What is AAR? It’s not a business–we don’t make any money and no one gets paid. It truly is a labor of love for all of us. (I do give the staff gift certificates at the end of the year to say thanks for all their hard work. The rest of the money we earn goes to keeping the site online.) The closest thing we are is a daily newspaper. We cover romance and women’s fiction, publishing multiple pieces of content each day. We have a publisher and an editor and a group of writers.
And, by most measures, we had a very successful year. In 2019, our users were up 20%–790,000–and those users had almost 1.3 million sessions. Our readers commented over 7500 times. Via our click throughs, we sold 23 thousand books through Amazon alone. We published almost 800 book reviews and countless blogs. We worked hard.
And, like newspapers and blog sites (HEA USA, the Romance Reader, and others) everywhere, we are in danger of going dark.
AAR supports itself one of two ways. We sell ads – this makes up about 30% of our revenue these days- and we make money as an Amazon affiliate. Amazon used to give affiliates 9% of sales–three years ago that number dropped to 4% or less. It’s my bet that, within the year, Amazon will cut that number further. Barnes and Noble and Kobo have both basically stopped paying affiliate funds and, given that Amazon doesn’t really need affiliate sales to make the big bucks, I suspect they too will follow suit.
What happens to AAR at that point?
I don’t know. I’ve believed for some time that the only way we can stay on line is on a subscription/donation basis but it’s unclear to me our readers have any appetite for that. There are, perhaps, other ways to make money–podcasts, Patreon, GoFundMe–but those all require a time commitment that I just don’t have–I barely have enough time to keep up with the work of the site as it is.
It’s a conundrum. We’ve been around a long time–since October of 1996–and I hope that continues. In the meantime, please consider linking to Amazon through our site every time you purchase something there. (Here’s the link.) Share the link with friends and family. (They have to log on to Amazon via our site.) Consider signing up for a monthly donation. If all our readers were to donate $10 a month, that would make a huge difference. (Here’s the link: Donate to AAR.)
I am considering some sort of monthly offer where all who donated that month would be entered in a draw for a box of books. If we had regular benefactors, we’d create a thank you page and acknowledge your generosity. Anything you can do or any ideas you have, I’d be more grateful to hear them.
Much love,
Dabney
I have written to find out about advertising, 2 or 3 times, and haven’t heard back from anyone. I have written two romances and would like to know how to be involved in your website. I write under Cece deLuc and am on Amazon.
I have emailed you!
I can’t thank everyone enough for their help last month.
If you donated to AAR last month, please consider making a regular monthly donation.
I am continuing to think about many of your suggestions and do so appreciate all the support you’ve given AAR.
You could try to crowd-source volunteers to work on the Patreon or other sorts of platforms if you think they’re too much work.
Thanks for the suggestion!
One of the things I like about Patreon and being a Patreon supporter (for various creative endeavors) is the access I get to special episodes/content/archives. There is a podcast I subscribe to that has hundreds of archived episodes that are only accessible to supporters. The 100 most recent are free, anything older is behind a paywall that is pretty affordable at $10/month. Maybe there is a way to put older AAR reviews behind a low paywall so that frequent/new visitors will still find valuable content for free but more intensive users can donate to access? Maybe older reviews don’t have that sort of appeal, but if you can see AAR traffic you might find a type of content that would be tempting to subscribers.
For what it’s worth, I use this site extensively for my work at an independent bookstore. I object to Amazon for ethical reasons, so I am glad that a Paypal donation is possible.
That’s a good idea although taking on Patreon seems like a lot of work. I’ll look into it.
Thanks!
Everytime Wiki hits me up for a donation I’m able to give from my Amazon account. There have been other instances where I’ve done that too with charitable orgs. If AAR could do that it would make it so easy for (me anyway) to donate quarterly.
I think I’ll do something like post a monthly/quarterly reminder at the top of the page. I’ve been SO encouraged by the response to this and it’s my hope that we can maintain support!
Want to try looking into Redbubble or sites like that?
You list the design and Redbubble allows the icon to be printed on things like stickers, pillows or shirts.
Otherwise, I’m into Washi tape and I came across the company’s instagram. You can get samples and it may be less competitive than Redbubble.
https://www.instagram.com/continentaltapeprinters/
We are currently trying that with Zazzle.
Here’s our storefront: https://www.zazzle.com/store/all_about_romance
Oh, rad. Excuse me while I make a Zazzle account.
I have the “I’m just here for the joy” shirt, coffee mug, and phone case. They’re all good quality. And I’ve given the “Made with Love” baby shirt to several parents who’ve loved it!