Hi there,

I'm Parker and I started the subreddit and run lifeprotips.com.

Most of this is correct, and doesn't need to be a secret. I registered the domain for the site around the same time I made the subreddit (in 2010 -- years before it became a default sub).

I began working on the site as a side project to be ancillary to the subreddit, where you could post guides (never implemented), and browse tips by category (something reddit does horribly through a flair system hack).

To my surprise the subreddit started growing organically. Most likely because I used to oversee all tips that were getting submitted and I had a pretty fine-grained control over it (and we didn't have as many moderators).

When reddit decided to make it a default sub, there wasn't much of a choice on our end and it happened quickly. From there, the quality started to quickly dilute. I felt that I needed to get the site (lifeprotips.com) finished before the brand died. I launched the site, but it never really saw the traffic I was hoping for to sustain the community.

I've been building sites for a long time and this is more of a side project than anything to me. I certainly don't make enough money to live off of this, but I would like the site to be self-sustainable. There are costs that go into running a website such as:

1. Servers
2. Sending transactional emails
3. Source control (Github)
4. S3 (Cloudfront)
5. My time

For the record, we also allow Imgur.com for submissions and we have since we started re-allowing images (there was a point after the default where we had to turn off link submissions due to karma whoring). And no, we don't use bots to downvote anything other than lifeprotips.com links.

Next time you attempt to start a lynch mob for a subreddit, look at the sidebar and message any of the moderators. We're more than happy to respond, and will answer your questions.