Blog it and they will come

I’m going to start with numbers; numbers are easy. Rascal ran a pledge drive in July to increase our paying readership. We posted about it here, and, publicly, at least, we had some pretty lofty goals. We started the month with about 1,050 paying subscribers, and while we had pledge goals listed up to 100,000 subscribers (maybe next year TSR Museum in Lake Geneva), internally our expectations were more modest. We wanted to end July with 200 new readers—about 100 more readers than we had been averaging over the past four months since we launched in February (February and March saw huge sign-ups, as people were first discovering us).

At the beginning of August, when we officially ended our pledge drive at our Gen Con panel, we had 1350 subscribers. That’s 300 more readers than we had started with, and 200 more than our average monthly signups. This is huge for us. It’s not just a successful pledge drive, but a momentous move towards sustainability. More people reading Rascal means that more people are sharing our blogs, which means that more people are discovering our work, and we are becoming a valuable resource to the community. We are also, to stress again, working towards sustainability. 

@theegoosegirl #greenscreen #dnd #dndtok #dndtiktok #dnd5e #bg3 #baldursgate3 #dungeonsanddragons #gencon ♬ original sound - madeleine 🍉

The three rascals were very frank about the state of the website and its finances; we do not earn enough money to survive on Rascal alone. But we do earn enough money to make Rascal worth it. We are only six months into this project, and as a news media startup run by three bardpunk freaks with anarchy in our blood, we are doing so fucking good y’all. Our successful pledge drive has proven that we can still reach people, and we can ask our community to spread the word… and they will. Two weeks post-Gen Con and our signups have not stopped—we now have 1,430 paying subscribers, and our readership grows every day. 

So thank you. Before I say anything else, thank you so much. Rascal started as a spiteful little fuck you to the media industry and it’s become a vibrant and well-read community resource, a reliable news source, and a place where honest, and often divisive, cultural commentary can thrive. We’ve even been able to bring new voices onto the site, and we have enough money in our budget to continue to diversify the perspectives, viewpoints, and expertise on Rascal. 

To drive this home, I took a look at the forbidden numbers (Google Analytics) to see what we’ve achieved. Numbers!

Over the past six months, we have had:

• 87,000 people visit the site
• 257,000 views from all users
• 702,000 clicks across the entire site

Not to brag, but these are sit up and pay attention numbers. We are a small, indie news start up that doesn’t use traditional advertising, doesn’t fuck with search engine optimization, doesn’t sell ads, data, or emails, and doesn’t accept advertising or sponsorships from any company. We started Rascal with the hope that the tabletop roleplaying game community would want to read news and editorial coverage, and would be willing to pay for it. And baby, ya’ll are freaks for news. 

Our motto has always been “blog it, and they will come.” We don’t have the time, energy, or knowledge to try to game the algorithm. We are journalists. We know how to do one thing and we are faking our way through the rest of it. Or, in the case of our CPA, paying someone else to do the math for us.

Yesterday, we achieved another goal. Ghost informed us that we had reached $100,000 in annual recurring revenue based on our monthly subscriptions. Internally, our goal was to make it to $150,000 in monthly recurring revenue by the end of twelve months. To get two-thirds of the way there only six months into this project is hugely affirming. We are doing work that many people want to read, and are responding to. Thank you for believing in us. Thank you for being here. Thank you for giving us five bucks a month. It might not seem like much, but it means everything to us. 

It’s two weeks into August and the rascals are working hard to finish up our Gen Con coverage amid some incredible (truly incredible) life circumstances. The good thing about running a site like Rascal is that we can really be there for our co-bosses and give each other explicit permission to rest, recover, and focus on health. The downside is that absences are felt keenly—a loss far more sharp than a newsroom with a full bullpen of writers and editors—and I’m sorry to say that I am going to be absent from Rascal soon. 

I wish I had something insightful to say about moving house; ripping your life off the walls, observing the dents and scuffs, finding ways to fix it before someone else shows up—or worse, charges you for it. Maybe it’s a metaphor about moving on from relationships, or a meditation on housing rights and capitalism, or a softly fond farewell to an apartment I’ve called home for close to a decade. Instead, I’m so fucking fried and stressed that all I can tell you is that moving fucking sucks, and I can’t wait to stop thinking about my life in little tetromino blocks. 

I’m moving because I was offered a gig out in Los Angeles. As often as we bang the drum that “we do not dream of labor,” I’m going to say that this is a dream job. The kind of job that I literally talked about in high school but had no idea how to accomplish. I’m not going to say too much about it here, but when I feel comfortable doing so, trust me: you will not hear the end of it. I wasn’t looking for a job or asking for one, I genuinely love Rascal so much and was thrilled to be focusing on building this outlet full time, but when career opportunities do knock… sorry Mister Strummer, but I’m opening the door. 

This means that I’m taking a step back from Rascal. My plan is to keep supporting the site—and co-bosses Chase and Rowan—from the background, maybe adding an article here or there, or editing a piece when I find time. (Don't worry, my horrible horoscopes are continuing.) I’m also planning on doing long-term reporting projects, so expect a few bangers in the next month or so. I will be taking a lot less money from the coffers, and we will be redirecting my salary towards a goal that we’ve been talking about since we literally started the site—a fourth Rascal. A mini-boss, if you will. 

Isaiah Colbert, one of my former colleagues from Kotaku who was unfortunately laid off from G/O Media at the same time I was, is respawning at Rascal. He’s sticking around for a three month fellowship, and we’re so excited to have him. A J-School alum with local news chops, bylines at Kotaku, IGN, Inverse, Polygon, and GameSpot, and an anime obsession, Isaiah is going to bring a fresh perspective on games and gaming culture to the site. Amid their video game and anime coverage, they have interviewed Baldur’s Gate 3’s Samantha Beart, wrote about neurodivergence and Dungeon Meshi, and published an interview with the devs of Citizen Sleeper. 

We’re all very excited to have Isaiah as our new mini-boss, and you can reach out to him at the usual address: isaiah@rascal.news. You can follow him on twitter here. He will be starting in September.

Which brings us to the last part of this blog: the fortnight of darkness. The rascals have been colloquially calling the next two weeks “the dark ages,” but really, we’re just taking a bit of a summer break. Chase is going on an actual vacation, I’m moving across the country, and Rowan needs time to rest. For the next two weeks, we will not be posting nearly as much as usual. We have a couple contributor pieces and licensed excerpts planned, and we will keep up with the announcement sections (hopefully), but for the most part… the three of us will not be working. 

We’re excited to return in September with a new voice adding to our chorus, refreshed and ready to continue reporting on this industry. Feel free to keep emailing us, but don’t expect too much. We need a break. We love it here, and we are so grateful that you—our readers—seem to like us, too. 

See you in September, space cowboys.