Part of the reason I've been thinking about pricing a lot recently, as mentioned in a few posts over the last couple weeks, is that I've had more than a few people ask us where we get all the money to do what we do. The answer to this is much simpler than the answer to how to price programs and products effectively. AoPS has been able to expand so quickly because (a) Sandor has been so busy and doing so well at Jane Street Capital that he turned over his share of the publishing of the original AoPS books to our company in return for a royalty agreement and (b) I have savings from my time trading at D.E. Shaw to invest in the company. (I'll also note that both Jane Street and D. E. Shaw group are continued supporters of our work - Jane Street by sponsoring the Careers in Mathematics Forum and D. E. Shaw group by sponsoring WOOT.)

Indeed, we aren't bringing in nearly enough money from programs we created since I started working on AoPS 2.5 years ago to fund the company entirely, but part of that is because we have this habit of hiring whenever we start bringing in more money. Last year we added Vanessa and Valentin part-time and Dave full-time. This year we are adding past Canadian IMO team member Naoki Sato (in a month or so). And both years we have had a group of summer employees.

From a business standpoint, it's not really even that important that we be making money now - we're a very, very young company. Furthermore, part of the reason I left a very successful financial career was that I learned that maximizing money wasn't important to my happiness. I do, though, hope by the end of next year to be able to do something I've avoided since starting AoPS - receive a paycheck myself .