As hard as it is to say after being on the internet for 20 years, advertising and referral links don’t add up to a hill of beans compared to the cost of hosting a website with over 8,500 reviews and articles. I’ve run this site at a monthly loss for years now, but I got an unpleasant surprise last December when my cost to keep the site online doubled. Many of you chipped in on Patreon to defray the cost, but we still run at a $40-$50 loss every month.

Some might say “Well Flash, it obviously isn’t that bad. The site is still here.” And you’d be right to a degree — I continue to eat the losses just as I have in the past. I have a job covering mixed martial arts and my wife works a 9 to 5 as well, so between us we can cover our household expenses and the essentials. It’s not really a good long term plan though to say “We can eat the losses in one area because we’re doing okay in others.” What if the traffic to the site goes up substantially? What if our providers raises their costs again? The situation can quickly go from barely tolerable to completely untenable with the slightest change.

The reason I am asking our readers to pledge a dollar a month (or more) is because I hear all the time on social media from people who say “I discovered my favorite artist on RapReviews” or “It’s an amazing resource” or simply “Thank you for what you do.” You’re welcome. All of us who contribute to the site love to hear that. We wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t a worthwhile endeavor for us and valuable to you.

If you believe in that value, pledging less than a cup of coffee to help us break even is a fine way to express your gratitude. We appreciate the compliments, but I’d appreciate doing away with the ad banners even more. Ad banners don’t add value to what we do, and they don’t pay for our webhosting either. We’d rather be a site that’s OF the people, BY the people, FOR the people.

Sincerely yours,
Steve ‘Flash’ Juon – RapReviews.com