Blog Startup Surrenders Profit Dreams, Becomes Literal Charity Case
It's not just America's sad newspapers that are considering converting to nonprofits: The blog Jewcy.com has transformed from potential profit gusher into the beneficiary of tax-deductible contributions. At least people are getting paid.
Jewcy's backers pulled out in February and the site has been run since then by volunteers, under the stewardship of editor Lilit Marcus. Now Jewcy has been "adopted" as the "flagship program" of the Jewish charitable non-profit JDub; the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles has already committed to funding the site, allowing the editor and at least some writers to get paid once again.
If the site had trouble converting traffic into money, perhaps that's because it was short on raw material: Traffic stands at around 200 people per day, by Quantcast's admittedly imperfect reckoning. UPDATE: A Jewcy spokesman says the site has close to 120,000 unique visitors per month, vs. the 8,000 monthly visitors reported by Quantcast.