It’s hard out here for a blog….
It’s time for my depressing reminder that AAR needs your help to survive. Lately, things have been a bit grim.
By many measures, we’re doing OK. In 2021, our users were up 5% and those users had almost 1.5 million sessions. We’re still, via Amazon, selling thousands of books a year. We’re publishing new, smart content every day. Our reviewers are THE BEST. Our readers are engaging in robust conversation on the site.
And, like newspapers and blog sites (HEA USA, the Romance Reader, and others) everywhere, we are struggling.
AAR supports itself one of three ways.
We sell ads – this makes up about 20% of our revenue these days.
We make money as an Amazon affiliate. Amazon used to give us 9% of sales–five years ago that number dropped to 4% or less. So many of our readers have switched to KU–not only do we not get any money from KU memberships or books read via […]