Confused. Web server cost pennies. Writers, heck lots would do it for the press. Publishing a magazine? There are tens of thousands of millennials just in SF alone that have net worth in the millions, and would love to be involved. Did you cast the net?
This comment really undervalues the craft of "writing good things", by a lot. These writers, editors and staff deserve a good wage. Not to work just for "the press".
I'm on the side of 'confused' as well. With that much traffic, it shouldn't be hard to run a business with great revenues or massive passive profits.
But having visited this site for the first time, it looks like an old relic that's about 4 "generations" out of date. I am not enticed to click on anything.
They also clearly missed the boat on social media (10.3 million visitors and you have 3500 Facebook likes and 6000 Twitter followers?!), who knows what else was missed.
Does a site like this really need a large sales staff? As programmers, can't you program a better self-serve system and moderate it?
Content doesn't need to be that expensive. There are ways.
IMHO, this is the kind of site that a group of experienced web marketers could seriously turn around, keeping just a few excellent and aggressive young writers and editors on board.
this is the kind of site that a group of experienced web marketers could seriously turn around, keeping just a few excellent and aggressive young writers and editors on board.
You mean like The New Republic did? Sure they could probably have cut costs, changed their focus, become more mainstream (perhaps focused more on articles in list form) and remained profitable, but the end result wouldn't have been DDJ, but something else and just a shadow of its former self. Sometimes its best just quit while you still have a good thing going, rather than relentlessly running your brand into the ground, desperately chasing just one more dollar.