BrianKrebs on Nostr: I've been asked quite a bit lately from newer followers wondering how exactly I make ...
I've been asked quite a bit lately from newer followers wondering how exactly I make a living grumbling publicly about security failures. I guess it seems like a somewhat desirable profession :p
What does 15 years as an independent website get you? We get between 1-2 million visitors a month (sometimes freakishly more). I don't know where it all comes from, but it's not from my promotion, which is largely limited to here and occasionally on LinkedIn. But others might. With very few exceptions, I don't attempt to influence any of that.
We have nearly 60,000 subscribers to our email newsletter, which only goes out when I publish a story -- generally two times a week. And it's pretty basic: a blurb about the new story and a link, followed by a similarly short blurb from a sponsor and a link. It's all plain text. Zero HTML in my newsletter. We did a recent review of subscribers based on domains and found we have a significant share of global financial institutions subscribed.
I also didn't realize until recently how many RSS readers we have. Last time I checked we had ~ 200,000 people who read KrebsOnSecurity content monthly with RSS.
These are some of the most loyal and long-time readers we have, but it still bothers me that their readership almost never supports the ads on the site. Which, btw, are all locally served and vetted by me. All like two dozen of them. We have no third-party content on krebsonsecurity.com. The last thing I want is for a security blog to become a security threat.
I'm writing this partly in response to a number of readers who've complained they can't access the site from a VPN or from Tor. Since the epic Mirai attack from 2016, our site has been behind the auspices of Google Shield, which seems to have been more aggressive of late in blocking access from different VPNs and from Tor (I don't have this firsthand, just from readers). My point is, there are lots of ways we make our content available for free, to anyone and everyone. That has always been my goal, and will be as long as I am still publishing.
What does 15 years as an independent website get you? We get between 1-2 million visitors a month (sometimes freakishly more). I don't know where it all comes from, but it's not from my promotion, which is largely limited to here and occasionally on LinkedIn. But others might. With very few exceptions, I don't attempt to influence any of that.
We have nearly 60,000 subscribers to our email newsletter, which only goes out when I publish a story -- generally two times a week. And it's pretty basic: a blurb about the new story and a link, followed by a similarly short blurb from a sponsor and a link. It's all plain text. Zero HTML in my newsletter. We did a recent review of subscribers based on domains and found we have a significant share of global financial institutions subscribed.
I also didn't realize until recently how many RSS readers we have. Last time I checked we had ~ 200,000 people who read KrebsOnSecurity content monthly with RSS.
These are some of the most loyal and long-time readers we have, but it still bothers me that their readership almost never supports the ads on the site. Which, btw, are all locally served and vetted by me. All like two dozen of them. We have no third-party content on krebsonsecurity.com. The last thing I want is for a security blog to become a security threat.
I'm writing this partly in response to a number of readers who've complained they can't access the site from a VPN or from Tor. Since the epic Mirai attack from 2016, our site has been behind the auspices of Google Shield, which seems to have been more aggressive of late in blocking access from different VPNs and from Tor (I don't have this firsthand, just from readers). My point is, there are lots of ways we make our content available for free, to anyone and everyone. That has always been my goal, and will be as long as I am still publishing.