How does Discord make money

By: Arik Marmorstein, Spectroomz founder

Spectroomz lets you and your team hire an online researcher so you can take smart, research-based, decisions without losing focus on where you are really needed.

Discord is a social network for gamers that have committed to being ad-free (unlike other social networks’ revenue model which has always been advertisement). Its revenue model is currently based on a monthly subscription for extra-features, a commission from games sold by developers on their server (10% commission), merchandise (currently paused), and partnerships.

1 - Discord Nitro - it’s an enhanced Discord experience which gives you extra features like choosing your own tag, upload GIFs for animated avatars, better live stream and higher quality videos, a higher upload limit, and more. Discord charges $9.99 on a monthly bases, or $99 if you go annual.

2 -Sell Your Game - Discord enables game developers to distribute and sell their games on their Discord server. Developers need to pay a small fee to unlock the option on their server, and then Discord will charge 10% of any sale (unlike Apple and Google who charge 30%)

3 - Merchandise  - Discord had a merch store, which is now down while they “retune it”. You can see a Reddit discussion about that. 

4 - Investors - This isn’t really a business model, it’s more of how Discord stays alive in order to find a solid business model. Discord raised $279M from venture capital firms such as Index, Greylock, Benchmark, and more.

5 - Partnerships and Ecommerce - from browsing Discord’s employees on Linkedin, you can find several business development managers, which basically work to accomplish revenue-generating partnerships with other businesses.