Just wondering how web sites like Straight Dope make money, if any…I don’t see any banners advertising links to Mortgage Companies (thankfully), nor do I see an address where you can send donations to Cecil (hope I haven’t opened a can of worms on that idea).
I know dotcoms were/are going belly up all over the place, but other than AOL and other Internet providers who charge you monthly for services, how are internet sites like these making money and which sites are making the most?
You mean you haven’t paid your messageboard dues yet?
The easy answer is, it probably doesn’t. It’s probably provided as a courtesy by the Chicago Reader, who probably assumes that the site encourages users to buy the newspapers that syndicate Cecil’s column.
Right…they want you to buy a copy of one of the free weeklies he’s in…
Seriously, I know that the Chicago Reader is free, and when I lived in LA, it was in the free weekly out there. So I was wondering how many newspapers is The Straight Dope in that you have to $$pay$$ for?
Speaking of which, you still owe me last month’s . . .
The Straight Dope is in these newspapers. I believe they are all freebie weeklies. Our revenue comes from those papers buying the column, and book and other merchandise sales. Needless to say, the message board is operated at a net loss to the Chicago Reader.
http://www.straightdope.com/otheroutlets/newspapers.html
https://securesite.chireader.com/cgi-bin/dopestore/buystuff.bat
Someone must make some money to pay Cecil the enormous salary he gets. On top of that, they then to pay the staff and I’m sure they are among the top paid journalists in the world.
[sub]::Message board dues in the mail::[/sub]
This belongs in ATMB, not GQ.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
Sigh.
The READER is a free newspaper, and makes money through selling advertising space. The READER pays Cecil for his weekly column, and makes some money from syndicating the column. However, it aint much. Mostly, it’s similar alternative papers (that usually means “free”) that carry the column. Sometimes, the READER gets a request from a major newspaper about carrying the column – that would be great, they can afford mucho bucks. But they get sent some past samples, such as “Why is fecal matter brown?” and then decide the perhaps don’t want to put it on the comic page of their family-oriented newspaper. Why they think that way, beats me.
The website is entirly a money-losing proposition at the moment. We don’t get anywhere near enough hits to attract paying advertisers. Staff is unpaid, we work for the glory and the honour, the free mug, a free calendar at Christmas, and the occasional kind word.
Keep up the good work, Dex, we appreciate it!
::Three cheers for Dex::
(I hope it’s OK to call you Dex…)