A quick LWN update

Posted Mar 31, 2005 8:04 UTC (Thu) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]

...a more focused sales effort. Making all this happen with the current staff will be a bit of a reach; we'll get there, but we ask your indulgence if LWN shows occasional signs of stress in the mean time.

Hi Jon,

Congratulations for surviving! But instead of asking for indulgence, why don't you ask for what you really need, which is for some of your 4,000 avid readers to go out there and help drum up business for you? It's the least we could do, considering what an essential resource you've created.

Regards,

Daniel

Posted Mar 31, 2005 9:02 UTC (Thu) by rwmj (subscriber, #5474) [Link]

1 week isn't enough to provide a distinctive
difference between subs and non-subs ...

Rich.

Posted Mar 31, 2005 10:19 UTC (Thu) by alspnost (guest, #2763) [Link]

Guys, move to Europe! That'll solve your health insurance woes, and you'll get better beer too ;-)

But seriously, it's good to read that you've met your original subscriber targets, and as always, you must be commended for sticking through the hard times and continuing to produce quality content of genuine value.

Posted Mar 31, 2005 12:53 UTC (Thu) by zooko (subscriber, #2589) [Link]

LWN content remains of high quality, but the quality of the comments has plummeted. I'm considering making a new policy for myself of not clicking on lwn.net comments, since they are more and more irritating and time wasting.

I don't know what, if anything you can do about that.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Zooko

Posted Apr 1, 2005 13:08 UTC (Fri) by sjn (guest, #2775) [Link]

How about arranging a recruit-a-friend campaign?

E.g. if I convince a friend of mine to subscribe to lwn.net at "professional hacker" or "project leader" level, I get a one-year free subscription (and maybe a month for every "starving hacker" subscription). Likewise, two years free subscription for two friends, etc.

And to make it a bit easier to "sell" LWN, you can allow an option to let new subscribers (who explicitly tell who recruited them) get 50% off, at which you get half the benefits (e.g. 6 months free subscription) per subscriber.

I'm sure we can easily double the number of subscribers this way.... (at least for the first year. If lots of them stay after that: Profit! :)

Posted Apr 1, 2005 18:50 UTC (Fri) by pointwood (guest, #2814) [Link]

Thanks for providing these updates, it's good to know it's going in the right direction :)

I'm not sure changing the limit from 1 to 2 weeks would change anything, but I'm no expert :p Since I'm a subscriper, you're free to change the length to whatever you like ;) You could also try to get user to subscribe by giving a little more of the content away than just the headline, a little teaser. That might convince a some people to subscribe.

I do have some other suggestions though. As others have written - what about some banners that we could put on our websites, I don't have a site that gets tons of hits, but I wouldn't mind adding a little banner or something like that to my site anyway - everything counts :)

Another thing you could do is making the subscription option more visible.

What about selling merchandise? I know it's most likely not going to be a goldmine, but again, every little bit counts.

Posted Apr 1, 2005 19:20 UTC (Fri) by danieldk (guest, #27876) [Link]

As some others said, one month would be far to much in Internet time. The reason I took a subscription is that LWN has high quality in-depth coverage of new developments. I think that I would have subscribed earlier with a lag of two weeks, because waiting one week is not that painful ;).

In the end I decided to take a subscription anyway, because I felt that I had been leaching for far to long. It was only at that point that I actually checked the subscription options and saw that there was a subscription level that is affordable for students. If I knew that earlier, I'd probably have bought a subscription earlier on.

I don't pretend that I have a clue about marketing, but I would:

* lag a bit longer before opening up the weekly edition
* make the subscription prices a bit more prominent

Posted Apr 2, 2005 15:48 UTC (Sat) by minty (guest, #28981) [Link]

The content at LWN is superb for technical types who have the pleasure of doing this for a living.

When I broached the subject of ubscriptions for my project team to management, they looked at what was available for free and decided that the one week delay really wasn't a problem. Hence no purchase.

Personally, I think they missed the point (and hence I and a couple others on the project team now have personal subscriptions), but the fact is, until some of the article content (excellent summaries/insights) are restricted in some way you may be limiting opportunities for 'corporate' orders.

Some suggestions:

1) Provide extended abstracts/references to all. Keep (some/all) extended content to subscribers.
Perhaps only restrict this to certain technical articles?
Perhaps make certain sections freely available one week in four or something similar (ie a nuisance factor and copyright-wise, corporates would be forced to pay for continuous access for their staff)

2)Make it easier for project managers to 'sell' this to management. e.g. 'A five-user annual license' (or a per project annual license - with project size defined) to LWN has a more comfortable ring to it than anything with the word subscription in it. (Our organisation just turns round and says we DON'T buy subscriptions, go to the company library and ask them.)

3) Perhaps some more articles geared to introductory concepts or to userspace programming to get the best out of the kernel may extend your userbase. You could then keep introductory articles and technical commentaries free, more advanced specific indepth articles for subscribers?

e.g. Some (topics)
Coverage of kernel latencies etc is fine, but the implication on audio/media/other app writers is the other end of the same problem. I've learned a tremendous amount from Lee Revell/Ingo's interchanges on LKML over the last six months. Maybe ask Lee to co-author an article on some of his experiences.
I've learned a lot about the need (and difficulties of profiling user and kernel code). Not sure where this is covered very well.

I guess I'm suggesting that LWN could grow to fill the hole that application programmers find when they move over to Linux as well as those that focus on kernel development.

I actually don't think that changing the one week delay to two or more weeks would be useful. It is LWN's shop window.It hooks people to come back.

I compare my LWN subscription with having to buy the 'latest' kernel books every 6 months.

I've paid because of my moral obligation to reward you for access to the excellent kernel articles etc. Unfortunately, many others will see they are available for free anyway and not do so.

Above all I want this to succeed.

Posted Apr 2, 2005 20:59 UTC (Sat) by pm101 (guest, #3011) [Link]

So I don't know about others, but the only content I really read is written by Mr. Corbet. Some of the guest authors are pretty good as well, but overall, the unique property of LWN is the quality of Mr. Corbet's writing. As a result, I'm perfectly happy paying Mr. Corbet. I would be less happy paying a staff of 20 less competent people to make a giant publication too large for me to read (those exist, and I don't read them). So I fundamentally think that LWN would be better off scaling back the publication (less work, no new costs, and potentially scaling back existing costs) than it would be trying to grow (increase both revenues and costs). I also think that a smaller LWN would be more robust to economic fluctuations.

I also think that, fundamentally, openness is a big part of what free software is about. I don't think a tightly closed publication with month-long waiting periods would serve the community well. I often point friends to LWN articles. This is both valuable to me, but it also brings in new people. A one-week delay is a minor annoyance, but a two-week or a one-month delay would be a show stopper. I would even consider experimenting with an even softer policy -- only provide the index page to subscribes, but allow non-subscribers to view actual articles. If someone sets up a deep-links-to-lwn-articles.net, take it down. If it's used only occasionally, to point a friend into an article, keep it.

It'd would be valuable if subscribers could post anonymously. I would prefer not to have my name and credit card number tied back to this post. Sadly, I do, because there are no other options.

It would also be nice if LWN had open books. I think Mr. Corbet deserves a good salary (anywhere between $50-$100k is certainly reasonable). Right now, I can at estimate that LWN makes 4000*60=$240,000. We add another 10% for advertising, and the total comes to $264,000. The staff is composed of 3 people. This would come to $88,000 revenue per person. Assuming 50% overhead, that comes to $44,000 income per person, which is right on the lower margin of what the editors ought to be paid, which is what the article claims. It'd be nice to actively know how much revenue LWN makes, how many subscriptions it has, and so on. Part of this is that people would be more likely to spend $$$, but part of it is purely philosophical. This is the free software movement. It is about openness.

Posted Apr 3, 2005 4:31 UTC (Sun) by egoforth (guest, #2351) [Link]

How about another tier of individual subscriber? I can certainly afford to support the site at more than the 'project leader' level, and I presume that I am not alone in that regard. Possibly a 'benefactor' level for US$15-20 per month?

If you feel the need to offer more premium features, I'd be happy with an "@lwn.net" e-mail address.

Posted Apr 7, 2005 17:44 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]

I really like lwn and it became one of three news sites I read regularily. However I'm still no subscriber, but would be for a long time now if there was just one more payment option: an ordinary bank transfer to a European account. This way the transfer would cost nothing and lwn would get 100% of the money I spend.
Credit cards are not an option since I just don't have one and normally also don't need one. Paypal is also not an option for me personally.

Posted Apr 8, 2005 15:20 UTC (Fri) by rrude (subscriber, #8953) [Link]

There is really very little difference between subscriber vs. guest
(particularly for lurkers), but further delaying access might not
convince many more people to subscribe. Perhaps lwn.net needs to nag
non-subscribers a bit more even when viewing older content? Many people
are just lazy and need a push.

Is there any way you can sell LDD through this site? I would rather have
purchased it directly from you rather than from Chapters. This assumes
you would earn a larger profit.

This site is a tremendous resource for developers. Hopefully all of the
distributors and high-profile shops purchase subscriptions for their
staff. I wonder if OSDL (for example) would be interested in covering
some of your operating expenses (hosting, bandwidth, servers, etc.) in
exchange for a 'sponsored by' on the front page. Are there any OSDL
folks reading this?

Anything that allows you to keep writing, Jonathon!