We Are the Founders of Hard Times and This Is How We Work
There has been one good satirical news site on the Internet for years. Onion (now a subsidiary blog of Lifehacker) had many copycats, but none were successful. Then the field opened up: Reduktress parodied women’s media; The Babylonian Bee and Landover Baptist ridiculed Christian culture; The Onion has launched a weirder site called Clickhole . And The Hard Times , a seemingly niche site poking fun at punk culture, exploded. The Hard Times and its spin-off for gamers, The Hard Drive, recently attracted 2.3 million monthly readers.
Site work is small and scattered. The only full-time employees are Founder and Editor-in-Chief Matt Sankom and Co-Founder and Managing Editor Bill Conway. All other editors work part-time. This is because they have a preference for freelancers who pay for the work, says Matt. In fact, the back end of their site is set up to automatically transfer the freelancer’s payment to their bank account when they publish their work on the site – a technology Matt recently launched for other media sites called OutVoice .
In an industry where major publications such as Vice , Out , Ebony, and Brooklyn Magazine have been publicly summoned for delaying freelance payments, and where media platform Contently recently started (and then stopped) charging its freelancers a commission of 4.75 % for withdrawing your own wages. —The Hard Times and OutVoice are a much needed step back to fair treatment. I called Matt and Bill to talk about running a site with a democratic punk ethos, writing satirical news in the shadow of The Onion, and other additional Hard Times sites that didn’t survive.
LH: How long has The Hard Times been around and how did you start them?
Bill Conway: We just crossed the four-year mark in December. Matt previously ran a magazine, sort of like a proto-Hard Times, but we got to know him through a podcast where he was a guest of mine. We kept in touch and one day I saw a message on Facebook like “I want to create a punk satire site. I said, “I’m in,” and we got together and started brainstorming.
Matt Sankom: We went from very small to quite large very quickly, and we had to find out about all of this along the way. I’m actually pretty happy with our monetization strategy at the moment, but it took us quite a while to get to it.
BC: We arrived just in time for the online postings to fully dive into the heart of the matter.
LH: What was this podcast that Matt was on?
BC: Egeland . I am a supporter, and I talked to people who were also conservatives. We had a few friends in common and this was the first time we spoke and Matt acted mostly as a character and was kind of a jerk for the first 10-15 minutes.
MS: The Hard Times has its roots in hardcore and punk. So we definitely have a few philosophical ideas to follow. Both Bill and I are strategists, and we think about things a little differently. We have an individual approach to things. Other people think, “Oh, when will someone help me with this?” And we think more: “Can we do it ourselves? What are the advantages and disadvantages of working with someone else? “So we just started our own podcast network instead of streaming the podcast to someone else’s network.
But we are crazy; we would rather spend time alone and create billing solutions.
LH: How long was it just you two?
BC: The first couple of months.
MS: When I had the magazine, I was a member of the magazine’s kids punk scene, where everything was collaborative. For example: “If you have a cartoon, send it to me and I will put it in my magazine.” And we launched the Hard Times with that approach. But at first it was just me and Bill. And then it became very popular very quickly and everyone wanted to contribute.
BC: It was a little strange for us when the first couple of people approached us with the question: “How do we write for you guys?” I don’t seem to know how you write for us? I guess come and hang out on this Facebook chat or something? We evolved from there. It was a little weird to me, at least when people were interested in it, because I don’t think we expected anyone to actually read what we are doing. It was just a creative exercise.
MS: I put together a team of music writers at SF Weekly, I was the editor there. But it was smaller, and the Hard Times got much bigger very quickly. So I called one of my old editors, Fred Pessaro, who was the editor-in-chief of Noisey .
I thought, “What should I do with this?” He introduced me to the guy who runs BrooklynVegan . And he allowed me to talk to him on the phone for a couple of hours, and I asked: “What am I to do here, what am I doing there?” Getting to know other publishers was a real asset. This is a job where you feel isolated and isolated. But when you reach out to other publishers and talk to them, they are quite open-minded and love to help each other.
LH: When people started writing, how did new people start writing, did it immediately start to change what you wrote?
BK: Matt and I, we are both committed guys, obviously we have a limited worldview about drug use since none of us have ever touched it. In particular, there was one headline in which we simply trusted the process: “A group booked in a sober place goes back to the van.” We’re like, “Okay, they’re drunk, yes, they’re going to the van. People do that, right? “It definitely helped that more people came and different experiences.
Matt and I don’t know a thing or two. People probably expect us to have an encyclopedic knowledge of all the hardcore stuff going back to the 1980s. No, I know the specific era of Boston hardcore from 2002 to 2006, and that’s all I listen to. So that’s all I’m going to know. But we’ve been to concerts, it doesn’t sound like … well, Matt the poser, and I haven’t.
Lifehacker: And you pay the writers as soon as they publish with the OutVoice system. How it works?
MS: It’s pretty simple. It is actually a plugin, it joins in what we hope to be any CMS someday, but it is now powered by WordPress and Drupal. So anyone with a WordPress blog can use this technology.
In most cases, writers and editors have a pre-agreed price by the time the article is published on the CMS. So I felt that the billing phase and tracking the editors, and walking the invoices down the hallway to accounting, and getting a check in the mail … I felt it was all very old-fashioned and ineffective. I grew up around the time you went out to dinner with a bunch of friends, you didn’t even spend cash, and you certainly didn’t write checks to split the bill. They were all PayPal and Venmo. I wanted to create a way in which writers could be paid so easily.
That’s why we created OutVoice and the Hard Times has become an integral part of that process. Bill and all the other editors constantly tested it, gave us feedback, and helped us customize it. So now I think it’s intuitive to the point where you don’t need to be tech-savvy. You can be anyone in the CMS.
BC: Yes, it’s very reliable. Choose a name, enter a price for the article, click Publish & Pay, and you’re done.
MS: It takes a long time and wastes the energy of the entire organization. In the past, the freelancer, editor, and publisher – as well as the accounting team – all had to do these tasks manually. What used to take an hour now takes a couple of seconds.
This does not mean that our freelancers jump up and down, saying, “Oh my God, invoicing is so great!” But they just act like it’s a solved problem. We don’t think about it because the money is literally transferred to their bank account after they write their articles. I think we have a better billing system than the New York Times.
BC: And often with the Hard Times, this is the first freelance writing job. This punk guy might have a funny idea. So they don’t even know it’s a problem. So if they do find freelance work elsewhere, they’ll say, “Wait, why the hell am I doing this now?”
MS: I was the guy who wrote my first freelance writing job, and the things I ran into were pretty damn outdated and unusable. I didn’t want anyone to have the same experience as me. One of our writers just did an interview for this podcast, Strange Record , and he talked about everything he enjoys writing for us, and in fact he was listing everything I set out to do. We publish OutVoice in different editions. We just put it on a new one on Thursday. So things are going well.
There is one more thing that I wanted to change from my personal experience. As a freelancer, I’ve always felt isolated, I didn’t know what my editors wanted from me. I didn’t know where the magazine was heading, I didn’t know what our goals were and what our upcoming projects were.
Therefore, we decided to conduct our publication in a fundamentally different way, where we have a group on Facebook. Instead of sending an editor’s mailbox, you are effectively promoting the entire post and the entire post gets a say in the headlines. This is not the final vote. But those who get the most votes go to the editorial meeting, where they are discussed and decisions are made. So there is a democratic aspect to this.
We also use the group to really communicate openly about what we have. At the end of the year, we have a book coming out. In regular posting, many of your freelancers will not find out about this. But in this post, they found out about it the minute we signed the papers and they contributed their ideas along the way, and they are excited about it and they are going to be a part of it.
We’ve really built a pretty good community. Meetings of writers are held throughout the country in different cities. It gives writers an opportunity to connect, which I didn’t have when I was working as a freelancer. They can meet creative people and hopefully create their own designs. I would like people to use Hard Times as a springboard. We had a writer Sari Belyak writing for The Onion, and the writers would go to IGN and a couple of other places and say the Hard Times is the reason they were able to do it.
We had several people who started their own publications. None of them have taken off yet, but when they do, I’m sure I will sing their praises to them.
LH: It seems to me that until a few years ago I still didn’t know about any successful satirical sites outside of Onion. It feels like for many years people were second only to one publication, and finally the writers realized, “There is enough room here.” There are several sites now that do this sort of thing.
MS: I was a journalism student in college when all these articles, those media reports about Vice that were like [voice]: “Vice is so cool, they do things differently, they are alternatives!” I looked at the Onion and thought Vice Onion didn’t exist! It’s kind of weird because it’s like this old establishment, and their heroes are these old white guys who have lawns to mow and children to feed.
So I thought I should run Vice Onion. I went out and wrote the first few articles. Everyone thought it was a bad idea, I got disappointed and never really released it. It wasn’t until a few years later that I met Bill, and Bill believes in the idea and helped me refine and redirect it. And then we launched it, and it was immediately crowned with success. So there is a hole in the market.
I think Reductress has found another hole in the fact that there are many magazines out there that demean women, even if they are for women. And they were able to make great fun of this voice. For Christians, there is the Babylonian bee.
BC: Babylonian Bee may be more than Hard Times and Reductress in terms of audience. How much satire is directed at the Christian people of the world?
MS: It looks like Christian rock bands are bigger than the most popular bands in pop culture. I think Babylon Bee, when I last checked, has roughly 2.6, 3 million unique visitors, Hard Times roughly 2.2, and Reductress roughly 1.2 or 800,000 or something.
It was fun and exciting to see other sites, how we all work and what our priorities are. You have your main product, your headlines, and that keeps the light going. What are you doing about this? The Hard Times does concerts, and Bill does monthly live shows in Los Angeles, and we created [OutVoice]. Babylon Bee has a paid subscription where you can join their pitch group and become a pitcher if you pay. Reductress seems to focus on education. So they give lessons on how to write satire. We’ve all found our minor products.
LH: And each of these extensions are so clear. It’s pretty obvious why The Hard Times is doing concerts. And why Reductress will help more women get into the male-dominated comedy world.
You mentioned when you started, even before you invited Bill, you were discouraged by some negative reviews. What was it, didn’t people just think there was room for another satirical site?
MS: They thought they would beat me.
I toured the US with a DIY punk band, I slept on the floor, squatted and stuff like that. So I have connections with various elements of the punk scene, not all of which are super naughty. There is a popular phrase in our subculture: “Talking shit is getting hit,” and there are many very serious people, brigades, gangs and the like.
And the thought that we’re going to play a trick on some sacred cows … hasn’t been done before in a way that doesn’t cause a lot of drama. And you must remember that I haven’t done anything good yet. So people didn’t believe in me. There was a strange transition in my life, when it was before, I threw out ideas and people told me to shut up. Now – sometimes the people I’m close to, Bill still tells me to shut up – but a lot of other people, if I have ideas, at least listen to me now.
BC: Yes, now I stopped listening to Matt.
LH: So do you have any really active critics?
MS: Something happened that I wanted to talk about … Do you remember, Bill?
BC: I mean the only time was that one infamous phone call I got …
MS: Let’s just say we are threatened by elements of the punk scene.
But one day we published an article, “Fun Dating Ideas You Will Never Get Because Dating Guys In The Group.” This group came to town and we booked their concert and they were furious. They turned their backs on our live guy, they acted very low-key, and in the end one of us had to say, “Guys, what’s going on, why are you idiots?” They said, “Well, this article just came out and all of our girlfriends shared it in a group chat right before we went on tour. And now they are all mad at us. “
BC: Very sensible of them.
MS: It’s like being the best guy! It is not my fault!
LH: How many freelancers do you work with?
BC: There are about 300 people in our pitch group. Some people just write one article and they disappear forever and they will never be seen again. And then there are people who are passionate about the process, and there are, say, 50 to 100 of them per month. Hard drive, probably a hundred more. In general, the games are just bigger, so maybe they have more choices.
MS: A year and a half ago we expanded to a new vertical called Hard Drive, and now it’s as popular as the Hard Times. I’ve been to their meetings, and they have more of one guy writing seven headlines. They have heavy hitters. I think we’re the only site outside of Onion to successfully launch a popular new vertical that is self-contained and has its own audience.
LH: How many full-time employees do you have?
MS: About … one.
BC: This is a rough estimate.
MS: This year we’re really trying desperately to get Bill full time. Last month we dropped slightly to 1.8 million. Bill and I spoke, and when we have 2.5 million unique users per month, we have enough to attract Bill. But it’s kind of a catch-22, because to get to this point, our team will need to spend more energy, but this energy is wasted in their day-to-day work. [After this interview, Bill went full-time to the Hard Times.]
Our monetization strategy is good, but our traffic is not entirely stable. In one month we are at the level of 2.2, the next – at the level of 1.8. If we could get to 2.5 and stay at that high level, we could hire a second full-time employee.
Remember, we started with $ 800. We have no institutional support, no investors.
BC: People still somehow think we belong to Onion or Vice. People will tweet us: “Hey Onion, hire me to get the real punk news!” No, two completely different things – even close to each other!
MS: Everybody gets paid here; editors receive a monthly stipend, and freelancers get a royalty for a photo or article, and it pays out very quickly. But we were unable to gather a full-time staff. This is our goal, and I hope we will achieve it this year.
BC: If we didn’t pay people, I could work full time. So maybe let’s just stop controlling payment! We will eat high and exploit everyone’s work! That’s what online publishing is, right?
MS: Bill understands our priorities well. We paid people very early, maybe earlier than we should. Sometimes I pulled out my credit card. Perhaps we could convince people to write for free, and perhaps we could have more people working full time, but.
BC: I saw something funny the other day. Someone tweeted us after an article like “Time Travel Punk Calls for Young Me to Sell” and this guy said, “I grew up in the punk scene and that taught me a lesson in hating money.” And Matt and I have it. We have to take care of other people first because heck we can keep working and working and it will eventually happen, but it was never a “us first” situation. It has always been a social situation.
LH: How does the Hard Drive fit in structurally difficult times? What platforms do you use?
MS: We have Slack with many channels. There is an editor’s channel, there is a hard drive channel and a Hard Times channel, a channel for a book, a channel for a podcast network. We also use Facebook groups to suggest articles to each other. We use email for some third party content. When we first started doing this, we actually used lyrics, which was pretty frustrating.
BC: Matt and I were probably texting each other every five seconds at first, announcing updates. My wife, my girlfriend at the time, said, “You can’t have that fucking phone when we are having dinner. I swear to god I’ll kill you, damn it.
MS: I think there is a psychological problem going on in the Hard Times. Bill and I were involved in creative projects that no one cared about. And this is what everyone cares about. So it’s super addictive, and we’re all hard workaholics in that regard. Because all our favorite musicians love this site and people talk to us about it and they send us fucking love letters and stuff like that. So we care a lot. I think the energy returned by the audience is how we were able to handle it. I quit my full-time job as an editor to do this, Bill still has a day job. Before this happened, we had a slightly easier life!
BC: I need to sleep eight hours a night, otherwise I’m a zombie. I wish I was one of those people who can sleep four hours a day. But I’m like, “Damn it, this is a dream, I’m fucking wasting a lot of time.”
LH: Let’s talk about a podcast. What is the editorial process for them?
MS: Our podcast is pretty simple. Bill has a lot of podcasting experience and we wanted to talk to the musicians, comics, and creators of the Hard Times universe that we admire and respect. Lars Frederiksen of the Rancid group will be out soon. He told many crazy stories about how he was stabbed.
BC: Pop out a friend’s eye. He was 11 when he did it. And he was high on PCP.
MS: Talking about exchanging a gun bag for a PCP bag. Lars is always an interesting character.
Right now, the podcast is just Bill and I hanging out and talking to people. We have another Super Mario show and I think we will be launching a third show soon. We are his demo. And I think it will be hosted by Keith Buckley from [metalcore band] Every Time I Die .
LH: This is also something you should watch out for and say, “Is it profitable?”
MS: Podcasts are really cheap to produce. I mean two things. Does he make money on himself, and am I asking someone to do something for his benefit? I think it would be wrong to ask someone to keep doing things that didn’t help them. So we’ll have to keep an eye on them, but so far so good. Our listeners and advertisers spoke very warmly of us. So it definitely remains.
LH: What does the podcast business model look like?
MS: Well, Bill and I are now, so it’s simple.
BC: And we have our editor, Liam Senior. He does the hard work.
MS: We have Patreon . Before we start, we prepared a document that described how we would divide the profits, and all participants receive some money. Every project we do gets paid. I think that’s why we have such a good vibe in the community. While there isn’t much money out there, it seems fair enough.
LH: It definitely looks like it has become more regular on independent sites.
MS: Yes. It is difficult to say what other people’s situations are in order to draw any conclusions. But there were situations where I could see very clearly that people can pay people and they cannot.
But it really matters to me and is ingrained in me so that the people who contribute get paid. The Hard Times is not a cash cow, there is no real money, but you get paid. And if it’s a sponsored post, you get paid more. We don’t always talk about it too much and we don’t want to bash people. But we paid people much earlier than the larger institutions, much earlier than our contemporaries.
BC: I think it was our system that pushed other [sites] at our level to start paying people.
MS: Now [some sites], even if they were paying their people, the first thing they had to do was beg their audience to give them money or whatever. And then if they pay people, I’m sure they pay them [90 days later] or some other shit.
LH: Can you tell me about the advertisement? I have contributed to a few small publications and it has always seemed very difficult to make enough money when you are too small for the giant advertisers to treat you like a single account. What are you doing to make this work?
MS: I needed to really figure out and understand how to run a business. I went to Joseph Fullman, who is VP of Marketing at Onion, and he told me a lot. We have been building relationships for a long time. But we rely heavily on programmatic advertising, and we have enough audiences, and that works fine. Mix that with native ads like [Internet Linking Platform ] Taboola , which doesn’t make a lot of money , but they write you a check for five thousand at the end of the month and that helps.
We have rarely been able to attract big advertisers – although I think Vans, Converse, Ray-Ban, Red Bull, I feel like they are wrong not to advertise on our website.
But still, we were able to get a few mid-sized brands or a few music festivals. We’ve built relationships with the owners of several music festivals – one company owns a whole bunch of music festivals – and we’ll sell them a combo pack, ten thousand dollars or something, and that’ll be a podcast, banner ad. sponsored content, all the promotional products we have.
Once you have a couple of these relationships, you can add them together. Software, native, five thousand here, three here, and you put it all together. Then we talk about intellectual property, as if we received an advance payment for our book. We do merchandise, host multiple live events, and promote other people’s events. We have tried to diversify our revenue streams as much as possible. We had a TV show project that we were working on. We have a podcast network that has already started to make money. You put it all together and you can keep the lights on. You cannot buy a yacht.
LH: Are podcast ad sales very similar to website ad sales?
MS: No, they are much simpler. I think people are really against banner ads. Because we have millions and millions of eyeballs [hard to sell ads for], but I have a podcast that I think is a new hit, and every advertiser I met jumped on board ASAP. I am happy that they are involved.
One of our first podcast advertisers was a tech company called LANDR, and they not only became a sponsor, but they bought sponsored content, so they now sponsor the editorial office as well. So I’m trying to mix and match and create small packages with people. This is a lot of work. I do a lot of rough work that is not [what people think]. “Man, you work your dream! You write jokes all day! ” Not really.
LH: I spoke to this couple who opened a bookstore . They knew that people thought you would just wander around and chat with books. No, you are in retail, you will be on your feet all day. But when you do it for something that you started, and you also advance the vision, it is very rewarding.
MS: It’s incredibly gratifying. I can communicate with the world. When I was in my groups – I don’t remember if I had anything important – but nobody listened to me. And now, because of our jokes, I think so. And it’s worth it. I really feel like there are going to be a lot of people starting their careers at the Hard Times, I’m about fifty years old, and I’m going to point to the TV and say, “This person first wrote in the Hard Times. … “
BC: I look forward to being the personal assistant of one of our best writers someday. I’ll say, “Wow, I’m glad I was nice to this guy!”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.