Perhaps I’m not getting the message but it seem that much of the income for WineAlert comes from the wine stores that are posting their data with you. With your page prominently displayed on Parker’s site, it almost seems (at least to me) that you should be paying Mr Parker for giving you a base to post and make that information available.
And you do raise another issue…I too am a wine critic but to the best of my knowlege I do not have “suppliers”. May I ask what other “suppliers” Mr Parker or any other critic might have.
With respect to WineAlert’s revenue streams, there is no “one size fits all” business model. For example, some magazines are 100% sponsor funded and are given away free. Others are partially sponsor supported and also charge a subscription price. Some carry no advertising and are 100% subscriber supported. Every business is different.
While you’ll have to contact eRobertParker.com directly to ask about their business specifically, of course you can see that any content-rich published site like eRP or the Wine Spectator Online or the Wall Street Journal Online requires the resources (both employees and outside suppliers) to cover all bases from editorial and design to programmers and servers to marketing and administration and overhead and everything in between.