Goonhammer is Selling Out!

That’s right, folks we’re selling out. It was only a matter of time, really.

Over the next few weeks you may notice some new developments on the site. Or not notice them, depending on how you’ve approached “supporting Goonhammer financially” in the past. The short version of this is: We’re selling out, and there will be ads on the site. If you’re a Goonhammer Patron, we’d like to thank you for your support, and you can immediately turn off this experience by logging in with this link. For the rest of you, feel free to keep browsing the content you love – every single article of it – only now with the occasional ad. 

Alright, that’s the short version. For those of you who are still here and haven’t immediately closed the tab and thrown your laptop out the window in frustration, let’s talk about the long version, and answer some of the questions you may have.

 

Why Are We Doing This?

Up until now, Goonhammer has been an all-volunteer project. And while we appreciate the work that everyone has put into what we’ve built here, we’d like to change that some day. In an ideal world, we’d all be free to post about our favorite games all day without having to worry about how we were going to get fed at the end of that same day.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in that world, and our people need to eat. Putting together this many articles on a regular basis that are high enough quality to prevent Rob from flying out to beat us all with a spiked bat is difficult, time-intensive work. For several of our contributors, the amount of time, money and effort they’ve put into this site in their free time would be enough to take on a part-time job. So if we’re going to put our money where our collective mouth is, we need to generate some money to put there. It’s our hope that advertising will let us make this into less of a losing proposition for the fine folks that put in work to bring you the content you crave.

We’re also cognizant of the fact that some of our readers may actually want to support us, but don’t have the financial wherewithal to do so at a particular time. If you’re in that category, the ads on the pages you’re already reading will help us without you having to reach for your wallet.

Finally, as we’ve moved into new spaces with the GHO and some other soon-to-be-announced projects we’ve been cooking up, we’ve learned that that stuff is expensive. More revenue means more and better events, as well as potential to do more cool stuff down the road.

What does this mean for your content?

Nothing. We’ll continue to produce the same great content we always have, attempting to deliver 19ish articles per week, every week, to you, the reader. Only now we may actually be able to pay our contributors for writing said articles. Our approach to what we write and how we write it will not change. We also won’t be gating articles or content for Patrons – the entirety of our site’s content will be available to you regardless of how you choose to view the site.

In other words, Meatwatch will continue as normal.

What if I Don’t Want to See Ads?

Hey, we don’t like ads either. We’re not going to ask you to turn off your adblocker or whatever – you’re an adult, figure it out – but if you want to both support us and not see ads anymore, then there’s an easy way to do that: Just sign up to support Goonhammer on Patreon. Any tier of support – including our $2 per month minimum – will not see ads on the site. And if you’re already a patron and want to turn off the ads, you can do that by logging in with this link right here.

What about your Patrons?

We are very thankful for our Patrons, who we love and appreciate a great deal. You’re all amazing, and we particularly like some of you. We’ve worked hard to make sure you can continue to have the same great ad-free experience on the site (see the above link), and we’ll be working on more ways to offer rewards/benefits to you in the future – stay tuned for an announcement in January around this.

What Kind of Ads Am I Blocking?

We’ve chosen to partner with Publisher Collective for the majority of our ads. They’re an ad network based in the UK who specialize in ads for gaming-related and adjacent products like video games, gaming accessories, and various flavors of Mountain Dew. So mostly those ads, though we’ll also be watching what kinds of products end up advertised on the site and working with them to make sure things we don’t want to see advertised on our site don’t end up here. 

What if I want to advertise on Goonhammer?

Ok now we’re talking. You can reach out to us at contact@goonhammer.com about advertising on the site, and if you’re a tabletop gaming company or accessories manufacturer, we’re happy to have a discussion about advertising and rates. We’re also going to be looking at reduced or preferred rates for Goonhammer Patrons to advertise on the site, if they want to do things like buy goof ads that say things like “ROCCO LICKS BUTTS” or “HOT WIZARDS IN YOUR AREA WANT TO PONDER ORB” or I guess promote their own hobby channels/stores or whatever.

A Note From The Administrator

I’ve made strong and unambiguous statements in the past that I do not, and will not, allow ads on this site. I think at one point I threatened to pull the plug on the entire thing if anyone tried to make me. As you can imagine, those statements are being thrown back in my face with some vigor these days. The simple fact is that this isn’t about me or my hangups. It never really was, but in the years between my hardline proclamations and the present, the site has expanded far beyond my ability to administer by fiat. 

Goonhammer has somewhere north of 40 members (read: owners) and, just like any of them, I get 1 vote to try and turn the tide on any motion. In this case it actually didn’t matter: I voted yes on the plan. Because, again, this isn’t about me shooting my mouth off two years ago. It’s about the other 39 people, who put in hours of work every week – writing actual content and not just waxing poetic about sandwich meat or 0-3 RTT finishes – and see nothing in return (something like half of our Patreon revenue goes toward just keeping the website online, and that number sure isn’t decreasing). I don’t love the advertising, but I also don’t love making people work for free, you know? This is a compromise, an attempt to do right by both our readers and our writers.

This is inevitably going to read like moving the goalposts, and to be fair it kind of is, but: at least the ads are as unobtrusive and relevant as we could make them. You’re still getting the same posts – there is no paywall, and the same rigorous editorial standards still apply to everything except Meatwatch – just with a few extra pixels. It’s going to be fine.

Have any questions or feedback? Want to tell us we’re about to become indistinguishable from Spikey Bits? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.