Quoted from Jetzxi:Now that Pinside is a business, are the volunteers still volunteers or are they considered employees.........time to get paid?
I don't begrudge Robin making a profit from administering this site, which I can believe is a full-time job and which in any event he's pumped plenty of time and money into over the years.
Plenty of sites are a full-time money-making business for the owner/admin, but still staffed by volunteer mods. The example that leaps to my mind is homebrewtalk.com, the major beer brewing site. hombrewtalk.com charges vendors to advertise but doesn't have a buy/sell/trade fee for regular members doing one-off transactions. They do offer a $25 annual membership that removes ads from the site, allows you to have an avatar and extra PM storage space, and gives you the chance to enter regular prize drawings.
I happily pay at homebrewtalk.com to avoid all of the ads, and would do the same here if Pinside went that route (would probably be about the same as the small annual donation I happily make now, with full knowledge that's going to pay Robin for the time and effort spent designing and maintaining this site). Since Robin has chosen to use the market place to monetize rather than going with an ad/membership mix, I'll be happy to support the site that way if/when I sell a game through Pinside (again in lieu of my small annual donation).