How Does the Onion Make Money With No Ads?

Jeff Lawson says The Onion now has more than 5X the revenue it had before he bought it, and the site runs with no ads. Readers support the paper directly.

Membership costs $99 a year. Members get the print edition of The Onion mailed 12 times a year, a monthly paper not made for a decade. He thinks they killed print in 2013. Earlier revenue was chum box ads, including AI ads that made little sense. Pages carried so many ads that a phone would start overheating, and the site did not work on mobile. Removing every ad took revenue to zero. Two years on, revenue is more than 5X the level from before the purchase.

The company would be profitable, except money is going into growth so The Onion can be the satire the world needs in the MAGA era. Under private equity, slashing the budget to make more money produced larger losses. A management team was hired on day one to run the paper, with help on strategy.