Your donations have been crucial in helping Wolf Street thrive as an open no-paywall site that isn’t bogged down in ads.
Dear Readers,
Thank you for your generous donations to Wolf Street since the donation reminder last week. Many of you donate throughout the year. Thank you!
Your wonderful support tells me that what I’m doing in between the boots of giants matters to you, and that it is appreciated. Each one of your donations gives me a moment of eye-contact with the community of readers I would not normally see. Your support is very special to me.
Wolf Street is thriving, powered by its wonderful and growing community of readers. 2022 was another record year, with 15 million pageviews, thanks to your support which has allowed me to cut back on the ads. There are now fewer ads, and the ads are less intrusive, load faster, and don’t mess up the comments anymore. This has improved the reading experience. Readers have stuck around more, and new readers have come back more often. I’m immensely appreciative of that.
Online advertising (“ad tech”) has become an AI-infested, slimy, bottomless pit for publishers, especially small publishers, and it has gotten worse every year since I started this whole thing in 2011. So the partial shift away from ads to donations has been one of my most gratifying decisions. I was talked into it a few years ago by long-time reader and commenter Karen. I will forever be thankful to her.
So thank you for your many generous donations that allow me to keep Wolf Street open for all, not partially or fully hidden behind a paywall, and not bogged down in ads.
If you missed the fun last week, and wish to donate…
Three ways to donate:
- Zelle (if you use it): It’s fast and free. Please contact me at howlatwolfstreet@gmail.com to get my Zelle info.
- Credit card via PayPal: I use PayPal as a payment platform so I don’t have to take your credit card data. The “Donate” button takes you to WOLF STREET’s PayPal page. You do not need a PayPal account. If it asks you to set up a PayPal account, back out and try again. Tip: On the initial PayPal page: 1st, enter the amount; 2nd, click on the WHITE button, “Donate with a Debit or Credit Card”:Bottom of Form
- Mail a check (much appreciated):
Wolf Street Corp
1288 Columbus Ave. #196
San Francisco, CA 94133
Thank-you gift: a WOLF STREET mug if you donate $100 or more:
I will send you one of our 12-oz glass mugs (see photo below) to thank you for your very generous donation of $100 or more if your address is in the US, and if you would like a mug.
The wraparound art on the mug – created by San Francisco artist Erika “Kitten” Lopez – shows a funny wolf, me, howling the WOLF STREET dictum, “Nothing goes to Heck in a Straight Line.”
If you would like a mug, please email me; include your shipping address in the US (I cannot ship outside the US) and phone number (FedEx will not deliver without it). Send the email to: howlatwolfstreet@gmail.com
Thank you, Dear Readers, for your generous donations, for coming to WOLF STREET, and for your many excellent and fun comments!!
Enjoy reading WOLF STREET and want to support it? You can donate. I appreciate it immensely. Click on the beer and iced-tea mug to find out how:
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Can you receive a bit of bitcoin or USDT?
🤣❤😍👍
Would we make out a check to “Wolf Richter”, or “Wolf Street Corp”?
Wolf Street Corp would be perfect. Thanks
Thank you, Wolf, for your blog that I read daily. Found you and Naked Capitalism (and others) around the GFC years probably linked from Zero Hedge (no longer following ZH but it was GOOD back in those days!).
The mugs are awesome y’all. Make sure you donate.
Congratulations on your shift from advertising revenue to donations. I was quite shocked by Vanity Fair’s Bethany McLean tweeting after Elon Musk’s interview with David Faber “If you run a business that depends on advertisers you might have to think about it a little bit differently and Musk seems utterly unwilling to make that distinction.” Which to me translates as “if you run a business that depends on advertisers, you are completely beholden to what your advertisers decide you can or can’t say”.
As I said before, yours is one of the few websites left standing that present unvarnished and sometimes even unwelcome truths. I’m sure your independence from the ad-tech world helps with this.
I hope you’ll manage to keep going for a long time!
“Online advertising (“ad tech”) has become an AI-infested, slimy, bottomless pit for publishers, especially small publishers, and it has gotten worse every year since I started this whole thing in 2011.”
Amen, brother.
And, it pervades much more than just online. I am old enough to remember when a 30 minute TV program ran 27 of those minutes – think Gunsmoke or Ozzie & Harriet.
I have been outspoken on this issue and am delighted with what Wolf has done.
One other item: “2022 was another record year, with 15 million pageviews”. That sounds good, but it really needs to be 150 million or 1.5 billion. Wolf’s insight being distributed wider would provide much needed knowledge to more people. We live in far too much of a wasteland of misinformation.
Best NEWS site on the web, as well as best commentary [even if I don’t agree with Wolf 100% of the time].
Happy to contribute.
Also great mugs.
They are great, but not toddler-proof, I’ve discovered. My mug went to heck with a bit of an arc. Good time to buy a new one!
Ever thought about doing a Patreon?
A lot of YouTubers have Patreons. I know they take a cut but it might open up new funding avenues. Especially if anyone is hesitant to send larger amounts directly.
I have my own platform. It’s called wolfstreet.com. It runs on my Linux server. It works great. I control it. I cannot be easily deplatformed. The site has a nice reach (15 million pageviews in 2022). The site has lots of email subscribers that I reach directly. You can send “large amounts” (or any amounts) just fine and securely via check directly to WS, or by Zelle directly from your bank account to the WS bank account, or by credit card via PayPal to the WS bank account.
So why on earth would I ever farm out donations, and pay a portion of them, to a VC-funded startup unicorn whose valuation has collapsed by over 70% in the past year?
YouTubers don’t have a platform. The platform they use is owned by Google, and Google controls it, and Google sets the terms. They’re on that platform because Google allows them to be on it. Google can shut them down any time. And they have to find another platform to collect donations.
Saw a warning about incorrect information on a youtube video today. Havent seen that before.
Good job getting your first wrongthink warning! 😉
Re: platforms, absolutely. Read the same on the Unsupervised Learning blog recently. Imagine building a business that survives at the whim of powertripping self-righteous millennial censors!!!😱
Because it has a large following. And it is where Patrons are made $$.
Good points you make.
The only source of Real information!
Strangely ONLY 15 comments when “Donate” was included in the headline lol
Not the most riveting divisive topic for comments, isn’t it? But you can’t see what people are actually doing, rather than commenting. I’m very appreciative of the many many readers who donated and supported this site so generously.