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The status of the subscription experiment
As of Wednesday Morning (October 2), there are almost 1200 individual
subscribers to LWN. We also have all of three confirmed (small) corporate
subscriptions, with discussions happening with others. With luck, we will
be able to announce our first large corporate subscription in the near
future. Many thanks to all of you who have shown your support for LWN.
So where does that leave us? It takes on the order of 1000 subscribers to support one full-time LWN editor with a minimal salary (i.e. less than they can make elsewhere) once taxes, health insurance, connectivity, and, perhaps, an occasional trade show are thrown in. So, in other words, we have made some real progress, but we are still some distance from being able to operate LWN at its current level of staffing (and, thus, content). It is, of course, early to say what the steady state subscription level will be. Corporate subscribers, in particular, move slowly. But, it seems reasonably clear that, unless we get a new surge in interest, LWN will likely go forward as a smaller operation than it is now. The good news is that (1) it looks like LWN will continue, in some form, and (2) we have been surprised before; the situation may yet improve. The best way to make things improve remains corporate subscriptions. We'll ask our readers one more time to encourage their employers and universities to look into our group subscription offerings. These subscriptions make LWN available to large groups of people while doing a lot to help keep LWN on the air. The subscription system itself seems to be working reasonably well - not bad for a big body of completely new code that had its first real stress test when deployed on the site. A few glitches remain, and we are working on it. In particular, there seems to be a cookie problem with Internet Explorer that is proving hard to track down - especially since we have very few Windows systems around here. It is not our desire to exclude IE users - they are responsible for about 20% of our traffic. We will work this one out somehow. Thanks yet again for your support of LWN. We will continue to do our best to produce a site that is worthy of that support. (Log in to post comments)
Someone still uses Internet Explorer? Posted Oct 2, 2002 17:25 UTC (Wed) by stonedown (guest, #2987) [Link] Why would anyone use the old and incompatible IE, when there is a very nice, modern, standards-compliant Mozilla browser, which runs on virtually every platform? Are you sure those 20% IE users aren't just people running another browser which has been configured to report itself as IE? ;-)The only good use for IE is to download the Mozilla Windows installer. It does a pretty good job of that.
Someone still uses Internet Explorer? Posted Oct 2, 2002 22:18 UTC (Wed) by dneto (guest, #4954) [Link] I know it's just flame-bait, but....I read LWN primarily from my place of work (between compiles, etc.). Off-topic, but I think the freeloader delay should be a month, not a (Oh, and to the person from Calgary: Isn't there a *severe* housing Thanks for the excellent site...I'm a reader since 1998. Regards,
Someone still uses Internet Explorer? Posted Oct 3, 2002 22:48 UTC (Thu) by mrshiny (subscriber, #4266) [Link] I'd like to add a "Me too" to this comment. At my work-place, IE is the standard, and if LWN doesn't work with IE I will probably cancel my subscription. I'd LIKE to use Mozilla or its derivatives, however I am not given the choice. So, IE is my only option.I really enjoy LWN.net and feel it's a worthwhile enterprise to support, and I can appreciate the difficulty in testing software when you don't HAVE the software in question, but considering how many web-apps are out there that work just fine with IE, I think that it's unacceptable to me that the site doesn't work with IE, especially if I am paying for this.
Someone still uses Internet Explorer? Posted Oct 3, 2002 7:02 UTC (Thu) by pointwood (guest, #2814) [Link] Please leave posts like that for /. - IE6 is actually a pretty good browser in regards to standards compliance. No, it's not perfect, but neither is Mozilla.
Someone still uses Internet Explorer? Posted Oct 3, 2002 7:34 UTC (Thu) by stonedown (guest, #2987) [Link] Sorry, I was just having a little fun; maybe, I needed to add another ;-))) Of course you are right - IE is a fairly good browser, although it is starting to show its age. At this time, I can't think of any reason why someone would choose IE over Mozilla (or even better, Galeon), other than that IE is the default. Mozilla used to crash on me, but that seems to be ancient history.So, yes IE is still very good, but no longer the king, in my opinion. Mozilla and Galeon are as fast and stable, but with tabbed browsing and extensive configurability which is sorely lacking in IE.
IE 6 cookie problem -- maybe? Posted Oct 2, 2002 17:27 UTC (Wed) by havoc (guest, #2261) [Link] I ran into a problem with IE cookies that was very difficult to track down.the problem I had was that (intermittantly) when sending more than 1 cookie back to the browser for a domain, IE would occassionally send back the first cookie it found rather than the cookie I had asked for. I had set a "false cookie" in the login process as a place holder, and that cookie (just a place holder) was the root of the problem. I have taken great care to ensure that my scripts operate on a single cookie if at all possible. Hope this helps!
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 2, 2002 18:19 UTC (Wed) by Manny_Calavera (guest, #2846) [Link] I'm from Europe, many people I know will definitly subscribe as soon as it is possible to pay by standing order.Hint: Don't underestimate the European market - many linux geeks out there :) see you,
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 2, 2002 18:57 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] Trust me, we don't underestimate that market. The stats from our account signup form show: UK 9%, DE 7%, NL 3.6%, FR 2.7% SE 2.5% DK 1.7% IT 1.6% FI 1.5% NO 1.5% CH 1.4% BE 1.1% ES 1.0% AT 0.9% PL 0.7% IE 0.5% etc. All told it adds up to a substantial fraction of our readership. We want your money too :) An easier method for Europeans without credit cards is high on our list.
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 2, 2002 22:17 UTC (Wed) by leonid (guest, #4891) [Link] And I am the only one from CY :)
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 4, 2002 6:23 UTC (Fri) by kostas (guest, #5805) [Link] No, you are not :)
stable url of [stale free] bigpage==? Posted Oct 13, 2002 11:41 UTC (Sun) by jidanni (guest, #6524) [Link] I need an unchanging URL of the week old free bigpage edition that doesn't change so I can tell WWWOFFLE to get it every week for me. jidanni@dman.ddts.net
How many from AU?? Posted Oct 3, 2002 1:54 UTC (Thu) by goonie (guest, #4252) [Link] I know there's at least one :)
How many from AU?? Posted Oct 3, 2002 2:30 UTC (Thu) by showell (subscriber, #2929) [Link] Make that at least 2 from AU.I also read from work during my lunch break and my company is not about to change from its comfy MS position. So even though this laptop has Linux on it I don't want to have to reboot just to read LWN.
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 3, 2002 5:45 UTC (Thu) by dmantione (guest, #4640) [Link] The best way to pay without credit card is PayPal. Open a PayPal account and skip the forms where they want you to add a credit card. Now transfer money from your bank to your Paypal account. A few days leter it appears on your PayPal account and you can pay your LWN subscription.The only problem is that unless you add a credit card you have a $1000 spending limit. I send an e-mail to PayPal explaining that most people i Europe don't have a credit card and that I had no plans to get one for PayPal, after all I was using Paypal to avoid a credit card. Two hours later I got a reply that they had removed the limit. Daniel
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 2, 2002 18:54 UTC (Wed) by doctornull (guest, #11) [Link] Do you include among the 1200 subscribers those who had given money to LWN.net before the subscriptions got started? ---Josh
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 2, 2002 20:20 UTC (Wed) by pabloa (guest, #2586) [Link] I'm glad for you.Tomorrow I'll have a meeting and I'll look for funds to subscribe us... I don't promise anything because the situation of my country is a bit "funny". :-) Congratulations Pablo from Argentina PD: Revise your code (the cache thing). When I login in from an article the page does not update and I can not to put a message until I refresh the not logged visited pages.
Thankyou for reminding me. Posted Oct 2, 2002 20:28 UTC (Wed) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] I had forgotten til I saw this today. I am guessing that for your subscription model to work, it is going to need to be 7000 subscribers at average of 5.00 per person.It might be educational to the mass audience to go into rough percentages of the various costs you listed below: Most people dont realize that the hidden costs of employment can be anywhere from 1.5 to 4 x the actual salary you are paid.
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 2, 2002 20:29 UTC (Wed) by seanpecor (guest, #2983) [Link] Your MSIE cookie problem rings a bell in this web developer's mind. Have you tried putting this in your Apache configuration file (assuming you run Apache!):SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" \ I have other MSIE SSL / cookie solutions in my toolbox, email me if you want me to dig them up. I also have in my office a Windows 98SE notebook w/ IE 6, a Windows 98 desktop w/ IE 6, and a Windows XP workstation w/ IE 6 if you need some help testing. Being a web developer I have to keep lots of Windows platforms on hand for compatibility testing... Sean Pecor.
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Dec 13, 2002 22:30 UTC (Fri) by Gelbaerchen (guest, #8569) [Link] Hi,perhaps you can help me, I'm using Apache 2.40 under Win XP, but whenever I try to use cookies on this server they are not saved. Best regards,
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 2, 2002 21:40 UTC (Wed) by mongre26 (guest, #4224) [Link] How many unique visitors do you get in a day? I mean it might be useful to compare how many people are putting their support behind LWN and others who are just well, enjoying the fruits of your labour without adequate recompense, to be polite...Oh and in terms of reducing costs have you considered relocating? Canada offers a very high quality of life and is right next door. Those 1200 subscriptions at $5ea would work out to nearly $9480/month Cndn at current exchange rates. At that price you could have one very well paid staffer in Calgary or even two staffers. You would not be the first Internet web site that made such a change. Securityfocus.com relocated most of their staff to Calgary precisely because you can live very well in Calgary on $70,000/yr Cndn. Some back of the napkin numbers makes that equivilent to about 740 subscribers. Of course that is if you can stand living 1 hour from mountain resorts, hot springs and ski hills in the winter, hiking, boating and mountain biking in the summer, metropolitan atmosphere without the crime and crowding. Some of the mildest winters in the country. No earthquakes or hurricanes. If you have children the University of Calgary was recently declared the best University in Canada and the city has some of the best primary and secondary schooling anywhere. Also with the Supernet project going ahead in Alberta probably the fastest networks anywhere too. Did I mention broadband costs only $40 a month Cndn and is available everywhere in the city, soon the province? Just a thought. ;)
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 2, 2002 21:51 UTC (Wed) by pabloa (guest, #2586) [Link] Yeah.Argentina has a very high quality of life too (if you have money obviously) and we have a lot of wonderfull things... Nowadays with $1500/month you are a king here! The numbers is the same that USA but in pesos. So if you buy a mac donald there for $5 you can get it here for ar$ 5 = ar$5 / 3.70 $ar/$ = $1.35! Idem clothes, cars, houses, etc, etc :-) And the girls are wonderfull! Think about all it! ;-)
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 3, 2002 18:52 UTC (Thu) by pabloa (guest, #2586) [Link] Well, I've just suscripted to me!Good Luck! I really hope you can continue with this project!
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 2, 2002 22:06 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] How many unique visitors? Depends on how you count. We got 413,000 unique IP numbers in September. There are 5000+ accounts on the system. That's about the best numbers we have.As for moving to Calgary...explain it to my kids :) Besides, Boulder, CO isn't bad for things like mountains and climate either - though it's a different story on the financial side. Besides, I'd probably go somewhere like Canmore...Calgary is too far from the hills...
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 2, 2002 22:22 UTC (Wed) by balerion (guest, #4499) [Link] That's ok... Canmore has broadband too (and only 50 mins from Calgary)
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 2, 2002 21:42 UTC (Wed) by TheOneKEA (subscriber, #615) [Link] Has there been any effort to make the cookies persistent (i.e. just going to LWN logs you in so that you don't have to do the extra step?)BTW, I intend to subscribe soon.
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 2, 2002 22:07 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] As far as I know they are persistent. I get occasional reports to the contrary, but without much information. Those of you who are having session persistence problems: which browsers are you using? With that, maybe I can begin to track this one down.
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 3, 2002 1:17 UTC (Thu) by rjamestaylor (guest, #339) [Link] I have to log in every time I visit the site -- unless I have previously logged in during the same browser instance. Again: IE 6 on WinXP. (Don't forget the mixed secure/insecure content when being redirected to https://lwn.net/login... and the "being redirected to an insecure page" after logging in; also, once I login the conext of where I was attempting to enter (a "$" protected story or to post a comment) is lost and I am thrown back to the main page. Then when I navigate to the intended area I initially see the "you need to log in" until I forceably refresh (Ctrl-F5).With Mozilla 1.2 on WinXP I stay logged in between browser instances and even after upgrading from one version of Mozilla to another. Damn WinIE. If not for the fact that our web application mandates WinIE, it'd be tossed.
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 3, 2002 5:04 UTC (Thu) by mwh63 (guest, #321) [Link] My setup is similar (IE 6 on Windows XP Pro and NT 4.0 SP6)and I am seeing the same problems described by rjamestaylor. I use Windows _by choice_ on the desktop because I don't
Browser things... Posted Oct 3, 2002 16:19 UTC (Thu) by dbreakey (guest, #1381) [Link] Enable the QuickStart option; IE only pops up that quickly because Windows 'pre-loads' it in the background during startup. If you want a quick option under Linux, try Galeon. I use it routinely on an AMD K6-2 200Mhz (now a Pentium 233 MMX) and it launches and runs noticeably faster than Mozilla. There's also a 'quickstart' option available for Galeon, where it loads an instance to act as a 'server' for subsequent instances--this dramatically speeds things up, if you can spare the memory (I think it's the -s option, but I can't remember offhand). If you need a Windows solution, try K-Meleon; this wraps a Windows interface around the Gecko engine (same that Galeon does for Linux). I have no idea how well it works though, since I'm using a 600Mhz P-III, so have no problem running Mozilla on Windows.
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 3, 2002 9:13 UTC (Thu) by Robin.Hill (subscriber, #4385) [Link] I'm using Opera 6.05 and have to log in again every session.
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 3, 2002 14:27 UTC (Thu) by Robin.Hill (subscriber, #4385) [Link] Found out what was wrong here - my bookmark was to www.lwn.net and the cookie only works for lwn.net.
Cookies good on Opera 6.01/Linux Posted Oct 3, 2002 13:31 UTC (Thu) by bbt (guest, #2812) [Link] I am using Opera 6.01 on Linux, and my cookies have persisted since I originally subscribed. I have found that Opera is generally flakey with cookies, but in this case, it has worked perfectly.-benjy
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 3, 2002 5:09 UTC (Thu) by mark_h (subscriber, #4628) [Link] I'm very glad that you're able to continue; in the unfortunate event that you may be forced to scale down operations a bit, have you thought about running some kind of survey to determine if any areas are more or less popular than others?In my personal case I love the editorials and kernel articles (and I'd continue subscribing at the current rate just for those), briefly read the security and language sections and skim most of the rest if nothing jumps out. If other user's preferences are similar for example that may suggest sections to trim if need be (and I hope it isn't!). Just my 2c; thanks very much for a great publication, Mark.
Just subscribed Posted Oct 3, 2002 11:29 UTC (Thu) by ndrsbngtssn (guest, #5429) [Link] I would just like to say that this is the first time I have ever payed for an electronic publication. Couldn't be without my weekly dose of articles!
Still a bit dificult for the third world Posted Oct 3, 2002 11:52 UTC (Thu) by iksrazal (guest, #5184) [Link] I did notice that there is an option for third world/unemployed for U$2.50 a month, which deserves to be applauded. I've read lwn for 3 years, and it's nice to know they also are conscientious.Still, in today's currency here in brazil, that's almost R$10!!! Each Real spends like a dollar here, and often more, so that's like paying U$10 a month. R$10 is about lunch for 2. There are elections now that are battering the currency - perhaps soon things will settle down. Until then, I'll have to wait an extra week for lwn. And that in and of itself is not worth subscribing for in my view. Rather, lwn is an asset worthy of keeping around. While its daily updates are not as verbose as another I can think of, its reputation is clearly untarnished. The weekly kernel section is my favorite, and something I look forward to. lwn is my sole source for a weekly kernel editorial. In short, best wishes and hopefully soon I can contribute with more than words. iksrazal
Still a bit difficult for the third world Posted Oct 3, 2002 12:40 UTC (Thu) by bryn (guest, #1482) [Link] Since subscriptions are only possible in US dollars, there are likely to be currency conversion costs involved. Presumably at $2.50 the conversion cost almost exceeds the actual amount given to LWN.
Still a bit dificult for the third world Posted Oct 3, 2002 17:38 UTC (Thu) by davidw (subscriber, #947) [Link] Because lwn is operating in the US, and their prices are in dollars, at a certain point, it just isn't worth it to take in a dollar or two from third world countries, even though that may be a lot of money in the local currency, it doesn't do much, if anything, for their bottom line.The obvious answer? Move lwn to a third-world country, so that their expenses are much lower, and the money they take in goes farther:-)
Still a bit dificult for the third world Posted Oct 3, 2002 18:58 UTC (Thu) by pabloa (guest, #2586) [Link] Yes I Agree!Think about Argentina? We are about to take off (in a couple of years I mean). It's very nice place.
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 3, 2002 13:59 UTC (Thu) by SwedishChev (guest, #5541) [Link] I just tried to subscribe. Everything looked fine until I got to the credit card area. You only take MC/Visa, my company only uses Amex (Corporate Card). Since there are lots of corporations that do the same, you might want to quickly change your credit card model.
American Express Posted Oct 3, 2002 14:14 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] Taking American Express requires a whole different merchant account and application process. It's on our list, but we've spent almost two months just struggling to be able to accept MC/Visa. We'll get there...
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 3, 2002 16:28 UTC (Thu) by pj (subscriber, #4506) [Link] I definitely suggest raising the 'pain' threshold a bit (2 weeks? a month?) to encourage subscription. Last week's news is still news, but news from 2 weeks ago typically isn't...Yes, this is the first electronic publication I've ever subscribed to. Yes, it's more than worth it. Thanks for your efforts! --pj
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 3, 2002 18:05 UTC (Thu) by eberhardy (guest, #5148) [Link] I expected to wait a while to subscribe. But its too painful to wait even 1 wk for the weekly edition. And for the first time in over a year I read every section.I think 2 wks is too long. Much of the information is out of date after 1 wk. But I think casual readers can withstand the pain for that. 1.5 wks though might encourage still more subscribers by the pain threshold of out-of-date data. Clearly the data on the number of new subscribers will need to be analyzed again before changing though... One suggestion I haven't seen yet: Maybe the security section should be available sooner than the rest of edition? Maybe only 1 or 2 days delayed?
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 5, 2002 18:11 UTC (Sat) by mr_bean (subscriber, #5398) [Link] > I think 2 wks is too long. Much of the information is out of date after 1 wkI'd like to add a vote for a longer delay - in a sense the *point* In the end I subscribed because I've been reading LWN gratis for
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 3, 2002 16:31 UTC (Thu) by frazier (guest, #3060) [Link] Why would anyone use the old and incompatible IE, when there is a very nice, modern, standards-compliant Mozilla browser, which runs on virtually every platform?I flip between browsers all the time. I'm in NS4 right now. I use IE quite a bit, and Mozilla as well. (All under Win98) Why? I like to get a fair view and feel for the web as many users get. I'm anticipating the new AOL being Mozilla based so I work it in to the rotation, besides, I really like Mozilla. (highlight word, right click, see Google search results) I rarely use Linux on the desktop. I use Photoshop everyday, plus I get a truer average web view using the MS OS. That's why this kid uses MS Windows and IE a lot of the time.
Internet Explorer problem info and possible workaround Posted Oct 3, 2002 18:37 UTC (Thu) by simonop (guest, #5649) [Link] As a user (yes, running IE in the office), I ran into this problem today myself while trying to get on. I found that I had to add "http://lwn.net/" to the list of "trusted sites" in the internet options. Once I had done so, I was able to enter the site.If you need further details, I would be happy to help you investigate. Just email me, the address is a valid one. I'm running IE5.5 under Win2k. On a different note, congratulations on getting subscriptions going. I've been around from the beginning and would hate to see you go.
Please mark subscription-only content Posted Oct 4, 2002 10:20 UTC (Fri) by starblue (guest, #5842) [Link] I suggest to mark the subscription-only content somehow,maybe with the date of expiration of the restriction. This is common practice, for examples see Economist or Salon.
Would having a LWN supporting community currency help ? Posted Oct 4, 2002 10:30 UTC (Fri) by copsewood (subscriber, #199) [Link] Clearly the current effort to get LWN onto a sustainable financialbasis needs to continue, but as a thought experiment, lets suppose the subsciption experiment raises half to 2/3rds what's needed to do what the current editorial team would like to do with LWN. I suspect the question then will not be whether LWN immediately closes, but how additional sources of income (e.g. advertising, merchandise, sponsorship etc.) can be expanded in order to make the quality of the effort suitably rewarding. LWN is certainly worth 5 USDollars a month to me, even if this involves paying in a foreign currency, and so I have subscribed. But some facts Part of the problem is the incompatibility between open-source Internet culture and closed-source monopoly kinds of money. The old-conventional stuff doesn't seem to be working very well in this context. Here we have a community of readers who are likely to have a fair bit of interest in each others' goods and services within a technologically adept marketplace, but a shortage of tickets to buy and sell with. Community currencies start with an assertion, let's say by This would give the editorial team access to our goods and services
MSIE Cookies Posted Oct 4, 2002 20:11 UTC (Fri) by cdmiller (subscriber, #2813) [Link] I have seen in the past many problems with expirationdates and MSIE cookies. I have not found a reliable solution, but cookies with - cameron
The status of the subscription experiment Posted Oct 9, 2002 10:31 UTC (Wed) by mgh (guest, #5696) [Link] couple of suggestions:create a community feel - there have been some suggestions already. mine is listing countries lwn.net subscription rate per capita. why not review some commercial linux based software and then include that - similar to an advertising feature in a newpaper. That way the organisation gets a benefit (and has to pay for the privilege), but it is also an interesting read. For example I was just asked to install a time sheet and project management package for a company that was a 100% M$ shop until I helped them out ... I would give the install process 9.9/10 - 10 users for free, a good package, handy for companies and much better / more complete than some GPL community projects. Normally I am a 100% GPL "type" but I thought this co. had a good value product.
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