Slate, the digital magazine which is believed to have eked out a mid-six-figure profit last year for Graham Holdings, is asking readers to send it contributions in exchange for access to a variety of events.
The new service, called Slate+, announced by Slate Chairman Jacob Weisberg, is the latest indication of the difficulties facing digital-only outlets seeking to turn a profit.
Weisberg said he’s not putting up a paywall nor does he see soliciting donations as a desperate move for the 17-year-old site started by Microsoft during the first Internet boom and sold to the Washington Post Co. in 2005.
“We face one major impediment to future success; we’re too dependent on advertising,” he wrote in an e-mail to readers. “Don’t get me wrong — we love our sponsors. But we’ve long recognized that we’d be healthier and more secure if — like many of our favorite ancestors in the print world — we got a meaningful share of our revenue from readers as well as advertisers.”
He’s asking readers for $5 a month or $50 a year.
Weisberg told Media Ink he is not setting a goal on how many readers he hopes to attract and admits there is still some internal debate on what the numbers will be.
“We certainly don’t expect a million [paying readers] but we hope to get thousands,” he said.
Slate’s revenue last year was believed to be in the range of $20 million. Its financials are not broken out by Graham Holdings, which is the name of the successor company after Donald Graham sold the flagship Washington Post to Amazon boss Jeff Bezos.