GREEN ONION:

The Onion - How the Web's Most Beloved Humor Site Stays Profitable (ContentBiz, 10/23/2002)

The site itself gets 1.3 million visitors accounting for 5.3 million pageviews per week (yes, that's week, not month.) In contrast, The Onion's print editions reach 300,000 readers who pick up f*ree local copies, and 20,000 who pay a token subscription fee to have it mailed to them.

Other ancillary sales are small slice of the pie compared to ad dollars. Cranmer notes that store sales always peak for two- three days after she puts new products in each month (note: continually freshen your inventory to keep sales high) and also during the gift-giving season.

You may have noticed one format The Onion doesn't publish in-- email. Cranmer notes she's cracking under reader and advertiser pressure to launch an email edition soon. "We want it to be good. We don't just want to rush in and dump headlines into it and say, go check these out. We wanted something a little different. We're still knocking around what that difference will be."

Which pretty much sums of The Onion's whole philosophy of getting ahead in business ... by really, really trying.

It helps to maintain the high quality of the product too. Posted by Orrin Judd at October 27, 2002 7:18 AM