Interesting post, Nick! What you describe there as IHR as trickling out without completely dying is quite what I would expect for Gage. It may remain a source of supplementary income for a while to come, but I predict he won't be able to live off of it beyond the end of this year.
Has Mark Weber ever made a living from IHR? What's he doing today to pay his bills?
(Actually, I predict that Gage will "close shop" in 2013. I guess that doesn't necessarily mean closing of the website. A website is cheap to maintain. Maybe I should clarify this as "will stop to produce new sales items and to tour to promote them").
I have looked at the items of Gage's 990, but found it difficult and speculative to parse.
Predictions of AE911T 'closing shop' in 2013 seem premature. I would however expect that there will be fewer tours since they will become uneconomical. However, what is not clear is whether the 800 or so Truthers who attended the shows bought merchandise and if so, how much. Or if they then ordered merchandise from the website.
Gage offers a wide variety of DVDs, CDs, books, t-shirts and other crap for sale. The production costs are offset in the accounts, one sees them show up in the 990s along with IT costs (= web hosting and other IT requirements).
What one also notices with the IHR is the value of merchandise can be offset as an asset; the IHR has listed $100,000 worth of merchandise and good as assets separate from property, which means, copies of their DVDs, books etc. The costs of manufacturing were paid for long ago; they now need only be housed in a not very big stock room and mailed out when purchased.
Thus, one sees on the 2010 AE911T 990 a significant rise in assets from $16,000 to $100,000 in that FY. But this shows up as 'cash' - $94,000 - on the assets page, whereas inventories are not listed at all. Which is strange
Sales of material netted $145,000 in FY2010, or $119,000 if one ignores 'program revenue' and 'reimbursmenets'. Costs of sales production, plus postage, plus credit card merchant fees, virtually equaled sales revenue.
This is odd, because I would expect these guys to burn 100 or 1000 DVDs in one go or get them burned in batches, waiting to be sold. Current prices charge sometimes $15 to sell a DVD from the AE911T store, and they sell DRG books for $20 (after buying them from the publisher, one assumes).
So sales of $119,000 would equal about 8,000 DVDs or 6,000 DRG books or 4,000 DVDs and 3,000 DRG books; or 4,000 DVDs, 1500 DRG books and 1500 t-shirts.
I mean, they did sell something, according to their accounts, in FY2010.
One other thing: as a 501c, donations to AE911T are tax-deductible.
http://www.ae911truth.org/home/68-contribute-to-ae911truth/420-donate-ae911truth.html
And let's put it another way: a total of 16,326 people have signed petitions for AE911T, which compared to total income of $434,000 in FY2010, means an average of $26 per supporter for that year. Not so much, actually...
Now, that will not be shared evenly among all 16,000 people, because of drop-out rates, which means that there must be supporters who buy merchandise and also donate, to a higher level.
There was a ratio of about 1: 2 for merchandise to donations.
