A memo from Earlg

[MoshMasterD]

https://www.democraticunderground.com/101313656

EarlG
1:31 PM
A personal plea from the Admins
If you've been around DU for a while, you'll know that we've always tried to be respectful in the way we fundraise. We don't send out desperate emails begging for cash; we limit our fund drives to two one-week periods per year (and we try to make those two weeks fun); and you get something in exchange for your contribution -- a Star Membership with additional benefits. For this, we don't force you to pay a monthly fee which we gradually increase over time; we've always asked you to pay what you want, which can be as little as one dollar per year.

Thanks to the many generous DUers who purchase Star Memberships, this fundraising method, combined with standard web advertising, has served us just fine for two decades -- but recently, things have changed, and unfortunately not for the better. The fact is that advertising brings in quite a bit more revenue than Star Memberships -- it's something like an 80/20 split. And over the past couple of years, for macroeconomic reasons, ad rates (the amount that advertisers will pay to advertise on a website) started to fall -- and then fell, and fell.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the January 6 insurrection, the social media giants deemphasized political content (wisely, many would argue). Even though we've never made it a priority to have a big social media presence, these global trends still affected traffic to DU -- and revenue -- just as they've affected many other independent sites recently, and even mainstream newsrooms.

I think some people have the impression that the DU Admins are independently wealthy and that this is all just a bit of a lark for us, but the truth is that DU is our job -- it's literally what we do for a living. We work hard at it every day, and we are incredibly grateful for the full time work it has provided us with, which we in turn put back into the site to keep it running, and improving, for you.

But like most people, we pretty much live paycheck to paycheck. And the problem is that the recent collapse in ad rates means that I haven't received that paycheck in a couple of months, and if things take too long to improve, I won't be able to give Elad his paycheck soon either.

What does this mean for DU? Well, we still make enough money to keep the servers turned on, so DU isn’t going anywhere. That’s not a problem.

But if Elad and I have to find other work so we can pay our own bills, it does mean we won’t be able to continue development on DU, right as we’d got it to the point where we were done fixing things and ready to start taking feature requests. There wouldn't be any more Pics Of The Moment. And more worryingly, emergency breakdowns, or issues that need immediate attention, would take longer to resolve because we wouldn't be here to keep an eye on the site every day. If we can't reliably conduct regular maintenance and stay on top of bugs, it really could cause problems and service interruptions that we can't immediately start working to fix. We do not want things to be this way! But there are only so many hours in a day that we can work on DU, and if we can't afford to pay our bills, we'll have no choice.

And so right now, we really need your help. I want to be clear: We are hopeful that ad rates, and therefore DU's overall financial situation, will improve as the year goes on. The trend lines are pointing in the right direction. But we don't know how long it will take before things get back on track, and we don't want to have to leave DU in the lurch, especially when we've got a presidential election coming up.

As mentioned at the top, I think most of you have known us long enough to know that this isn't some Trump-style BS just to cash in. I wish it didn't have to be this way, but it is what it is. So if you value what we do, please consider kicking in to the fund drive. What we would really like to see is an increase in monthly subscriptions, because that would help to stabilize our budget. But any assistance you can give us would be greatly appreciated:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/star

Thanks for reading

EarlG, on behalf of Elad -- the DU Administrators

[67 Rover]

https://www.democraticunderground.com/101313656

Butt plug ad revenue not paying the bills?

[Old n Grumpy]

ad rates (the amount that advertisers will pay to advertise on a website) started to fall -- and then fell, and fell.

Well, what can you expect if the advertisers stop by and see the hate filled screed from your members. I’m surprised anyone would want to advertise there at all except maybe manufacturers of blowup sex dolls

[Ralph Wiggum]

Thanks to the many generous DUers who purchase Star Memberships, this fundraising method, combined with standard web advertising, has served us just fine for two decades -- but recently, things have changed, and unfortunately not for the better. The fact is that advertising brings in quite a bit more revenue than Star Memberships -- it's something like an 80/20 split. And over the past couple of years, for macroeconomic reasons, ad rates (the amount that advertisers will pay to advertise on a website) started to fall -- and then fell, and fell.

Bidenomics at work!!!

[CollectivismMustDie]

Dear (ignorant) members,

We want more money.

Thanks,

The admins.

[USA4ME]

Go woke, go broke.

Also, let's not forget what our mutual friend, franksolich, has pointed out many times over the years. DU was initially created so the Dem party could corral the kooks into one place so they could be controlled by the real movers and shakers. For this, the party paid David Allen handsomely and his sidekicks got a little recognition, too. But, if the site fails to serve it's intended purpose, for what use is it to the party? After over 20 years, the kooks that use that site are aging and dying off. It served it's purpose, but the new generation of kooks use different methods of spreading their ideology which is a combination of the worst of Marxism and the worst of Fascism. Even the Dems occasionally recognize when they're chasing bad ideas with good money.

.

[Texacon]

He’s lying. He’s an evil, greedy, business owner. Biden said so himself. Biden said there was no inflation it’s just the greedy business owners.

Plus, if you haven’t visited that site without an ad blocker you need to. It looks like the TV screen on Idiocrasy where 80% of the screen is ads. It’s crazy!

He’s just fleecing his sheep, to be pellucidly clear.

KC

[Old n Grumpy]

There’s so many ads over there there’s almost no room for the idiots to post their hate filled screens!

[SVPete]

There’s so many ads over there there’s almost no room for the idiots to post their hate filled screens!

Apparently purchasers of "Hearts" get DU ad-free. Maybe EarlG needs to raise the price of hearts so as to get more $$ from purchases and maybe price a few DU-folk out of buying "Hearts" so the ads get more DU-eyeballs.

[Ralph Wiggum]

Apparently purchasers of "Hearts" get DU ad-free. Maybe EarlG needs to raise the price of hearts so as to get more $$ from purchases and maybe price a few DU-folk out of buying "Hearts" so the ads get more DU-eyeballs.

Additionally, this "Valentine Heart" fundraiser is a great opportunity to get a gullible DUmmy to buy you them which also gets you access ad-free.

Liberals have no clue how to run a business nor how the economy works, so I have a lot of these for SquirrelG: