information can be leaked on Quora also, that’s why you should only share the information with which you are comfortable.
Some feature of Quora which makes it a safe site –
1. You can answer the questions on Quora by being ‘anonymous’ without displaying your name.
2. It isn’t mandatory to put a profile picture on Quora.
3. You just need your email address to make a Quora account.
4. How did Quora become famous? 4. How did Quora become famous?
Quora isn’t much famous if compared to other social media sites. However, most of the visitors Quora gets are from India. Quora become famous in India, in 2014, it become popular among NEET, JEE Aspirants, IITians, and BITS Pilani students (Colleges & Competitive exams aspirants of India.)
Quora’s 40% of visitors are from India.
Final Thoughts Final Thoughts
Quora is a good company, with great vision but it has faced hard times making revenue. In the initial stage, Quora was totally dependent on funding, and later on, it adopted a revenue model. And their revenue model cannot justify so high a valuation.
The concept of the website is great, as there are many people who are looking for personalized answers.
Which search engines like Google cannot give, as their algorithms rank on website authority, not on person’s experience and quality of answers. Many people like reading first-hand experience rather than reading tips or methods.
In the future, Quora will be attracting more visitors as they have high-quality authors, businessmen, consultants, etc.
But for now, Quora needs to revise its revenue model to be a profitable company.
That’s it for this article, thanks for reading!
