Hello again Autostraddle Plus members! Last year I decided that as some of our most passionate patriots, you might enjoy a peek behind the curtain into the dark annals of numbers, charts, graphs and figures about how this little light of ours fared in 2015. I was right, you DID enjoy it! Now that 2016 is over and we are all broken people, it’s finally time to do that all over again. We’d like to politely request that you do not share any of these graphics outside of A+ and instead enjoy them only here on this page right now with us as a family! Okay? We brought a cheese plate and a bowl of pretzels.
Most Popular Content of 2016
Social Media 2016
Hahaha remember when we didn’t even bother to post about our posts on Facebook and we still got so much traffic? Those were the days.
Who Wrote What
Who has been working hard and who has been hardly working? I can’t tell you the answer to that last question, but I can tell you the answer to that first question, through this chart:
Money Money Money
Income & Expenses
This year, our income was up by 17%, but our expenses were up by 47% — mostly due to increased payroll and contractor expenses (including payroll taxes), which continue to rise in 2017. We survived anyhow ’cause we still had profit left over from 2015; stay tuned for how we’re gonna make it work this year! We’re hopeful about A+ income, which’s gone up 20% since last year. Merchandise income is down 21%, which might be because our new fulfillment center takes a 20% commission and also because it’s way easier to find cool queer apparel online now than it used to be — and we keep telling you where to find it! Camp income is up because we had two camps instead of one, but that profit margin will shrink this year as our Midwest site is both better/more accessible than our California site and about twice as expensive (and we’re not gonna charge twice as much, because that would be mean).
Merchandise
This year we continued growing and changing and bless the trendsetters amongst us who noticed that enamel pins were becoming a thing and got us right on top of that, Rose.
You People
Okay now it’s 2017 WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN TO US I hope we are all okay.
cannabis bacon
Was just coming here to express my appreciation for all the weed recipes that got outclicks.
I want to scissor with all of this sweet, sweet data.
Kate, please accept A+ Emoji Trophy since we don’t put A+ comments in the Comment Awards.
*standing ovation*
omg! AS readers are really fucking rich? i would have thought that the 25k or less section would be way bigger… @rich lesbians where u at in my life?
I mean it is A+ members so I would imagine those numbers are not proportionate to AS readers as a whole, presumably autostraddle readers making less than 25k have less discretionary income to sign up for A+. I too was surprised that almost half make over 50k, would love to know what kind of jobs y’all have
That’s what I thought too; indeed, part of my rationale for upping my A+ membership was that as a grad student at Princeton, my stipend is higher than those of grad students at many other institutions (plus I don’t spend much money on other discretionary things, since I hate shopping).
Keep in mind these are only stats for A+ members, so, folks who probably have a little more expendable income than readership as a whole! (I want to know if there are any people in the lowest income bracket paying for Gold memberships and kick in more of my money to send these people special perks for being that generous.)
Also, I feel like the statistic that 50% of A+ readers making under 50K is pretty depressing and wish that AS/A+ readers were rolling in it far more because we all deserve it. The older I get, the more I realize that 50K isn’t enough to pay for healthcare, quality food, savings, retirement.
There’s that research that shows that 75K (household income) is the sweet spot, where people making less than that tend to be unhappier and people making more than that are marginally happier but not as much as you’d expect. 75k is the income where, in the US, you’re not even rolling in it, you’re just making enough to plan for unexpected events and the future and have some fun, even though it seems like A Lot of Money. 75% of A+ members don’t make that much! So in closing, :( :( :(
yeah, what Lady H said!
can we please not refer to people making over $50k as “rich” or actually talk about how much money people make at all? i included that b/c i’m happy that so many A+ readers making under $25k are A+ members, because that is an extremely tight budget to live on.
like the recommended annual income to live comfortably in a major american city and put money away for retirement and savings is $120k. If I was the editor-in-chief of a Gawker media property, my starting salary would be $150k. BUT I’M HERE INSTEAD BECAUSE I LOVE YOU.
i hope that when y’all get older that you are making well over $50k! like most of my friends in their mid-thirties who don’t work here make between $60k-$100k a year, and it’s not like they’re bathing in money. depending on your life situation, family structure, and bills, that can be just enough.
Yeah, I feel weird because a few short years ago I was making like 20–30K (or less when I was unemployed) and now I make around 95K so it feels like I should have everything taken care of, but I’m still not quite there yet — I’m self-employed, so between business expenses and taxes, that can be anywhere from 35-50% of my profit, plus I don’t have employee benefits like healthcare, retirement matching, sick/vacation days and that is another pretty big percentage of where my profit goes. My lifestyle is not extravagant and I budget down to the last dollar every month!
I am grateful for my situation because I like what I do (I’m a graphic designer), and work has been steady for a couple years so I feel more stable than I ever have before. But I have a couple male friends doing similar who make more than me and they don’t feel bad about it, they don’t justify it like I have here, they just feel like they deserve it. And we do deserve it! I wouldn’t begrudge any of the writers here at AS making 100-200K because they work hard and add so much to so many people’s lives, I wish we could provide that to you all!
It bothers me that most of my queer friends work at jobs that pay so little; most of them are artists/PHD students/non-profit workers/service industry lifers/etc, and there’s this expectation that if you make more than 50k you’re probably not contributing to society because you sold out or that you’re basically in the 1% and no longer understand them… which is why they don’t know how much I make. (This is specific to my friend group and my own issue but I think applicable to a wider subset of queer people.)
I wish we did talk about how much money people make more, I thought 50k is around the median income
yeah that’s a valid wish
i think basically i’ve gotten to a point in my life where i’ve become like excessively conscious of these enormous disparities in lifestyle expectation amongst people in their 30s vs. 20s and in HUGE differences in life expenses whether or not you live in certain cities, double in some cases. so it feels in some ways like these numbers are meaningless — $25k in Grand Rapids, Michigan, will go as far as $60,830 if you live in Manhattan or $46,713 in Brooklyn. or if you’re supporting more than one person, have a two-income household, etc. also the cost of healthcare is ABSURD. I have a friend in NYC who pays $800/month for hers
Im sorry for passing judgement, it’s just a mind boggling amount of money to me and I got overexcited. also I come from an English perspective so wasn’t thinking about healthcare etc. Plus I’m a single student so have no idea it costs to be a ‘real grown up’ with commitments and dependents.
yeah no that makes sense! sorry if my response was harsh, i’m in a really special place emotionally right now. it looks like this is a conversation people want to have, so!
The cheapest place to live my co-worker could find in my city is $1050 per month…for 250 sq feet! Her bathroom is so tiny it doesn’t even have a sink ( she uses the one in the bedroom/kitchen/everything else room). So yes, context is huge. Kids, healthcare, education, transport, utilities, safe water too drink etc etc etc all make an incredible difference to your finances and ability to get by and/or thrive.
Some of us may have screwed statistics up by forgetting the questions were in US dollars, and vastly overstating their income…whoops.
re: “I want to know if there are any people in the lowest income bracket paying for Gold memberships and kick in more of my money to send these people special perks for being that generous”
9% of gold members make under 25k and 14% make between 25k-49k! THANK YOU GUYS
That’s astounding! I completely second that statement. I would love to support those freakin generous people.
Everyone here’s just so awesome, my little heart can’t take it.
Can any of this data be broken down by country? Cost of living probably varies quite a bit among the readership and I suspect that those of us who have access to basic public health care are the ones more capable of getting a gold membership on a lower income…
Australian reader here! I first signed up for A Plus when I was a full time student and only working 1 day a week and definitely the reason I could afford the cost was despite the high cost of living in Aus, univeristy loans are managed far more fairly (debt to government, only rise with price of CPI not interest rates, don’t start paying back until you’re earning 50k and your repayments are proportioned to your income) and relatively decent universal public healthcare.
living in a small town in Britain !
I’m in the 25k – 49k bracket but I have cheap rent, zero debt, and honestly I justified the price of the membership by realising it’s cheaper than the money I spend on whisky. So.
You have my undivided attention if you can expand on the research about $75,000 in household income and where that research came from.
For sure! It’s based on this study by a Nobel price winning economist and also a Princeton University Study, both of which are far more in depth than just “75K gets you happiness” but most of the articles focus on that juicy tidbit!
My comment has a bunch of links so it’s in moderation still, but in the meantime you can get the original study by googling “Princeton 75k happiness” (first result is a PDF of the study) and “angus deaton 75k” and a lot of related articles from those!
also! just for the record — AS readers, including A+ readers, skew VERY low income. it’s been a huge barrier to us getting advertisers that we don’t talk about very much b/c it felt tacky. but it feels sometimes when we look at other media kits that if you aren’t making at least $50k a year, you aren’t seen as having any discretionary income. we do our best to avoid giving this info to advertisers. but everybody’s generosity makes up for it, i think!
Riese, on the survey did it ask for individual or household income? I’m trying to remember how I answered. Thanks!
I think I remember it being household income but I might be misremembering…
Was the dead lesbian/100 coverage (and corresponding disappointing coverage from AfterEllen) really not one of the biggest reasons people signed up? It seemed like it at the time and that was when I first signed up to cobalt, which became gold after AE was shut down.
I just want to put it out there, since these numbers aren’t showing my favorite parts of the website: I LOVE the long form current event essays, personal essays, and all the book and comic recommendations. and news round ups. and maybe just everything?
I second this comment. Including the maybe just everything :)
Since the data don’t indicate it, I’m curious: how did you determine which were the top advice posts? Number of hits, number of comments, intensity with which commenters thanked the authors…? (I certainly remember appreciating a lot of the posts listed, even when I wasn’t in the same situation as the advice asker)
I hope it is intensity of thanks
traffic!
Thanks!
Vapid Fluff is super popular! You go, Vapid Fluff!
4 for you Vapid Fluff!
Yesss A+ membership is up 20%, that’s awesome!
A while ago I used the A+ priority contact box to let you know I might have some ideas to help you make money. I was told to email Sarah, (I did), but I didn’t get a response back. I just wanted to make sure you guys got it. I understand if the ideas aren’t usable, I JUST WANT TO HELP.
I want you to be rich.
ooh I love this.
a few surprising things for me:
1. that fewer people subscribe to NYT than hulu?? (like until hulu release the handmaiden’s tale what is the point?)
2. only 1% of income comes from donations. that’s super surprising to me!
3. I didn’t realize A camp was so expensive.
also this is making me more annoyed at everyone who gets angry when y’all use “lesbian” in headlines because clearly it’s what drives so much traffic to the site. (reason #2454 of why I’m so frustrated with a queer community that prioritizes questions of language over questions of money/power/material resources.)
THANK YOU EXACTLY SEE?!!!
also the nice thing about donations though is that there are no additional expenses for donations. like we made about the same amount this year from A-Camp 7.5 as we did from donations, because of the incredible expense of putting on A-camp 7.5
Reason #2 – YES! Unless people are new to AS, I feel like they should know now that AS is on their side and is using the term ‘lesbian’ to drive traffic, not to shut out readers. I get and respect that a lot of readers don’t identify as lesbians but the site needs eyeballs on it to survive and you’ve gotta do what you gotta do to get the eyeballs on it and these stats prove that the word lesbian brings the eyeballs. I think as long as AS keeps addressing said fact via an editors note, then what is the problem? There are a A LOT of shitty places far shitter than AS (and for the record I do not think of AS as even remotely shitty) who are 100% actively trying to erase your identity and AS is NOT one of those places.
Hello! Just a heads up that I have been here since July, I think? And I had no idea this was why. I also, as new bisexual type lady, do not mind at all. But I think it might be worth mentioning a little more often if people DO mind, as this is the first I’ve heard about why those terms are used.
I. x
Hey @inkspot, welcome! If you haven’t already, it might be both informative and entertaining to read both Autostraddle’s comment policy and About Us page. They’ll explain this issue in more detail, plus give some other good information about the AS community. Enjoy!
https://www.autostraddle.com/comment-policy/
https://www.autostraddle.com/about/
UGH. YES. It is the most annoying thing to read an interesting article and get excited about discussing it with people in the comments, only to see that the first 5 comments are all people arguing about why the word “lesbian” was used (or not used) in the title.
Have you guys thought at all of just putting a general disclaimer/link to the comment policy at the bottom of every relevant article explaining that you use certain words for search optimization reasons? I know people don’t read (see 172 dead lesbians post) but maybe it might save the editors the time and hassle of having to wade into every comment section to explain the same thing 50 billion times?
the actual worst is when people *know* that’s why the word is being used and acknowledge the fact and then still complain. like heLLO? it’s ok it’s fine let’s just not try to help the site thrive. good idea.
The thing is they can’t win ! if they use queer or wlw, people will still go into the comment section arguing “you can use LESBIAN you know it’s not a dirty word !!!”
You’d think people would be CONVINCED that this website is an equal opportunity kind of thing for labels regarding women loving women given the diversity of its editorial staff and pool of writers but no !
Just to add on to the use of lesbian in titles discussion. I can completely understand why people get offended if the word lesbian is used in the actual article when another word is clearly better (ex. referring to Rosie Spaughton a lesbian). But in the title? It’s AS!! As Zoe pointed out, Autostraddle very clearly doesn’t shut out anyone, as opposed to other websites. I KNOW Autostraddle is on my side, and I want to be on Autostraddle’s side and help them got lots of traffic so they can keep existing and also so that people know that this wonderful website exists!
*as a lesbian
In dream future where I am a rich person I wanna build a new wing of the library on the Autostraddle campus and name it after @carules and my friendship. Until then, thank you all for all your hard work! Love this place and all of you!!!!
omg YES and a nice garden outside the library with a dedicated flower crown maker and a dragon topiary. or maybe the garden is INSIDE because the library also has a conservatory wing? we are ready for the commune, riese
I think the garden should be in the center of the library, like the library has a big courtyard in the middle with plenty of nice-weather reading spots. ??
i’m mildly obsessed with buildings with courtyards in the center of them, so yes okay yes sold. though i still think conservatory wing would be fun.
Obviously it needs both!
‘your completely queer guide to horoscope hookups’ was the first autostraddle article i ever read. i saw it get shared on tumblr probably right after it was published, in 2013 when i was still figuring out that i was gay. i read like every damn thing on this website after that, especially everything remotely how-to-ish or about coming out. i mostly still read every damn thing published on this site. thanks for what y’all do. <3
statssss!!! and thank you all for your hard work!
ngl i feel so ridiculously proud that i wrote the third most articles last year. like, i’m literally beaming w pride
You should be, you’re an incredible author Mey <3
This is all fascinating, I love it, thanks for sharing!
I do a job that involves a lot of “the business of art” type stuff like this and this post makes that part of my brain very happy. Also, so, so interesting!
As a data nerd I am in nerd heaven with all of these figures and charts! Of course, no matter which way I look at it, the result is always the same – you people are awesome
The fact that a Clexa fanfiction got more outclicks than Kristen Stewart getting an awkward hug from or being seen kissing Soko in Paris is giving me life.
Why read gossip mags if you can have fanfiction?
Also, I’m feeling strangely validated by Carol’s Oscar Snub article ranking so high.
It’s making that seething, familiar anger bubble up again, but at least I’m not alone in shaking my fist at Hollywood.
And, yes, maybe we should be talking more about money.
Current sexual orientation: attracted to charts.
Thanks for all the lovely data. You guys are great!
It makes me sad that Yvonne and Rachel’s well-researched, insightful, timely and helpful politics and current events posts do not get more traffic/comments. I want you guys to know that you are one of my every. single. day. go-to places for (US) political news.
I will also say that, while yessssss I love the personal essays and interviews and other A+ stuff, the absolute BEST part about being an A+ member is stuff like THIS – getting to peak behind the curtain. It feels a little like being part of the team, being let into the inner circle. And I know you don’t want A+ to be this clique-y thing, but that’s definitely one of the big draws.
My favourite A+ feature is the podcast <3
Oh I absolutely love the podcast too!
I agree with 100% of what you said
Came back to add: I’m glad that Lila’s “the pace of queer time” got so much recognition (even if “only” on tumblr), it’s still today one of my favourite articles I’ve ever read.
I’m also coming back to say that i’ve had a big look at the Income situation again and Riese (and everyone else on the editorial staff) I’m so fucking proud of you for managing to stay afloat and create this incredible business model that means you don’t have to compromise on content or integrity. I hope your revenue is relatively stable from year to year (unless i become unemployed i don’t plan to stop paying for a gold membership, and even then I might just get the cobalt instead) and that you continue to thriiiiive <3.
And get crazy recognition from the general media for showing 'em !
i’ve re-read this article like…4 times now. which is officially the most I have ever cared about statistics and i wish i could muster this kind of enthusiasm for the stats parts of my degree.
Thanks to Riese and AS for the level of detailed financial transparency demonstrated here. I spend hours in my professional life puzzling over nonprofit’s annual reports and tax statements trying to decipher where they get their money from and what they spend it on. That information is rarely/never conveyed in the same amount of detail as what’s presented here.
The nerd in me is fascinated by all the data and thanks you muchly for it.
And an additional reason I love this place is the commitment to both the longer (and fact heavy) and informative, as well as personal pieces even though they seem to not get as much reward. I know they take so much time and energy (and often emotional energy) to put together and don’t receive the traffic or comments that other (and often lighter/fun) things do, but they really are one of the things I love most about AS.
So thank you. And thank you for the data and amount of transparency.
If Midwest camp is so much more expensive are you guys going to go back to Angelus Oaks?
do you like frozen bread or what
Carmen SanDiego only eats frozen sandwiches, it’s what gives her her edge
*snaps*
This reminded me that I meant to upgrade my membership from bronze to silver. Even though I don’t comment that much, I definitely appreciate having Autostraddle in my life! So much love!
Every time I get the email saying your “A+ subscription will renew next week” my mental response is always “GOOD!” Keep up the great work!
Did people answer the income question based on their salary/hourly rate or what they actually get to take home (minus taxes, insurance, etc.)? I forget how the question was phrased. Just wondering because there can be a big discrepancy between those two numbers based on a bunch of different things.