With over 100 million monthly visits, 9Gag is one of the most visited websites on the internet. Everyone seems to be on 9Gag this day.
However, 9Gag makes money through various means including advertising revenue from advertisers who pay for ad space on the site, paid memberships, merchandising sales, and donation drives. 9Gag is a profitable, fast-growing social media platform.
We’ll take a close look at its revenue streams and see where they come from.
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About 9GAG
9GAG is an online community with a social networking component and a mobile application that features popular funny memes and animated GIFs.
According to Similar Web, in June 2021, the site ranked #426 in the world in terms of its traffic. It had 113.26 million unique visits in June 2021.
Visitors spend an average of nine minutes per visit and view four and a half pages each time they come to our site. In June 2020, we had five hundred million visitors.
How Does 9GAG Make Money?
Its main business objective is to provide an online community where people can share funny pictures.
According to SimilarWeb, 88.71 percent of the web visits to 9GAG. com comes directly from the site itself. Search Engineers send only 4.81 percent of the visits to 9GAG.com. Social Media sends 5.83 percent of the visits.
The owners of 9gag sell the placement of advertisements within 9GAG’s user-generated content, including displaying advertisements on the site’s pages mixed in with viral video posts.
9GAG features video content on its own site (9gag.com) and on social media sites including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
As per its terms of service, under which 9GAG.com doesn’t disclose any earnings generated by ads displayed on the site, the company does not pay out the people who create videos for
It’s a privately held business. Earns about $1.2M per month from its ad network.
Make Money From Viral Content
According to an analysis by HM Social Media, 9GAG was one of the first social media sites to get popular in Asia.
9GAG is similar to Reddit and 4chan in that it has an emphasis on humorous content.
Most people who visit 9GAG.com fall into one of two categories: (1) teenagers/young adults; or (2) middle-aged men.
On a good day (which happens once every three years), over 11 million people visit 9gag.com, which equals over 40 billion visits per year. Multiply by 5, and you get 200 billion page views per year. This puts 9GAG.com at number 6 on Google’s list of 10 most popular humorous sites.
The viewer decides what they think about the article. They can vote positively or negatively. A popular article gets lots of views and likes. An unpopular one may get no votes at all. A lot of people read articles because they enjoy them. Some people just click through to see if there is any new information. Others come back to check out new posts. Some people share links to interesting articles. Some people comment on articles. Some people post videos. Some people create blogs. Some people
It has just a few people who review articles before they go live on its website and social networks.
The company acknowledges that there are sometimes instances where hateful or offensive comments slip through its filters. However, users are vigilant in flagging these kinds of posts, and human moderators can remove them very quickly before they cause any real harm.
Millions of people visit websites every day, creating an estimated revenue of up to $13K per day, generating an annual income of $9.8M.
9GAG doesn’t use any third parties like Google’s Adsense, which takes commissions from the ads placed. Instead, the website has its own proprietary native platforms to collect 100% of the revenue generated by ads.
Advertisers are willing to spend a lot of money for high-quality web traffic from 9GAG.com. Because the site keeps its content relatively clean, ads placed there have a big influence on their clickthrough rate (CTR).
For example, the company generates a significant amount of income through advertising on its Facebook page. The exact amount is unknown, but it is thought to be comparable to the site’s earnings.
Capital Invested
9GAG was started by Ray Chan and Brian YU in Hong Kong in 2008.
Craft Reports says that the company has raised $2.8 million dollars since its inception. Wikipedia agrees and said the amount raised in July 2012 was $2.8 Million or August 2012. Whatever date the money was actually raised, the company has been self-financed ever since.
As of July 2020, it was estimated that Google has 123 employees, an increase of five percent from the previous fiscal quarter. It operates out of three locations: one in Hong Kong, one in Mountain View, California, and another in New York City.
The first-ever funding for 9GAG was raised by 500 Startups, Box Group, First Rounds Capital, Freestyle Capital, and Greycroft.
Advertising on 9GAG
9GAG calls itself a global social media and online publishing company with an international audience of about 150 million people, mostly Generation Y and Generation Z.
Gen Y (Generation Y) was born between 1981 and 1996. There are approximately 72 million Gen Y people in the U.S.
Generation Z (Gen Z) is the generation of people who were born after 1995. There are currently approximately 90 million Gen Z kids in the United States alone.
According to Iconosqaure, 9GAG has been the sixth most popular brand on Instagram since June 2018. And according to Sharablee, 9GAG has had the highest engagement rate among all brands on Instagram.
With over 40 million active registered members and over 100 million followers across its various social media platforms, 9GAG represents approximately 2.2 billion social impressions per year.
The main appeal of the 9Gag app is that most of its content is generated by users themselves, creating a unique social media experience.
Advertisers can buy sponsored posts from influencers who have large followings. They can create their own branded content using influencer marketing. And they can get into contact directly with the younger audiences that traditional advertisers struggle to reach.
9GAG Competitors
There are several general internet ad platforms that compete with 9GAG for online advertising sales including Reddit, Feedly, Flipbook, and Digg. Direct competition includes sites that offer memes, images, and video clips such as imgflip.com, imgur.com, knowyourmeme.com, and ninecache.com.
A serious threat of censorship by the Chinese government
Some of the posts on 9gag are pretty risque. There is also a separate section on 9gag. com for those over eighteen years old that is not appropriate for work (not safe for work). Many things can be posted on 9gag including criticisms of the Chinese government.
The Chinese authorities block access to 9Gag content if you’re not using a VPN to get around their site blocking system. It’s against the law to use a VPN to get around the site blocking system in China.
The recent anti-democracy crackdown in Hong Kong, which saw the closing of the last remaining independent media outlet, has also put the Chinese social media giant Tencent (which owns 9GAG) at risk of being shut down.
There are photos on 9GAG that show Chinese President Xi Jinping looking so…well, we’ll just say they are unflattering
The non-Asian audience is larger than the Asian one.
According to Alexa, Germany is the leading country among non-Asian countries. The US ranks second. Denmark ranks third. France ranks fourth.
If the Chinese government takes down 9GAG, then even if the site’s founder and most of its staff aren’t caught in China, the site, mainly in English, will continue to thrive. According to Alexa, there are 3,523 sites linking to 9GAG.
The company has continued to operate on its mission to “Make life better.” It seems like this will always be popular.
Young adults share funny memes online because they’re experiencing common issues at the same time. These issues form the basis for many jokes.
There were talks in 2018 about creating a comedy TV show and building up the 9gag media empire. Currently, the company is testing out live chats that are still in beta. Users who register get access to the live chats, ranging from “I want to know everything” to random chats by age group.
Conclusion: How Does 9GAG Make Money?
9GAG makes its money from ads, donations, and selling merchandise on its online shop. It ensures that the site is easy to use and has lots of interesting memes and videos to keep visitors engaged for longer periods of time.
While 9GAG’s approach to monetizing content may seem questionable, its growth and success are undeniable. It already has over 42 million Facebook fans and over 16 million Twitter followers.
The reason why 9gag is so popular is that they have a great UI/UX and their unique subreddit style allows them to get a lot of traffic. They also have a ton of funny memes and images that make it easy to share things with friends.
