AndThe Hard Times, a seemingly niche site satirizing punk culture, blew up.
The Hard Times and its gamer spinoffThe Hard Driverecently attracted 2.3 million monthly readers.
The sites operations are small and scrappy.
The only full-time workers are founder and editor-in-chief Matt Saincome, and co-founder and managing editor Bill Conway.
Other editors are all part-time.
Thats because they prioritize paying freelancers, says Matt.
If youre creating something people truly want, it shouldnt take that long.
You shouldnt be grinding.
Bill Conway:We just passed the four year mark in December.
I said Im in, and we got together and started brainstorming ideas.
BC:We came around just in time for online publishing to totally go into the tank.
LH:What was this podcast you had Matt on?
Im a straight edge guy and I talked with people who were also straight edge.
MS:The Hard Times has got its roots in the hardcore and punk scene.
So weve definitely got some philosophies that followed us.
Both Bill and I are straight edge, and we think about things a little bit differently.
We have a DIY approach to things.
Other people think Oh, when is someone going to help me do this?
And were more like Could we do this ourselves?
What are the benefits and cons of working with someone else?
So we just started our own podcast data pipe instead of getting a podcast onto someone elses data pipe.
But were lunatics; wed rather hang out by ourselves and build invoicing solutions.
LH:How long was it just you two?
BC:The first couple months.
Like, If you have a cartoon, send it to me and Ill put it in my zine.
And we launched Hard Times with that attitude.
But it was just Bill and me at first.
And then it became very popular very quickly and everyone wanted to contribute.
Im like I dont know, how do you write for us?
I guess come and hang out in this Facebook chat or something?
We evolved from there.
It was just a creative exercise.
But that was smaller, and Hard Times became much larger very quickly.
So I called up one of my old editors, Fred Pessaro, who was editor-in-chief ofNoisey.
I was like What do I do with this thing?
He put me in touch with the guy who runsBrooklynVegan.
Getting to know other publishers has been a real benefit.
Its a job where you feel isolated and siloed.
Were like All right, theyre drunks, yeah, theyre gonna go to the van.
Thats what people do, right?
Having more people come on and having different experiences definitely helped with that.
Matt and I are not experts at anything.
People probably expect us to have this encyclopedic knowledge of all hardcore going back to 1980.
So thats all Im going to know.
But weve been to shows, its not likewell, Matts a poser, Im not.
I think that we have a better invoicing system than the New York Times.
Lifehacker:And you pay writers as soon as theyre published, with the OutVoice system.
How does that work?
MS:Its pretty simple.
So anyone with a Wordpress blog can use this technology.
I felt like all that stuff was super old school and inefficient.
It was all PayPal and Venmo.
I wanted to create a way where writers could be paid in that easy a manner.
So thats why we built OutVoice, and Hard Times has been integral in that.
So now I think its intuitive to the point where you dont need to be tech savvy.
you’re free to just be anyone in a CMS.
BC:Yeah, its very dummy-proof.
MS:It takes a lot of time and wasted energy out of the whole organization.
What used to take maybe an hour now takes a couple of seconds.
But they just they just act like its a fixed problem.
I think that we have a better invoicing system than the New York Times.
BC:And a lot of times with the Hard Times, its a persons first freelance writing job.
Its a punk kid that might have a funny idea.
So they dont even know there was a problem.
I didnt want anyone to have that same experience that I did.
Were spreading OutVoice into different publications.
We just put it on a new one Thursday.
So things are going well.
Theres another thing I wanted to change from my personal experience.
As a freelancer I always felt isolated, I didnt know what my editors wanted me.
So we decided to run our publication in a radically different way, where we have a Facebook group.
Thats not a final vote.
So theres a democratic aspect to it.
Also we use the group to communicate really openly about the things that we have coming up.
We have a book coming out at the end of the year.
At a normal publication, many of your freelancers wouldnt know about that.
We actually built quite a nice community.
Theres meet-ups of writers all across the country in different cities.
They can meet creative people and hopefully create their own projects.
I would love to see people use Hard Times as a springboard.
Weve had a couple of people start their own publications.
Now there are multiple sites doing this kind of thing.
And I looked at the Onion and I was like, theres no Vice Onion!
So I thought I should start the Vice Onion.
I went out and wrote some of the early articles.
Everyone thought it was a bad idea and I got discouraged and I actually never released it.
And then we launched it and it was immediately a success.
So there was a hole in the marketplace.
And theyve been able to satirize that voice perfectly.
Theres Babylon Bee for Christian people.
BC:Babylon Bee might be bigger than Hard Times and Reductress as far as audience.
How much satire is out there directed towards the Christian folk of the world?
MS:Its like how Christian rock bands are bigger than the most popular bands in pop culture.
You have your core product, your headlines, and thats keeping the lights on.
What do you do around that?
Reductress seems to be focusing on education.
So they put on classes on how to write satire.
Weve all found our secondary products.
LH:And each of these extensions is so clear.
Its very obvious why The Hard Times would do concerts.
And why Reductress would help more women get into the male-dominated world of comedy.
What was it, did people just not think that there was room for another satire site?
MS:They thought Id get beaten up.
So I have connections to various elements of the punk scene, not all of which are super savory.
And you have to remember that I hadnt done anything successful yet.
So people didnt believe in me.
And you have to remember that I hadnt done anything successful yet.
So people didnt believe in me.
BC:Yeah, Ive stopped listening to Matt at this point.
LH:So do you have any really vocal critics?
MS:There was something that happened that I wanted to talk about … Do you remember, Bill?
And theyre all pissed at us now.
BC:Very reasonable on their part.
MS:Its like, be a better boyfriend!
Thats not my fault!
LH:How many freelancers are you working with?
BC:In our pitch group, we have like 300 people.
Some people just write one article and they disappear forever, never to be seen again.
Hard Drive is probably another hundred.
Gamings just bigger in general, so maybe they have a bigger pool to choose from.
Ive been in their meetings, and they have more like, one guy who writes seven headlines.
They have some heavy hitters.
LH:How many full-time people do you have?
MS:About … one.
BC:Thats a rough estimate.
MS:Were really desperately clawing this year to get Bill full-time as well.
Last month we had a little dip to 1.8 million.
[After this interview, Bill went full-time at the Hard Times.]
Our monetization strategy is pretty good, but our traffic isnt completely steady.
One month were at 2.2, the next month were at 1.8. you’re gonna wanna remember, we started with 800 dollars.
We have no institutional backing, no investors.
BC:People still think were owned by the Onion or Vice for some reason.
People will tweet at us be like Hey the Onion, hire me for real punk news!
Nope, two totally separate thingsnot even close, man!
But we havent been able to build a true full-time staff.
Its a goal of ours and hopefully well accomplish it this year.
BC:If we didnt pay people, I could be full-time.
So maybe lets just quit paying control!
Well live high on the hog and exploit everybodys labor!
Thats what online publishing is all about, right?
MS:Bill has a good point about our priorities.
We paid people very early on, maybe before we should have been able to.
I sometimes whipped out my credit card.
BC:I saw something funny the other day.
And Matt and I kind of have that.
Its always been a community situation.
LH:Structurally, how does The Hard Drive fit into the Hard Times?
And what platforms are you using?
MS:We have Slack, with a whole bunch of channels.
We also use Facebook groups to pitch articles to each other.
We use email for some outside submissions.
When we first started this thing we actually used texts, which was pretty annoying.
BC:Matt and I early on were probably texting each other every five seconds with updates.
I swear to god I will fucking kill you.
MS:I think theres some sort of psychological thing going on at the Hard Times.
Bill and I have done creative projects that no one cared about.
And this is the one that everyone cares about.
So its super addicting and were total workaholics about it.
So we care really intensely.
I think that energy back from the audience is how weve been able to sustain it.
I quit a full-time editorial job to do this, Bill still has a day job.
We had somewhat easier lives before this came around!
BC:I need like eight hours of sleep a night or Im a zombie.
I wish I was one of those people who could sleep for four hours a night.
LH:Lets talk about the podcast.
Whats the editorial process for those?
MS:Our podcast is pretty simple.
Coming out soon, theresLars Frederiksen from the band Rancid.
He told a lot of crazy stories, about getting stabbed.
BC:Popping out a friends eye.
He was 11 years old when he did it.
And he was high on PCP.
MS:Talks about trading a bag of guns for a bag of PCP.
Lars is constantly an interesting character.
The podcast right now is just Bill and me hanging out and talking to people.
We haveanother show about Super Mario, and were launching a third show pretty soon I think.
MS:Podcasts are really cheap to produce.
I have two things that I keep in mind.
Is it earning its keep, and am I asking someone to do something thats for their benefit?
So well have to keep an eye on them, but so far so good.
Weve had a really great reaction from our listeners and from advertisers.
So its definitely sticking around.
LH:What does the business model look like for the podcasts?
MS:Well right now its Bill and me, so its simple.
BC:And we have our editor, Liam Senior.
He does the heavy lifting.
MS:We havea Patreon.
Any project were doing, everyone gets some money.
I think thats why we have such a good community vibe.
Although theres not a lot of money to go around, it feels very fair.
Any project were doing, everyone gets some money.
LH:It definitely seems like something thats become more regular at independent sites.
Its hard to tell what other peoples situations are, to make any sort of inference.
But this is really important to me and ingrained in me, that people who contribute stuff get paid.
We dont always talk about it too much and we dont want to rag on people.
But we paid people way sooner than larger institutions, way sooner than our contemporaries.
And then if they paid people Im sure theyre paying them [90 days later] or some shit.
LH:Can you tell me about the advertising side?
What are you doing to make that work?
MS:I needed to really dig in and figure out how to make a business.
Weve spent a long time building relationships.
But we rely heavily on programmatic advertising, and we have enough of an audience where that works okayish.
But regardless, weve been able to get some medium sized brands or some music festivals.
Once you get a couple of relationships like that, you’re able to patchwork it together.
Programmatic, native, five grand here, three grand here, and you piece it all together.
Then intellectual property deals, like we got an advance for our book.
We do merch, and we do some live events, and we promote other peoples events.
Weve tried to diversify our revenue streams as much as possible.
We had a TV show project that we were working on.
We have this podcast connection, which is already an early moneymaker.
You piece all of that together and you might keep the lights on.
You cant buy a yacht.
LH:Podcast ad sales, are they pretty similar to the sites ad sales?
MS:Nah, theyre way easier.
I guess people are really turned against banner ads.
Im happy that they are involved.
So Im trying to mix and match and create little packages with people.
It is a lot of work.
I do a lot of grunt work thats not [what people think].
Man, you work your dream job!
You write jokes all day!
LH:I talked to this couple whostarted a bookstore.
They knew that people think youre just going to be wandering around and chatting books.
No, youre giving yourself a retail job, youre going to be on your feet all day.
MS:Its incredibly satisfying.
I get to communicate with the world.
And now, through our jokes, I think that they do.
And thats worth the hustle.
Ill be like Whoa, Im glad I was nice to that guy!
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
