Hello and welcome to your annual report chock-full of numbers and images that represent those numbers! Since 2016 we’ve been providing this information to our beloved A+ members. We did it in 2017 and then I did it in 2018 then I did it in 2019 and then I did it in 2020. Now, it’s 2021, a year that will probably be pretty bad, but we’ll get through it together!
We’d like to politely request that you do not share any of these graphics outside of A+ and instead enjoy them only here on this page right now with us as a family! Okay? Great perfect!
Most Popular Content of 2020
Who Wrote What
For the second year in a row I have been thoroughly out-performed by Heather Hogan, which I believe remains the face of things to come. Speaking of the faces of things to come, however, this list brought me a parcel of joy and here’s why!
I started making these lists in 2016, so our first time was 2015, and this year’s our first since 2016 where the top 4 was not white as snow! 53% of 2020’s most prolific authors are QPOC, compared to 37% in the prior two years and between 25% – 30% in the years prior to that year.
Money Money Money
Income & Expenses
Believe it or not 2020 was not our best year financially. We were truly on a roll in 2019 and full of hope for the future — we were building great relationships with advertising partners and poised to have a stellar 2020. Then you know, everything that happened; happened. Thank the lord that despite it all, y’all came through for TWO big-ass fundraisers.
I have also been called upon to ensure that we’re clear what this graph represents vs. the graph you may have seen on our “Join A+” page. Here I’m counting all the money that landed in our bank account in 2020 because that’s what I’ve always done with the annual report. This is what we report to the IRS, this is what our Profit and Loss reports indicate, etc.
The Join A+ page has a lower % attributed to advertising, and that’s because that graph represents only income we earned in 2020, which means it’s only including ads purchased from us in 2020, which is a better representation of where we currently stand when it comes to ad income than the number below, which is for ad money we were paid in 2020. 70% of the advertising revenue we got in 2020 was from ad campaigns we ran in 2019.
By the way we are very good at advertising and if you are an advertiser you should advertise with us!
Merchandise
This year’s merchandise HIT was our Queer Word Magnets!
You People
Let’s do a nice long slow clap for our A+ Director Nicole!! Look at these incredible growth numbers! From 2018 to 2019, we got 36% more Cobalts, 25% more Bronzers, less than one percent more Silvers and 14% more Golds. As you can see below, our growth this year was way better than that! Nicole’s leadership has enabled us to maintain a consistent content schedule — a schedule we’re also only able to meet because of our incredible staff and team contributing to roundtables, The Insider, advice boxes and more. Kamala and Sarah debuted the very popular S L I C K erotica series in 2020 and we’re stoked to have some of our writers filling in K’s shoes on that project for the next few months.
A perhaps little-known fact is that the person who was stocking, hand-addressing, packing and shipping out your A+ perks since 2016 has been me (Riese) UNTIL THIS YEAR. Now it’s Nicole, bless us everyone especially Nicole.
Heather Hogan had goddamn long COVID in 2020 and still managed to write the most posts, what a legend.
Yes, came here to leave this exact comment. Way to go Heather!
Right? Damn, Heather.
Heather is also just about the only writer on the internet whose posts I will click on even if the title makes me quite sure I’m not interested in the topic, because if she’s written it, I always turn out to be wrong.
Best wishes for improving health this year, Heather, and please make sure you get the rest you need, you have nothing to prove to any of us, we love you.
Seconded! have written this very thing into the A+ priority inbox several weeks ago 😽🌸🌿
I love that Your Completely Queer Guide to Horoscope Hookups from 2013 is still a top post. When I was dating, it was always my first stop after meeting someone new.
These numbers are so interesting; thank you for making these graphics. And yes, I’m looking forward to my magnetic poetry’s arrival!
My heart is in (love)knots over the fact that, whatever may be going on in the world, year after year people just want to learn how to tie each other up. Myself absolutely included.
I always love these data and behind the scenes posts so much. Thank you for your effort on them and for the transparency and info
Thanks for the write up! It’s crazy how little money AS actually runs on and how ~5.5k people are responsible for ~50% of the website’s budget. I wonder how AS would change if it had 5-10x the current number of subscribers. Ah well, thanks again!
IT WOULD BE SO AMAZING, wouldn’t it??? We’d raise rates for writers and illustrators and contactors a lot, also raise what we are paying our tech team so they can give us more hours, we’d hire someone to be focused on the advertising + affiliate side of things bc honestly with the exception of hiring nicole, whenever we’ve had extra money we put it back into editorial instead of the business side, and that has left me + sarah with “advertising’ as one of 25 elements of our job descriptions, which is not ideal! I think we also need someone to make us a tiktok for us. anyhow those are some of the one billion things we would do if we had twice as many members!
It would be the most incredible, life-changing thing if we even had twice as many members!!!
I know I signed up to be a member last year, but how do I know if a year is up and I need to renew my membership? Sadly, I can’t remember when I signed up in 2020.
Hi! Thank you for being a member 💗 You can alsways access your membership / account info here but if you have any trouble, please feel free to submit a help ticket.
Semi-related question for Nicole since my membership is up soon, do I have to do anything to renew or will it renew automatically?
Hi! Unless you’ve paused it, it should renew automatically. :)
When i got a new credit card 2 years ago i had decided that i would upgrade my silver memebership to a gold one.
I don’t remember how I went about it, but the reslut was that I ended up with both a gold and a silver membership, and i have kept it like that since then. Because i really wanna support this site :)
My HEART. Thank you for supporting! (And also, if you do ever need help with membership stuff, please feel free to get in touch!!)
I’m sure these graphics are great but they don’t seem to have alt text on them and that’s a bit sad. Not sure if it would be extremely tedious to add some but it would be nice if these charts were accessible for all your A+ members!
I would guess this is to avoid copy-pasting confidential information, as Riese understandably requested “that you do not share any of these graphics outside of A+ and instead enjoy them only here on this page”.
I see that this may interfere with screenreaders… maybe a general description of each graphic could be of help (maybe “Graphic on [headline 1-3]”)?
Hi, I know you mean well but Riese’s concerns re confidentiality shouldn’t be a barrier to making their content accessible. After all, a sighted A+ member could just as easily screenshot and share despite Riese’s request not to.
However, they seem to have alt text on most of the graphics now, which makes me very happy!
i’m sorry this is simply my bad! these infographics have been uploaded and re-uploaded 500x as i noticed tiny typos and along the way some of the alt text got lost, i’m fixing it today.
Love your work Riese – thank you so much for fixing this!
I love this infographic party every year! It feels like I am in a board meeting, but only the interesting parts; like it’s a romantic comedy and I need to salvage the fall festival before we get shut down by a brusque executive from out of town who I keep getting into sexy arguments with.
YES love this
Thanks very much for this insight into all of what s being done. I feel privileged to be a part of this amazing community. Also, you truly are a great team and excel on so many levels … thank you all!
Thank you for showing us members a peek behind the scenes. Aside from being my queer home, this is the most transparent and ethically run business I’ve ever encountered! Proud to support! <3 <3 <3