FanGraphs Business Update: July 2020
With baseball scheduled to return in a couple of weeks, I wanted to give everyone an update on how FanGraphs is doing business-wise. For those of you who are returning to the site for the first time since the season was postponed, a lot has happened since you last visited.
You can read all about what’s been going on here, here, and here, but the quick recap is this: When the season was postponed, our traffic decreased by over 70% and ad rates declined by as much as 45%, causing an 80% decrease in ad revenue, which is far and away our largest source of site revenue.
We asked you for help in sustaining the site and you’ve come through in overwhelming fashion over the past four months, giving us some breathing room to try to weather the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. We were also able to secure funding through the second round of the Paycheck Protection Program, which was another boon to our short-term viability. We are incredibly grateful to everyone who helped keep the site alive. We would not be here today without you.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t still need your support and assistance. We still have a long way to go.
In June, we continued to see an 80% decrease in ad revenue, and as we are still currently living through and seeing the effects of the pandemic, the ad-based business model we have relied on for over a decade is likely to be an insufficient source of revenue for the foreseeable future. Our traffic has rebounded some, and we hope it will continue to improve as Opening Day approaches, but we are still seeing around a 60% decrease in traffic and we don’t know what will happen if the pandemic eventually forces the cancellation of the season.
A few weeks after Opening Day was postponed, we had just over 10,000 Members. After our initial appeal for your help, that number grew to almost 14,000. At that time, we set a goal of 40,000 Members by April of 2021. Today we have just over 17,000, putting us 23,000 members short of our goal. To put that in perspective, we had 1.3 million unique users in April of 2019; 23,000 Members is just 1.8% that total.
FanGraphs is far from the only place in need. Quite frankly, our need seems embarrassingly trivial when compared to that of front-line medical workers and the Black Lives Matter movement. But if you are in a position to help, there are a number of ways to do so:
Become a Member
You can become a Member or an Ad-Free Member. You’ll see all the same great content and have access to all the tools. Ad-Free Members enjoy the site with faster loading times and no ads. It is the best way to experience FanGraphs.
Donate to FanGraphs
We have a simple donation form you can use to donate to FanGraphs. Please note that donations to FanGraphs are not tax-deductible. For the purposes of this year’s Membership goal, we will treat every $30 donated as one new Membership towards our goal.
Gift a Membership
You can send a coupon code for one year of FanGraphs Ad-Free Membership to anyone you like. The code never expires, and no credit card or other form of payment is required when the recipient signs up. Their Membership begins when they use the coupon code.
As always, thank you for your support and keep safe!
David Appelman is the creator of FanGraphs.
…..: mugs
Listen, I love this site… but the ‘mugs’ request has been going on for months now. Doesn’t seem like a hard fix. No, it would not solve the $ problem, but every bit helps.
Mug Costanza
We hit a little bit of a supplier snag with mugs, but we’re working on it and hope to get them available for pre-order soon.
would buy
face masks face masks face masks face masks
I feel like “We’re all gonna go dateless” would be super appropriate to have printed on a face mask
I was thinking of the standings for the Dee Gordons, Bartolo Colons, Adam Dunns, and Koji Ueharas.
But I’d also buy masks that just had the fangraphs logo on it. I’d buy a few of ’em.
I think of that post (and revisit it) quite often.
Scented with Pine tar please, or old leather…
I would buy any new merch.
I would like to trade your membership curve for the COVID case curve and a common cold virus to be named later.
Is Fangraphs advertising on other platforms? Just thinking that if memberships have plateaued and daily site visitors have dropped significantly, one can’t reasonably expect that much more revenue can be generated from the folks who are already members or currently visiting the site without membership.
I presume ad rates have plummeted on other sites too, so may be an opportunity to try and buy up some ads and get some new eyes to the site, especially as the season approaches. Just trying to be helpful. Already bought my membership and some merch.
We haven’t advertised FanGraphs really ever (or not for more than a decade). Though we did test out some Facebook ads about a year ago and found them to be quite expensive and probably not a profitable avenue when it comes to cost of acquisition.
It’s something we’d need to test out, but at the end of the day, it’s just math problem, and we can probably find out in relatively short order whether or not it’s viable.
I grabbed a membership for myself in March, I’d love to buy some merch though. Super sad I missed out on the hats.
Other things I’d be interested in: Beer glasses, beer koozies, baseballs with the fangraphs logo (maybe a stand too?), tank tops, posters. I’d rather buy Fangraphs merch than any particular team these days.
There’s still 2 hats left! I just bought one myself. 🙂
BEER GLASSES 100% behind this
I know creating and stocking new merchandise is no simple task, but seeing things like masks, mugs, beer glasses, shot glasses, stickers, miniature bats, baseballs, stretch-fit hats, pop sockets, phone cases, koozies, bags, and water bottles in the store would be great. I already have a membership and made a donation, but I’d be happy to buy some new merch.
It seems strange to throw a political position into a donation request. Maybe someone made the calculation that it would help more than hurt, I don’t know. Seems odd though, especially when there has been criticism of the site as putting a political slant on its content.
One throwaway sentence in the article was enough to have you scrambling to whine about a political slant. Lord, your kind are sensitive.
“Your kind”?
Acknowledging that there is suffering beyond this isn’t a competitive threat or taking sides…
Ummm… speaking as one who has been critical, there’s not a single political position in the post. Feel free to fire your arrows where you choose, but criticism that misses the mark risks weakening the value of criticism overall.
“Quite frankly, our need seems embarrassingly trivial when compared to that of front-line medical workers and the Black Lives Matter movement”
I take no personal position on that statement, other than to point out that is a very political statement in many, many circles right now. It’s one you likely agree with, and I don’t have a problem with the statement itself, but that you claim it’s not political. It is. BLM is an absolute dividing line right now and for you to claim it’s not is kinda embarrassing.
I’m not embarrassed by it. It’s not political to believe that Black Lives Matter. I can believe that, and believe wholly in the spirit of the related movement, without subscribing to the orthodoxy of the movement in total.
The orthodoxy is political. The sentiment and underlying belief is, in my opinion, human rights issue rather than a political issue.
But it’s not embarrassing to me in any way to shout as loud as I can that the concept that Black Lives Matter, in and of itself, is not political. Others (including leaders of the movement itself, and people opposed to their goals) have politicized it, but the underlying statement and concept itself is not political in any shape or form.
Believing that black lives matter and being supportive of the “movement” that calls itself the proper name Black Lives Matter are two separate things.
Why is this concept so hard to grasp for some?
I had the same thought. I mean, I don’t care about the politics of a sports site (unless it compromises the coverage), but occasionally I catch the news, so I’m not sure political tolerance is particularly popular right now.
Snowflake
I think it is fairly obvious choosing to explicitly mention front line medical workers as opposed to including all first responders (which obviously includes Police) is taking a political position. Or are you that obtuse? I don’t know why everyone is jumping on Cliff…he didn’t say it was good or bad. He made the reasonable observation that in today’s current political environment it is kind of odd to take a political stance in a post where you are asking for donations. I don’t think it was necessary for everyone to start lobbing insults at him.
Are police facing more risks because of coronavirus or anything else? I’ve not heard that they are (in any empirical way). Perhaps factory and grocery workers should have been included. They’re facing more risks these days. The ratio of how much public blessings police get to how dangerous the job actually is appear underwater to me.
You’re referring to mixing business with politics, I think. It’s not smart unless you put principle above money, and businesses don’t do much of that. Businesses exist to make money, usually, and nothing interferes with that. And those that dabble (see Goya as the latest example) can expect flak Rotoworld invites flak by saying what they did about BLM and equating their situation with emergency workers. Not too much flak from THIS site’s customers, but some just the same.
I haven’t seen much politics here, but then again, I’m just a casual visitor. However, I just finished Baseball Prospectus 2020, and the political commentary (all from one side of the aisle) was overwhelming, and off putting.
At the end of the day baseball is entertainment. People take part in entertainment to get away from the troubles of the world. If entertainment wants to get politically involved, that’s fine – just understand that people have a lot of other choices for entertainment. That doesn’t mean people don’t care about a given cause or perspective, mind you.
I’m glad the site is open access but if even 5% of this site was stuck behind a paywall I would have become a member years ago.
I guess, but I don’t think I would have stuck with it long enough to become a member.
The ideal is having a relatively high meter, which would probably stick about 25% of the stuff you would read behind the paywall. Enough to keep you coming back and clicking and make it part of your routine, but when you really want it near the end of the month it is juuuuust out of reach.
The whole idea of “free” content, whether it be journalism, music, or baseball articles, has been a pernicious one, imo.
We feel like we’re winning because hey, free stuff, but in reality, it has destroyed tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of jobs, which in turn means those folks are buying less of whatever goods or services you or your employer provide, and so on. We came for the free stuff and got under/unemployment instead.
It’s crazy that we expect the livelihoods of everyone in the affected industries to be supported by advertising alone (i.e. people buying stuff from someone else). Think about how crazy that is – at some point, someone needs to actually pay for something or else nobody gets paid. Except that pie is shrinking as well due to the aforementioned impacts of under/unemployment.
All the wealth goes to Google, Amazon, private equity, and whoever else is at the top of the food chain. Et voila, wealth inequality.
I suppose this is my roundabout way of saying shame on us for a 1.8% subscription rate.
Standard Oil was forcibly disbanded when it was found monopolistic, wealth inequality was high, and owners were richer than ever before. Perhaps Google et al. are next in line, once the data industry is finally recognized as one.
Are there any retired ballplayers/FO folks in the FG community? Would they be willing to do an online fundraiser for FG? Drum up support for memberships, sell of memorabilia, i dunno…I don’t think “mugs” is gonna make up 50k viewers/day
Considering how FG has almost been a feeder for MLB front offices (and MLB itself in some cases) it would be nice to see a donation or two coming from the league or teams.
I won’t hold my breath though.
Jeff Passan bought 20 memberships. At least someone on the inside cares. But yeah, it would be a nice gesture from an MLB team/MLB itself to do something like that. But we all know they’re “struggling”
This is even more hilarious when you remember how the league has treated the minor leagues over the past year.
Dig the honesty!
Insert image of Joe West throwing out covid!
Have you considered becoming a 501c3? I love what you do, but i’m not really down with donating to for-profit companies.
I understand that perspective, but consider it paying for VERY high quality content.
You’re not donating, you’re paying for content
It is more akin to a patreon than a typical donation or paying for content.
Paying for content that is available for free… That is the same thing as donating for charity.
There is literally a “Donate to Fangraphs” hyperlink in the article. You can see that I’m a member so obviously I am fine with paying for content.
I actually have at times considered making FanGraphs a not for profit. FanGraphs essentially operates that way with zero margins for the entirety of the company, and has often times operated at a loss.
I don’t know if it would make an actual difference perception wise and if we did decide to get funding at some point, it would probably cut off that option entirely.
It actually wouldn’t, you could have fangraphs the parent company, a 501c3, own a product and spin that product off as an LLC which you can get investment in. This isn’t that uncommon in the healthcare world (where I work).
I joined. Fingers crossed.
I’m not here to help or contribute but I would like to see a whole bunch of bold predictions pop up soon. Thanks!
Signed “baseball cards” featuring the writers, maybe? I would definitely buy those.
Ah well, off to buy a sub for a friend. That works also.
damn…wish I could afford a submarine too
Why not just make all stats pre-2000 or something for members only? You’ll make up that gap in no time.
Right cause bref doesn’t exist.
I don’t think the average Fangraphs reader is spending too much time looking at stats from 20+ years ago
Speak for yourself.
To all those complaining about no mugs or facemasks…Dave does not strike me the sort to litigate if you just have them made and sell them with the profits going to fangraphs. Step up or shut up
Why do you require auto renewal? Seems like an unnecessary step if you are trying to attract new business. Thanks.
You can immediately untick a box to disable the auto-renew feature after subscribing. It takes literally 3 seconds.
You can buy a gift membership for yourself, those do not auto-renew. You can also just turn off auto-renew pretty easily.
Also, on the occasion that you forget, we’re happy to issue refunds and have done so in all circumstances where someone has forgotten, or had mistakenly had their subscription renewed.
We also send out an e-mail that your subscription is going to renew.
I think we have a lot of options for those who are only interested in a one year purchase, and of course we hope that our members find the site valuable enough to keep coming back year after year.
Also with auto-renew, there’s some sense of what our membership revenue is going to be the next year given a normal renewal rate. I don’t doubt that people will renew, but sometimes people forget to renew even though they wanted to. I do think auto-renew potentially helped us stay in business this year.
We have been extremely light on membership calls from a post perspective in the past 5 years since we’ve launched FanGraphs Membership. I actually count 3 posts I’ve written from 2015 – COVID times. I think the auto-renew has helped keep that low.
It’s hard to know for sure, maybe we’re making a mistake here, but I’m trying to be as transparent and fair as possible.
Great post – got me to sign up for a membership
I’ve been a member for years but don’t often “sign in” when using different phones, computers, etc. so I may look like just one member but count as 4 or 5 unique users.
It’s certainly possible the unique number is overstated. Google analytics is a bit of an industry standard, but counting actual uniques can be difficult.
Not sure I would’ve mentioned BLM with healthcare workers.
yeah, one is a profession that people voluntarily do, and the other is a race of people that has been systematically oppressed for centuries in this country. no comparison really!
I thought BLM was a group, not a race? I’m so confused. You wouldn’t be acting hyperbolic, would you?
I know traffic is down due to the delayed/short season, but I wish Fangraphs took a more innovative approach to keep readers and members engaged. There are new sites and things to read popping up every minute and those other places are putting out some really good content. I want to see this site survive and for the record I am an ad free member here.
What do you suggest?
Something other than maintaining the status quo in terms of site layout and content and repeated asks for member support. The pace of new content slowed dramatically and it seemed like the last few months were used as an excuse to pause content rather than an opportunity to use the extended off-season to get to some deeper things there just wasn’t time for in the past because of the new baseball games being played.
Sites like the Athletic and PitcherList are pumping content and growing. Brand new baseball sites are literally popping up weekly, and the Twitter baseball community has been as active as ever. The demand for content is there, and we really don’t need “new” baseball to continue down the path of learning and discovery that Fangraphs is known for. Alex Chamberlain and Ben Clemens, for example, have added some great content but with an extended off-season and no other plans, I was hoping for a lot more. Player profiles for 2020 didn’t even get finished/announced.
The site needs a makeover, integration with Statcast, and a clear utility to the reader. Currently it’s a bit of a hodgepodge of article themes, a projection/win probability tool, a depth chart source with RosterResource, a prospect site, Ottoneu server, leaderboard, and advanced statistics library (which is now fairly outdated).
Thanks for this comment. It’s always good to know when we’re not hitting the mark and this is definitely a well thought out critique. I sincerely appreciate it.
The player profiles I will admit we had issues with and the roll out was not ideal. We screwed up there and are re-evaluating if they are something worth pursuing next year and their overall usefulness and if there’s ways we can make things more useful going forward.
We’ve added bunch of things this off-season, including launching KBO stats and coverage, adding Roster Resource features, FanGraphs Prep, live streaming content, a new row aggregation feature on the stats pages, and right before the season started, a complete overhaul of our stats pages to make things mobile friendly. We covered COVID rather extensively, and did a lot of work behind the scenes from an infrastructure standpoint to prepare for the season and the future.
Last year between April and June we published 507 posts on the FanGraphs side and this year we published 497, so the amount of content has been comparable. However, on the RotoGraphs side, where admittedly we made bigger cuts, we went from 516 posts to 161. This was obviously noticeable and something we hope to remedy going forward.
Admittedly, for the past few months a lot of the focus has been on being a viable company, and as part of that we let the majority of our freelancers go, so content was bound to be down, though I think the amount it was down on the RotoGraphs side was not ideal.
Given the circumstances we found ourselves in, I think we accomplished a lot in the past four months, and it was a highly unusual situation we all found ourselves in both from a work and personal perspective, but your point is definitely taken and we will keep trying to do better.
Thanks for listening and the response, sir! I promise all of my comments are coming from a good place and were definitely based more on perception than facts. I do mostly come to the site for RotoGraphs content, so that explains my perception of the content flow. Some of the other things you mentioned as improvements and added content aren’t really tools/coverage I use or follow, so again, this is just my individual perception.
Thank you again for the transparency and I very much hope things continue to get better for you and your team from here on out!
I’m 50/50 in terms of coming for Rotographs. I just figured Rotographs was the half that didn’t need any live baseball for content, it seems like that should have been equal to/greater than previous volume without stretching for content. I personally am not a fan of the video game coverage, I find it insulting and it was one of the big reasons why I put my Auto-renew on hold. The other big reason was the death of Rotographs, which has recently started to come back to life a little bit still has loads of room to grow.
That said, clearly I hate the streaming and OOTP coverage (unless OOTP was paying for the coverage – then I could understand – still wouldn’t read or click, but I would get it). But I’m just one person, and while I don’t imagine any paying member was thrilled about paying for people to play video games, perhaps a survey about how the readership feels about the new content would be enlightening.
Edited for a typo, on my iPad and messed up a sentence…
For the record, I love the player profiles. A great way to get a quick snapshot of a player. I imagine they are a lot of work though for maybe not the biggest return or anything, but I do use them a lot.
Have you considered selling shares/equity? I recognize that’s a short-term fix, but I bet quite a few members would be open to it (along with the other good ideas suggested here). Another idea is allowing people to pre-buy a few years of membership as a way to give you cash and reduce attrition risk in out years.
I would do this.
Looks like the membership codes never expire, so you could buy a few and keep the codes in yuor gmail.
Does clicking on ads generate revenue? If so, that seems like another simple request that could be made. This is the one site where I have my ad-blocker disabled and I would be happy to get in the habit of clicking on some ads every time I visit.
This is explicitly against Google’s ToS and could quickly wipe out all of FG’s ad revenues. Please don’t fraudulently click ads.
It’s thoughtful of you to think of doing this, but clicking on ads doesn’t actually help us, and as Travis L stated, it could be construed as click fraud (though not in a traditional sense), since it’s not we as a company have organised.
Disabling ad blocker on FanGraphs is very much appreciated and we have done a lot in the past year to rid the site of potentially harmful ads, (I have not received a single complaint in the past 6 months), so while it may not be as pleasant an experience as an Ad Free Membership, it should be a lot better than it was.
Crazy idea here: What about producing (more) video content? With $3 to $5 of income per 1,000 video views the going rate for YouTube, this would seem like another way to monetize the writers’ insights and analysis. The production values needn’t be that high; just put Eric and Jay on Zoom, for example, and upload that. Maybe replace the chats with video?
Love the site. Got a membership. Would buy more merchandise.
Like he said. Not a fan of donations but I sure would love to support with mechandise
I believe Fangraphs’ struggles are more related to the prevalence of left wing politics at the expense of the objective analysis of politically-neutral baseball than to the COVID pandemic.
I cancelled my paid membership after many years as a supporter. I will use the free content, but I can’t see giving money to a website run by people who seem to hate people with conservative political beliefs.
Not only are the politics so sharply left wing, but the comments section is filled with so much hate toward those of us who voice non-conforming opinions.
When Dave Cameron left, Fangraphs began a slide toward its inevitable ruin. As much as I hope things change, part of me hopes Fangraphs never recovers. I think there will still be a market for the content Fangraphs used to provide. But I don’t see this website lasting long enough to recapture that market.
Who knows? Maybe I am wrong. But websites that are thriving don’t need to beg for members to donate more and more money or buy more and more trinkets.
You’re going to get downvoted to oblivion, but you’re right. There seems to be some sort of political reference in almost every article on this site now when there doesn’t need to be
he’s at +12. Just when we think we have Fangraphs readers figured out, they prove us wrong!
I want Fangraphs to survive and thrive. I love Fangraphs. Big time love. It is the best baseball analysis in the world, with brilliant minds who think and speak and write baseball the way my brain follows and loves and lives and breathes my favorite sport.
There appears to be, however, a complete lack of ideological diversity among the writers and Editor at the present time. This is especially true with respect to capitalism as an economic and political system, even if discussions don’t directly veer into pure politics itself.
I find it untoward when media outlets show contempt and harbour ill-will towards capitalism at every turn, and then ask me to spend my own hard earned dollars to support their disdain for the very economic system that made it possible for me to spend my money as I choose in the first place, in support of free media unencumbered from state influence as in few other countries in the world. The irony of such appeals for my dollars is not lost on me, ever. Apparently you want my subscription dollars, but not at the expense of asking your writers and Editor to display open-mindedness and an understanding of the fact that their views, which they swing like sledgehammers, are often held by only half of your potential readership.
That is, of course, your prerogative, just as it is mine to respectfully decline to provide financial support.
I post this not to be rude, or “trolling,” but because my momma raised me to speak my mind and try to do so constructively. That’s the foundation of coming to better understandings, but only for those who actually desire to do so.
the “cancel culture” is working overtime right now, meaning no matter how respectively one dissents with them, they are still going to attack. Your momma was right (aren’t they always?)
People in this comment section need to come to terms with a hard truth:
Merch is not going to keep Fangraphs alive.
There are costs associated with designing, producing, and shipping merch. The margins, in general, are not great. It could certainly be part of the solution (I don’t know anything specific about Fangraphs’ situation in this regard) but it’s not as simple as “Make mugs and the site will be fine.”
There are plenty of direct to consumer sites that let you design stuff that is produced as it’s ordered. It’s at a higher cost to the consumer than just ordering and shipping the inventory yourself, but it’s possible.
We are actually looking for a new merchandise provider, possibly with a direct to consumer option. We’ve typically gone with Custom Ink, but the previous pre-order with nearly 500 items to ship wasn’t the most ideal, and it’s true our margins aren’t that great.
We are definitely interested in making our merchandise more readily available, so we’re working on it.
I’ve been a member for years, but right now the content feels lacking. I guarantee there are thousands of people looking for fantasy insights on how to approach this crazy season and yet you’re still posting articles about video games and historic players.
Step up your fantasy content during this season and you’ll gain a lot of new site visitors and members from SEO alone.
As I stated in a comment above, it’s true our RotoGraphs content is down considerably, mainly due to the cuts in staffing we were forced to make. This is something we hope to remedy.
With Fangraphs facing a pitcher who keeps throwing junk that it can’t square up, thanks for fouling off as many as pitches as possible until there’s one to hit. Let’s hope the MLB restart is a sign of balls-in-play ahead, followed by a boon for your business. Fangraphs is a home site for many of us, so thanks for the perseverance. And I think the content has been as good as possible without live baseball. Thanks for the creativity — I’m sure the staff/editor meetings have been interesting.
I don’t know if you’ve ever tried this, but you can potentially get a lot more ad revenue if you sell ads directly rather than use a third party ad server. I have run a web site supported by both ads and memberships since the 90’s and the direct ad sales model has worked well for us.
You need to think of who your most targeted advertisers are, and it is not always obvious from the start…it is a bit of a heuristic process. I’d assume that that vendors of team merchandise/athletic apparel & tickets are the first choices, but there’s also gambling and gaming companies, vendors of statistical software packages, travel & hospitality tied to the geographic locations that you can determine from your users’ interests.
I guess you don’t have the time or desire to be the head salesperson, but we’ve had success with a low risk sales model of very low salaries (like minimum wage) and very high commissions (like 50%). Don’t just take anyone off the street since they are representing your company, and there needs to be mutual trust and integrity to work in this commission structure. Given the marginal cost of placing ads is almost nothing, you can experiment with the right commissions.
Good idea and I agree, though I suspect they will do nothing. Just look above, tons of great ideas that can help, but likely none will get done.
Direct ad sales.
Coffee mugs. With a great suggestion to use a direct to consumer site so they don’t invest any working capital into inventory, they literally monetize immediately. This won’t cost money, only make money.
Changing the auto-renew. Even if 1/3 of the people that upvoted it were to subscribe, that would pay for the cost of the programming fix five times over, and lead to more subscribers in the future.
Paying for advertising to drive readership.
New content said in several different ways. FG is having sites like MLBTR, The Athletic, Razzball, Pitchers List and even mom and pop sites I don’t particularly like I.e. Rotoprofessor run circles around them in releasing content. The lack of the season isn’t an excuse, it was an opportunity.
Pump up Rotographs for the fantasy season.
Stop with the politics, it divides. No politics, no politics, no politics.
Good pointer about how they are likely overstating their unique readers, potentially significantly so.
I only hope that someone is listening to some of the community feedback. And doesn’t just stick with the status quo, go radio silent for 90 days then come back up for air to ask for money without makes any changes.
FanGraphs over the years has done its best to add reader suggestions into the site. Many of our features are reader suggestions. I have read every single post on this thread and every other membership related thread several times.
We’ve added a bunch of things based on those suggestions including making merchandise more available, adding a donation option, and a gift membership option.
RotoGraphs quantity of content is something that I’m now more cognizant of, because of this thread, needs to be addressed and quickly.
Keep in mind that FanGraphs is a very small company. We only have 9 full time employees and a handful of freelancers, because of the cuts we had to make to even be able to pay the next months payroll. We have to pick and choose what we think will be most effective because we can’t afford do everything.
None of us at FanGraphs have been sitting around doing nothing and only asking for money during the prolonged off-season. We’ve been writing and coding to try and make FanGraphs better and viable as a company going forward.
Four of our 687 posts since April have been about becoming a FanGraphs member. Outside of our membership popups we have asked for support a total of 7 times as posts in our entire history. I’ve put the past 15 years of my life into FanGraphs and I don’t want to see it go away and we’ve made real progress these past four months by gaining over 7000 members who feel the same way along with the previous 10k members. At some point we may hit a wall, but it turns out that most people won’t support a free site unless they’re asked and have a reason to do so.
I think we’ve had a reason to support us for a long time, but I’ve been very shy about asking. That’s not the case anymore because we don’t have that luxury.
Thanks for the replies and very happy to hear about you reevaluating Rotographs based on the feedback.
Regarding ad sales, maybe you can look at a contract salesperson that only makes a commission based on new ad sales. Maybe you can have a commission only situation for a newsletter – you manage it and send it, but someone writes the content, sells the ad space and makes 25% of the revenue.
Maybe you can have a readermanage the direct to consumer merch idea and they only make commission on the new sales. Maybe you can have multiple readers, one per product category. Maybe a reader out there owns a shirt business and would be happy to extend Net-60 terms on apparel. Maybe someone out there would fund everything up front and participate in a profit share with you. I know I would and could do something like that for PPE. FG back to work kits, FG logo and contact info on the label, some masks, sanitizer, wipes and gloves inside, I front the money on Net 60 terms and you make $5 per. Not offering for any self serving reason, just an example to illustrate.
Maybe you can reach out to the readership and ask for donations in the form of sweat equity instead of money. There has to be a ton of salespeople who read, some of which already have existing relationships with obvious advertising partners. Maybe those who can avoid a conflict of interest can make a connection immediately. Maybe you can ask for more reader contributions for content. Or writers who will write for free – I wrote for FanSided for free, all of the authors did, only two people per site were paid when I was writing. It was a way to build a resume and I was happy to do it.
Maybe you can set article goals for the authors. Meaning volume. 1 a day. Maybe you can set some chat guidelines – I.e. must have ____ chats in an hours – chats aren’t ideal when the host does one question/answer combo every 8 minutes, especially when a Dan or a Mag are doing 3 PER a minute often times. Maybe you can set a guideline about any political statements – right or wrong, the country sucks and is as divided as ever right now.
Maybe you can approach another site about an ad exchange. Doesn’t even have to be baseball related. Could be finance related – no conflict for either site and there is definitely crossover in the demographics. You give them 1M impressions, they give you 1M impressions, see what happens.
You could put ads on the player pages. They must get a lot of traffic and I don’t think there is much, if any, ad space on there.
In general I think many people with a wide variety of skills would be happy to contribute to FG. Maybe you can form a volunteer committee where people can actually add the experience to their resumes.
I don’t know if any of this is feasible to you, and I don’t know if you agree with any ideas, just some ideas to think about potentially engaging the readership, partner with us.
Either way thank you for the thoughtful response. Thank you for listening and taking the time to reply. I personally just renewed my membership because you took the time to reply, and are replying to the comments in the thread. It’s meaningful. Not that you owe me anything, you don’t, but I think it’s important. So thank you.
We have explored doing direct advertising sales, but have typically been advised that between the commission and the way ad exchanges have advanced recently, that there’s really not much to be gained for a company our size. Up until this year we actually saw pretty good growth on advertising rates.
I do think it’s worth exploring again, though now might not be exactly the right time to do that given advertising budgets.
Annual Membership bought, keep up the great work gents, read from the other side of the pond!
I currently have a membership, which I believe was $20. I would be willing to donate $30 in order to upgrade to a $50 ad-free membership. Is that possible?
Yup, I did exactly that
May I respectfully propose that you unleash Eric Logenhagen? I have routinely been impressed by his insights — and not “just” on the prospect stuff — and would like to see him take on issues far and above the 20/80 scale and July 2. He obviously has his hands full with the prospects now that Kylie has left, but he did a smash-up job when hosting Fangraphs Audio #881. (How many times did Jay say “Geesh” after Eric finished asking a question?) No offense to Meg, but it was the best Fangraphs Audio in a LONG time. The site has been bled dry by front offices and competitors of late, and it has been adrift, in particular, since Carson left. Is Eric the new Carson? No, of course not, but I think giving him more opportunities — whatever that means — would help the site establish a new identity. In all honesty, the Devin Fink experiment was the moment I felt the site might have jumped the shark. Identifying new talent is hard in baseball and also in baseball writing. I get it. But that’s exactly why I think Eric should be given a larger role. He’d probably be happier to continue watching high school baseball in southern Cali however.
The reason I won’t be supporting you guys with a paying membership has less to do with content and more to do with the people representing Fangrapghs publicly. Jay Jaffe is, I’m sure, an excellent analyst but his angry political rants on Twitter are disgusting. And I mostly agree with his politics, just not the pure anger. It’s off-putting. I enjoy Paul Sporer on the podcast, though he can be at times a bit condescending on social media. But Justin Mason is probably the worst. The dude just drips condescension.
Sorry, won’t be supporting you anytime soon with those guys as your public face.
In addition to the other suggestions for generating revenue, if a couple of ad reads during the podcasts could help keep FanGraphs around I’d be fine with it. Maybe even as a temporary thing? Desperate times, and all that