5 ms·

Not really. From TFA: > The "subscriber link" mechanism, suggested by our readers, has become one of our most powerful marketing tools. All told, it is not a

Not really. From TFA: > The "subscriber link" mechanism, suggested by our readers, has become one of our most powerful marketing tools. All told, it is not a model that has made any of us rich, but working for LWN is not an exercise in poverty anymore either.

oblio 9y ago
It's a somewhat recent development. Just a few years ago LWN had to fire Jake Edge. I guess things are looking up and they rehired him. Good to know.
- Tuna-Fish 9y ago
  "Things are looking up" was caused by a single change: They raised their prices, especially the cheapest "starving hacker" tier was raised from $1 to $3.5, while prices for other tiers were raised but not by as much. IIRC, they later commented that this had almost no impact on their subscriber count. They are serving almost everyone who has a major interest in their subject, and the market turned out to be much less price-sensitive than they expected. They could have avoided many years of shoestring budgets just by raising their prices earlier.
  - oblio 9y ago
    It's kind of funny, considering that their target demographic probably makes an average of 100k per year after graduating :)
    - cozzyd 9y ago
      Presumably some of their audience lives in a country with much smaller salaries.
      - patio11 9y ago
        I deal with this objection a lot. 60% of this market is in the US; 40% or so is elsewhere. (That is not true of the prospective users of this, but it will be broadly true of the payers.) Half of "elsewhere" is in an elsewhere with compares-directly-to-US living standards. $1 rounds to $7 for US and parity-with-us technologists; both require more bandwidth to make the decision, as a percentage of all available bandwidth, than they occupy a portion of the budget. $7 does not round to $1 for some technologists elsewhere. You won't get their business at $7; you probably don't have it at $1, either, because they might find it difficult to physically get you a dollar. Subsidize their price down to zero by charging US technologists an appropriate amount. Many people want to operate tech-facing businesses like charities for ideological reasons or because they have an exaggerated view of the size of the audience that won't/can't pay. That's suboptimal but survivable, if you at least operate like a competent charity. A charity which doesn't have a $250+ a year option cleanly presented to its donors who are in the top 2% of the US income distribution is not a competent charity.
  - gwern 9y ago
    patio11 would not be surprised.

oblio 9y ago

It's a somewhat recent development. Just a few years ago LWN had to fire Jake Edge. I guess things are looking up and they rehired him. Good to know.

Tuna-Fish 9y ago
"Things are looking up" was caused by a single change: They raised their prices, especially the cheapest "starving hacker" tier was raised from $1 to $3.5, while prices for other tiers were raised but not by as much. IIRC, they later commented that this had almost no impact on their subscriber count. They are serving almost everyone who has a major interest in their subject, and the market turned out to be much less price-sensitive than they expected. They could have avoided many years of shoestring budgets just by raising their prices earlier.
- oblio 9y ago
  It's kind of funny, considering that their target demographic probably makes an average of 100k per year after graduating :)
  - cozzyd 9y ago
    Presumably some of their audience lives in a country with much smaller salaries.
    - patio11 9y ago
      I deal with this objection a lot. 60% of this market is in the US; 40% or so is elsewhere. (That is not true of the prospective users of this, but it will be broadly true of the payers.) Half of "elsewhere" is in an elsewhere with compares-directly-to-US living standards. $1 rounds to $7 for US and parity-with-us technologists; both require more bandwidth to make the decision, as a percentage of all available bandwidth, than they occupy a portion of the budget. $7 does not round to $1 for some technologists elsewhere. You won't get their business at $7; you probably don't have it at $1, either, because they might find it difficult to physically get you a dollar. Subsidize their price down to zero by charging US technologists an appropriate amount. Many people want to operate tech-facing businesses like charities for ideological reasons or because they have an exaggerated view of the size of the audience that won't/can't pay. That's suboptimal but survivable, if you at least operate like a competent charity. A charity which doesn't have a $250+ a year option cleanly presented to its donors who are in the top 2% of the US income distribution is not a competent charity.
- gwern 9y ago
  patio11 would not be surprised.