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Over the years of occasionally reading LWN articles I've never noticed, or at least internalized, that LWN is subscription supported. Not saying they should in
by tlrobinson 10y ago
Over the years of occasionally reading LWN articles I've never noticed, or at least internalized, that LWN is subscription supported.
Not saying they should introduce annoying "subscribe now!" modals, but they definitely could sell it a little harder.
- Analemma_ 10y agoLWN articles are paywalled, but subscribers can generate public "subscriber links", which are the ones that get shared to HN. This is such a double-edged sword: it's great for visibility, but as you've shown, it means people can read your content for a long time and never even know that subscriptions are available. That trend only gets stronger as more people go through aggregators like HN/Reddit. Hopefully "pledge drives" like this bring in enough new revenue that they can keep the current system going.
- dublinben 10y agoThey could make it significantly more clear that you are viewing a free preview, provided by the subscriber who shared it with you. It seems like a lost opportunity for conversions to omit this from the page.
- notatoad 10y agoThey do exactly that on their paid content. This article is a free public post, not a subscriber link, so no message. For example, https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/695910/61948e743f7054ec/ https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/695910/61948e743f7054ec/
- umbs 10y ago"LWN articles are paywalled" It is paywalled for a short period (2 weeks??). After that, everyone can read their articles for free.
- JoshTriplett 10y agoOne week, and only for a subset of articles; some articles are available to everyone immediately.