DID YOU KNOW THAT GILLETTE HAS RAZOR BLADES AND THAT THEY ARE WILLING TO SELL THEM TO YOU?¡
Yeah? Me too, and I’m tired of hearing it and I’m sure you are too.
If you look to the top, right, and bottom you may see something missing.
The goddamned ads. And if we can help it they’ll stay gone.
The burden of having those things on the site was offset by how much we were getting paid. However, I’ve reassessed the situation. I’m not sure that spending time tracking down the asshole advertiser of the week that redirects you guys, or puts up nasty ads, or publishes ads that cover the whole website is more important than improving the site, editing comics and producing books. I’m not sure and I never have been.
Penny Arcade has the right idea: we’re not in the business of selling ad space, we’re in the business of making you laugh. We’ve joked about selling out before, but honestly if we keep clinging to an ad supported model instead of a reader supported one, it becomes less of a parody and more of a prophecy.
Ideally we’d mitigate the removal of advertising by applying the power of your giggles directly against our mortgage.
Unfortunately the closest that science can currently come is that new tip jar on the left.
We’ve gone ahead and made the remainder of August ad free, and the donation drive is to eliminate ads for the month of September. In September the drive will be to eliminate ads for October and so on.
The goal is set to match our previous ad revenue, and every bit is appreciated. As a thank you, everyone who donates will be receiving exclusive content at the end of each drive. If you are unable to donate, then share your favorite strip with a friend via our social media buttons, email, or smoke signal. Sharing a strip is just as helpful as a donation!
So please, consider contributing what you can. With your help we can get back to focusing more on the funny and less on the money.
Thank you all!
*EDIT*
CHARIOTS CHARIOTS!
So, I’d just like to confirm that our socks have been rocked. We’re currently compiling the bonus goodies and they will be sent out at the end of the month via email.
Also, thanks for the suggestions and ideas, I feel that some feedback is owed:
Flattr: I looked into it before going with the Chipin widget. We may add it in the future but for now I don’t want to split the focus of your donations.
Paypal: Yes, they suck, but so does the payments industry in general. Just about every company we’ve relied on for collecting or conveying our income has committed some asshole move at some point. I just tend to pick the most useful asshole for the given situation. Also as mentioned above I don’t want to split effort by putting up a 2nd contribution method. Boycotts are a strong statement of protest and I want nobody to feel guilty for sticking to their guns.
Flash: The best widgets were all flash (and based on paypal…). It’s some kind of conspiracy. I’ve made the banner a link and put up some backup text for the flash widget. If you can’t see it hit refresh (tested it on Chrome on iPhone 4s ).
RSS Readers: Keep using our feed, it’s there to let you view our content however you like. To notify our RSS feed users about the drive I’ll be posting a link to the contribution site in these fund drive posts, starting now: Click here to chip in!.
Project Wonderful: We had PW, and the day we took down the ads we had an email from someone asking for a link exchange, which we usually would respond to by saying “Bid on our Project Wonderful spot!”. If we allow these ads back in, it’ll be after holding a poll.
Subscriptions: I don’t like the idea of laying the entire burden of supporting the comic on the backs of a few serial contributors. With this loose model it lets different people step up to the plate or relax in the dugout as they please. This may change in the future, but only if I can streamline it so that subscribers and sporadic donators both show up as contributors towards the same goal.
Thank you all again and remember if you can’t donate, just enjoy the comic!
