Everyone's always really curious about this, and as always the specifics are private information that I'm not going to share. The site's a business, sure, but also a passion. I've stuck with a minimal aesthetic and a focus on user experience and have kept the ad quality as high and unobtrusive as is humanly possible, whether the site was even profitable at any given time or not, because what mattered first was keeping the thing good, after all the bullshit that came before with the struggles of keeping the community intact and on functional hardware prior to my explicit ownership and reimagining/relaunch of the community independently in 2004 (thanks to ~$2000 in seed money generously donated without any strings attached by the tiny contingent of kind former members of the previous iteration that self-destructed at the time). With a little digging through interviews that touch upon the financial side you'll understand to what extent I'm a stubborn asshole about this thing and how little I ultimately care about personal financial security on my end, through the ups and the downs alike. I grew up in poverty, and the site does well now, and I have my fun as a result for the time being, but I'm okay with whatever at the end of the day. If times change or I screw up and it goes poof, it's just an exciting flip of the page to a new chapter, so I don't care much for the buyout offers, as long as I stay vaguely sane in this gig. It's probably a foregone conclusion, though, that sanity has long since passed by, but here I am.
The site is entirely free to use. I don't accept donations because I'd honestly just rather you donated to UNICEF or an equivalent and save some kids' lives, y'know? That'd make me feel better than taking your money, though as business models change and everyone starts to adblock the entire internet it may be begrudgingly necessary some day to branch out in order to keep the gears moving smoothly. Never know for sure. Therefore it's appreciated if you don't adblock, whether you click on ads that interest you or not, since adblocking flat out destroys the business model of free websites and forces them into inferior business models that no one likes, like shitty naggy donation drives, or insta-death pay models, or microtransaction hell. I like free and minimalist. I'm sure you do too.
Just enjoy the site.
