LWN status update

Posted Jul 30, 2002 17:24 UTC (Tue) by nas (subscriber, #17) [Link]

I think you should limit the weekly edition. It provides incentive for people to subscribe. It's not that everyone is a freeloader but that people are lazy (e.g. "I'll subscribe next week").

I still have to wonder if you will be able to make enough money to give the LWN staff fair compensation for their excellent work. Don't torture yourselves if the money is not there.

Posted Jul 30, 2002 17:28 UTC (Tue) by dank (subscriber, #1865) [Link]

Go ahead and restrict access for a day, either for just
the weekly content, or for everything.
Ideally you'd use the same URL before and after the restriction period,
so any links we make into the restricted version automatically
work after a few days even for nonmembers.

I'll subscribe as soon as you set up the subscription process.

Posted Jul 30, 2002 17:33 UTC (Tue) by cpeterso (subscriber, #305) [Link]

I think you should limit the current edition of Weekly News to subscribers, but keep the archives open to the public. This will help preserve your great content for posterity. The one week delay will also give an incentive for people to pay up to get the current news.

Also, if I am going to pay money to subscribe, I would like LWN.net to work correctly in IE. Ever since the LWN face lift, the account login cookies have never worked correctly in IE.

Posted Jul 30, 2002 17:51 UTC (Tue) by bombadil (subscriber, #2968) [Link]

Could you please put up a subscription page so that willing readers can
commit to order subscriptions of lwn.net ?
The fear that my favourite Linux and free software information site will go down already results in me visiting lwn.net 20 times a day in the hope that lwn.net will post a 'We continue' message.
The decision for each reader boils down to:
Either lose lwn.net or honor their work by some form of subscription which allows the editors to earn a living.
I want to put my name somewhere so I can relax again (selfish guy that I am).

Posted Jul 30, 2002 17:52 UTC (Tue) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

I believe in subscriptions as the way to go... the next is to go with a PBS
style telethon where for a week or so you remind people how much this
service is valued and would they please contribute. The vast majority wont (probably thinking the next guy will which he wont), but there are enough nice people to keep things going maybe in a diminutive way.

Stephen Smoogen.

Posted Jul 30, 2002 17:58 UTC (Tue) by smulcahy (subscriber, #2758) [Link]

I'd also be in favour of restricting the weekly to subscribers only for some time period if for no other reason than to give folks an incentive to subscribe - as the last week has illustrated, people will get off of their ass if something like this is jeopardised, but unless they have an incentive they'll keep putting it off. A weekly edition restricted to subscribers for a week would be a good incentive to subscribe.

Thanks again and glad to hear things have changed so much in the last week :)

Posted Jul 30, 2002 18:10 UTC (Tue) by crow (subscriber, #96) [Link]

I would like to think that you could be supported by advertising, but obviously this is not that case.

On the other hand, I've always thought that web advertising was lacking in some key areas:

First, if you look at other media, much of the advertising is brand awareness and reinforcement: Did somebody say McDonalds? Drink Coke! Just do it. I never see those as web ads. Why not? The Web is acting as a substitute for traditional media for many people (not a total substitute, but multiple studies have shown more web use correlates with less TV). Companies need to be looking to the Web to reinforce their brands.

Second, web advertising is too easy to ignore. If there are banner ads, you scroll them off the screen. If there are pop-ups, people get annoyed, and you get a backlash. Ideas for new advertising methods that work need to be explored. One that I just had (which I should probably shut up about and patent) is watermark background images. You could plaster a logo behind the content, with a traditional banner ad for any who want more information.

Third, web advertising is too fragmented. As much as I hate Double-Click (and I've blocked them in my /etc/hosts), they've got the right idea. Companies don't want to deal directly with hundreds of separate web sites. They want to deal with one broker that will get the ads all over the net. Frankly, I think this is your biggest problem in getting non-targeted advertising; currently there are more web sites selling than advertisers buying. Hopefully that will correct in time.

Well, those are my thoughts. They're probably not too helpful or anything you hadn't thought of, but it might be an interesting discussion.

Posted Jul 30, 2002 18:15 UTC (Tue) by heinlein (guest, #1029) [Link]

One option that crossed my mind was to distinguish between the free and non-free content in the weekly edition.

Free content would essentially be limited to the stuff you lift/scrape from other sites or that gets pushed to you in some way:

* Security
* Development
* Linux in Business
* Linux in the news

Non-free content would consist of your terrific analysis sections (which, to my mind, are the cream of the site) and the distributions research:

* Distributions
* Front Page
* Kernel development

This isn't to suggest that the free content is developed without your editorial expertise. I realize that you invest a serious percentage of your staff time in those pages -- and it shows. It's just that the public can largely get that news in other (albeit less efficient and direct) ways, and probably wouldn't be a big draw for subscribers.

Posted Jul 30, 2002 18:24 UTC (Tue) by BogusUser ((unknown), #2971) [Link]

The delay for non-subscribers is going to have to be more than just a day or two. If not, too many freeloaders will accustom themselves to the notion that LWN comes out on Friday evening, rather than Wednesday evening. To put it bluntly, the freeloaders must feel some pain, or else they will never subscribe. I know this is harsh, but reality is often harsh. And I can say this as one who has donated to LWN and as one who pays full price for every Linux distro experimented with. The Linux community is going to have to accept the fact that quality content costs money to produce, and that somehow, somewhere, the creators must be paid. It is time to grow up and get rid of the free mp3 and free software mindset that never even considers compensating creators for their work. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. It's a fundamental law of physics, kids. Learn it. Live it. Love it.

Moving along, the folks at LWN might want to talk to the folks at TidBITS and exchange ideas. TidBITS is an independent, highly respected Apple Macintosh email publication that creates a lot of original and worthwhile content. They accept donations, have advertisers,sell stuff, etc. They too have struggled in the aftermath of the dot.bomb era. They have also been around for a long time, and have extensive experience in successful electronic publishing. Unfortunately,people from the Macintosh culture are accustomed to paying for stuff, while folks from the Linux culture are not. So not all of the experiences of the TidBITS crowd would translate directly into workable ideas for LWN. Still, it might be worth a shot. They are on the web at: http://www.tidbits.com/

Posted Jul 30, 2002 20:06 UTC (Tue) by BogusUser ((unknown), #2979) [Link]

I have been a regular reader of LWN for longer than I care to remember. Every thursday morning I download the weekly news as one large page onto my laptop so I can read it at my leisure. I was shocked to hear that LWN was to be shut down and I will wholeheartedly support a subscription based site. LWN is one of the best sites on the internet and to lose it would make my thursdays a bit darker.

One method of testing the number of potential subscribers would be to run an online poll. This would give you a rough estimate and allow you to plan further if you are willing.

Posted Jul 30, 2002 20:33 UTC (Tue) by Steve_Baker (subscriber, #265) [Link]

A suggestion for non-subscriber content would be to offer a monthly preview as it were, where one week out of the month, non-subscribers are given access to the same content that subscribers are (and at the same time.) The rest of the time they are given greatly diminished content, stuff they could likely find anywhere, i.e. most of the daily news. Include important security news in there though, because that's just a good public service. This lets non-subscribers see what they're missing 3 weeks out of the month and doesn't let subscribers feel like they're not getting anything for their money.

I also think that comment posting should be limited to subscribers, if only to keep the troll quotient to a bare minimum. Or perhaps just make posting an extra service that costs a couple bucks a year or something, which subscribers automatically get.

Lastly, if you do manage to make this work and subscriptions work out, I'd just like to put in my vote now for a return of the desktop section as well as perhaps some more commentary and op-eds in general.

Posted Jul 30, 2002 20:59 UTC (Tue) by Manny_Calavera (guest, #2846) [Link]

Locking content and therefore knowledge is not what seems to be fair, especially for people living in poorer regions of the world, who want to take part in our community. I'd just pay about 10 bucks a month for nothing than getting a good news ressource. It's just about having a system that regularly grabs a fixed amount of money from your account. I think there are enough people who would pay this amount.
Some special services could be available, too:
Getting a newsletter with all the todays' headlines every day
There are sure a few others too, just be creative.
As soon as the subscriptions increase more money comes in and you can employ more reporters grabbing even more interesting linux news.
Again, i think you can make money without locking content. You just need a good payment system or many variants (paypal and so on). In Europe many people own accounts at a bank. You could add the possibility to pay automatically and regularly.
It would be nice to have a donation-o-meter which shows how much was donated and earned through paypal & co.
I hope you understand the meaning of this posting. I'm not that good at English, you know.

see you,
- Manny -

Posted Jul 30, 2002 21:50 UTC (Tue) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link]

I think it'd work better the other way around -- with the weekly edition free for all, and the constant daily stream of updates as a for-pay feature. It's the obsessive LWN-daily-reloaders who are most likely to pay, after all.

Posted Jul 30, 2002 22:09 UTC (Tue) by ber (subscriber, #2142) [Link]

Please restrict content as little as possible.
(One crasy idea would be to make this dynamic, too).
The less restricting the higher my subscription price or
support ads from my company will be.

Note that restricting access will involve some technical
efforts that might be spend better elsewhere. As a reader
I prefer to get LWN content offroad or at other people's places, too.
Restrictions would make life harder for me.

Make sure that you offer subscriptions in a way that people
can pay more if they want to.
Actively and aggressively encourage people to think about the
value they get out of a free LWN and compare this to more common
media people are used to pay for (newspapers, magazines, cable(?)).

Posted Jul 30, 2002 22:23 UTC (Tue) by BogusUser ((unknown), #2985) [Link]

excuse my poor english.

I read the previous post and a don't understand something like "Limit the weekly edition", ...

I only want that lwn get enough donation to continue.

But a man that give a donation is not stupid. He doesn't want to give some money for something already plenty of money.

lwn need a status page. Something that said :
- enough money for six mouths
- Warning money for only two mounths
- DONATION needed : money for only one mounth !!!

This kind of informations should be controled by an independant organization.

Posted Jul 30, 2002 23:08 UTC (Tue) by davidm (subscriber, #35) [Link]

Limit the weekly to 1 extra week old and restrict the daily to subscribers only. That way if you want the latest breaking news you can get it but you pay for it, older news is free, sort of like ghostscript was, only they were a year old (as I recall).

Posted Jul 30, 2002 23:09 UTC (Tue) by malor (subscriber, #2973) [Link]

It seems like the 'limit access for awhile' is a good approach. I was originally thinking 'a week', but another poster suggests a month. I think either could work. The nature of your commentary is such that it won't lose much value in a month, so that might be the better choice.

I do think that the 'security updates' page should probably stay free; security is everyone's problem.

Reasonably open and transparent books would be nice, too. This, unfortunately, forces you to reveal staff salaries (at least in aggregate). I don't see any easy way around that. I guess it depends on whether you intend to structure as a nonprofit. If so, then open books strike me as an absolute necessity.

It feels like a subscription system is the smart way to go... one-off donations require that you beg over and over for new money, where a subscription requires only one beg, and can last a long while. I'm not sure why people are so resistant to subscriptions to online sites. We've been doing it for magazines forever, after all; nobody expects Time to give us their product for free, yet for some reason we seem to think that Web content should all be gratis. Yet more damage from the dotcom bubble, I suppose.

At any rate, this is one of the best Linux sites I read. I have been somewhat intermittent over the years, but keep coming back. I'll subscribe as soon as you come up with a system to handle it.

Posted Jul 30, 2002 23:10 UTC (Tue) by strombrg (guest, #2178) [Link]

If you guys go subscription, I'll definitely want to talk with my manager about getting the university to spring for a subscription. The info you provide, especially on security issues, is second to none. I only wish you handled unix in addition to linux.

Posted Jul 31, 2002 1:53 UTC (Wed) by stonedown (guest, #2987) [Link]

I donated $50 and would be willing to subscribe for up to $40 per year.

My several cents worth:

I think you should allow free access to the weekly edition, headlines, the calendar, the Penguin Gallery, and security stuff.

You might consider doing something to make viewing the daily updates just a little annoying for non-subscribers, such as a 5-10 second delay, before allowing them to view the updates page. During those 5-10 seconds, you can make a gentle pitch for subscriptions. Alternatively, you can delay non-subscriber access to the daily updates by some amount, perhaps posting them the next day.

Access to the Archives should be limited to subscribers. If a non-subscriber follows a link to an archived article, they should see something like this:

"You have attempted to access an LWN.net archived article. Although LWN.net offers many free services, archived articles are available for subscribers only. Please subscribe to LWN.net for only $X/year and support high quality news on Linux and open source software. We need your support!"

I think the subscription rate should be about $20-$40/year, in order to make it easy for people to afford. You can add a premium subscription level of somewhere in the range of $50-$80, for "Friends of LWN.net" or something like that. But, I'm not sure what special benefits they might receive. When a person subscribes, they should be encouraged to add a donation to their subscription.

The Linux Stocks page could be available to subscribers only. In the future, you might consider adding monthly interviews or some other special feature, which is only available to subscribers.

Good luck! I hope you are able to come up with a strategy which works well for you. You might want to take a look at MandrakeClub, in case nobody mentioned that yet.

Whatever you do, you need to be more upfront about asking for donations/subscriptions. You have to market yourself better. That's why I bring up MandrakeClub, because those guys seem to understand very well what is required.

Signed,
a MandrakeClub member ;-)

Posted Jul 31, 2002 3:29 UTC (Wed) by BogusUser ((unknown), #2971) [Link]

If LWN can hold out long enough, in about another 12 to 18 months, a lot of Linux news website competition is going to go away. Consider VA Software. Given their current levels of cash, and their burn rate, they will be gone in about five quarters. When they go down in flames, so does slashdot.org, LinuxGram (overpriced), and NewsForge. Losing NewsForge would be sad, as they create some sane, non-juvenile, original content; but such is life when the market is consolidating.

Think about all the other free Linux news sites. They are either amateur productions run by one person who will soon be overwhelmed or get bored and likely quit; or they are sponsored by corporations that are about to flameout in the last tremors of the dot.bomb bust.

If LWN can just hold out for a while longer, a lot of this free competition is going to disappear. LWN would be left with a substantially larger readership, a sterling reputation in the industry for editorial excellence, more potential subscribers, and a better advertising market.

Hang on guys. If The Register and The Inquirer can do it, so can you. And yes, I'll pony up the cash for subscriptions in the meantime.

Posted Jul 31, 2002 6:37 UTC (Wed) by pascal.martin (subscriber, #2995) [Link]

Why not following the NPR/PBS path ? Let send us a reminder each month, asking for us to contribute with financial support.

I do not think that people will volunteer support without been reminded in a regular fashion. I would actually not be bothered by a call-for-support mailing related to a service I value, especially a non-profit one.

Posted Jul 31, 2002 7:44 UTC (Wed) by Deno (guest, #2765) [Link]

There are several big problems with the idea of closing down the content for non-subscribers. It boils down to "you'll loose readers".
I'm sure you can imagine why, so I wan't bother...
It's IMO far better idea to give these folks a few peanuts (mostly "recognition") in addition to what everyone else gets, and leave the main content freely available. Personally, I don't need any aditional peanuts, but do offer them - you'll get more subscribers.

If you really consider closing down the content in order to get more $$, do the following:

* Big friendly "Doomsmeter" on the front page
* Site is open for everyone as long as the "doomsmeter remains in the good shape.
* Site is open only for subscribers if the "doomsmeter" is in the red zone.
* When the site is closed for non-subscribers, they discover a note explaining what's going on, how much money is missing, etc. instead of content.

Ah, one more thing. Look at MandrakeClub pricing model. I'll give you $50-$60/year without thinking, but I wan't give you more than that because I don't consider it worth more, and I don't have too much $$ on my account either. Other people may be in a better mood, or simply have more $$, so give them the oportunity to do so. Also take a look at the original "street performer protocol" article, for more details.

Btw, don't be surprised when some trolls start calling you "beggars" just because you don't demand money, but instead kindly ask for it. I had to endure that kind of (sometimes rather personal) attacks for months, but MandrakeClub contributes 10% to mandrakesoft income today, most of the members seem to be quite satisfied, and these trolls are finally giving up now.

There are people out there who are uncapable of understand the idea of supporting something you do not HAVE to support, and they will bother you from time to time (call you names and such). Leave the possibility to post comments (this is NOT a main feature of LWN, so you can do it without losing readers) to paying customers, and these poor bastards wan't bother you.

Good luck, and please do offer this subscription so that I can join. :-)

yours
Denis Havlik (Deno)

Posted Jul 31, 2002 10:19 UTC (Wed) by eyal (subscriber, #949) [Link]

I think that non-subscribers should get delayed access to the weekly addition (by 1-3 days), and delayed access to the running stories, by several hours.

You also have your archives to consider - maybe let subscribers search and download, while non-subscribers will also be able to browse.

One way or another, I'm glad LWN gets another chance.

Eyal.

Posted Jul 31, 2002 10:21 UTC (Wed) by and (subscriber, #2883) [Link]

If you feel uncomfortable in delaying the whole weekly edition for
non-subscribers, delay only some parts. I think of those parts which
require the effort to create them.

Sections that are mostly collected news (like "Distibutions", or
"Linux in the news") or crucial sections (like "Security") should NOT
be delayed for non subscribers, whereas sections containing mostly
original content (like the terrific "Kernel" and the "Frontpage"
sections) SHOULD be delayed for non-subscribers.

Posted Jul 31, 2002 13:09 UTC (Wed) by zmower (subscriber, #3005) [Link]

Yes, the weekly edition should be limited to subscribers. People don't mind paying as long as they perceive they are getting something in exchange. I have a suggestion about pricing; let the reader set his own price. Only make suggestions of the level of subscription. That way you won't exclude that programmer in Bombay who can't afford your set level. Linux is a global phenomenon and it really doesn't make sense to set a global price. It'll also give people the feeling that you're still part of the community. Also give the option to pay by the month/quarter/year. Explain that paying for a year is better because of the interest you earn.

Once you're on an even keel, start thinking about improving the product. The desktop section was a good idea but poorly implemented. Maybe you could appeal for articles on the subject and pay for the ones published.

Chris Moore

Posted Jul 31, 2002 16:10 UTC (Wed) by jbelmonte (guest, #3010) [Link]

Please give up your plans for a subscription model, for dividing readers into "subscribers" and "non-subscribers", and for dividing site content. As much as I enjoy reading the Weekly Edition every week, and despite having donated recently for your past work, and despite a willingness to donate more in the future, I'll refuse to pay a subscription.

Just decide your monthly rate, require two month's payment upfront (or whatever heads-up-it's-time-to-find-a-new-job window you feel comfortable with), and let readers donate as they please. Make a real-time donation status available. If donations, combined with ad income, should fall behing target, then shut down-- it means either people have a "let the other guy pay" mindset, or the price you're asking was too high.

Posted Jul 31, 2002 16:43 UTC (Wed) by pm101 (guest, #3011) [Link]

Howdy. I'm a graduate student. I donated 30 bucks (in the form of an ad
campaign asking people to donate more money). I've read LWN since it
started. First, I'd like to echo the sentiments of other people who posted:
I'll gladly pay any reasonable subscription fees. At this point, LWN is the
only publication I read on a regular basis. It has a lot of value to me. I
have yet to find a publication in any field with the level of intelligence,
accuracy and integrity LWN has consistently shown over the years. I think
a substantial portion of the readers would be willing to pay the fees as
well.

That said, you need to be careful. First of all, communities rotate. The
community is very willing to pay, but what you may find is that if you
close off the site too much, you will stop getting new readers. Old
readers will slowly drop off, until the site dies. Second of all, a large
value of LWN comes from it being free; I don't want to have to log in from
every machine I visit to access it; I don't want to give anyone the ability
to track what I read and when I read it; I want to be able to forward
links to articles to friends. Again, you can't close too much off.

At the same time, you need enough of a value-add that sysadmins can write
of paying subscription fees as a business expense. At that point, if
someone's job is paying, you can charge very reasonable (read: high)
subscription prices. I might make something where you have three levels
of subscriptions: Student ($30), Personal ($60),Business ($120+) and
Departmental ($500+ for an everyone in an IS department, with price
varying for size of department). You don't actually need to verify this
too much; I doubt the type of people who will want to subscribe will want
to cheat the system.

Finally, you need to figure out whether or not sponsors will be as happy
with a subscription site. A business may be willing to donate to keep
free LWN alive, but not willing to donate for commercial LWN.

A day or two of delay is fine. A crippleware site, on the other hand,
would mean marginally higher short-term profits, but long-term death.
Of course, I've watched you guys for many years, and I have complete
confidence that you will do the right thing. The folks at LWN have an
overdeveloped level of ethics and intelligence, and I have no doubt in my
mind you won't do anything stupid (like many of the things suggested).

If you ever do go under, please maintain a skeleton LWN; a much shorter
version that you can do in your free time. That way, the site won't die,
and if the economy ever pops back up, you can return to full-fledged
operation. Ideally, you'd do consulting half-time and LWN half-time (the
exposure of LWN would bring in a decent amount of work), but even working
full time, and posting a brief site over the weekend would at least mean
you'd have the option of reopening the site at a later date.

Three more jobs for your todo list:
* Let subscribes get the thing ("One Big Page"-format) by e-mail, if this
can be implemented quickly
* (Probably #92737 on your TODO list) tie in so I can log in with my
advertising password to post comments. One account instead of multiple.
Several passwords for the same site are a bitch.
* Fix whatever cookies f-age you have. I had a painful time logging in
from Netscape for Linux with full cookies enabled. If what people are
writing is correct, this may be as simple as having www.lwn.net always
refer the user to the same page on lwn.net.

One more point: the site already takes me most of the week to get
through. I find the front and kernel pages invaluable. Skimming
through security to see if anything on my system has a bug is useful.
Distributions, Development, and the old On The Desktop pages were nice,
but a bit long. Linux in the News is way, way too long, but I still
skim it. Linux in Business, Announcements and Letters to the Editor I no
longer bother with. I'm not sure if trying to expand the site is the right
approach. In the end, it means the site takes more labor, and is more
expensive to produce. At the same time, it's already big enough (a bit
too big, actually), and most of the value comes from how well you
summarize everything in Linux news; I know I'd personally find a tighter
summary even more valuable.

Y'all are in a tough situation, but we're with you all the way, for
whatever it's worth.

Posted Jul 31, 2002 20:57 UTC (Wed) by addw (subscriber, #1771) [Link]

I posted something like this a few days ago - but it seems to have evaporated.

Looking at your 'donate' page, there are ways in which it can be improved to help some people give you money. Those that I am thinking of are people who could claim it back from their company (or as a tax legitimate expense) if the wording was slightly different. Maybe you want 2 pages, let people choose which one they want to use.

Changes:
* remove the word 'donation' it won't go down well on an expense sheet, 'subscription' would be better.
* Allow people the option of requesting an 'invoice' to be sent to them following receipt of payment, if you can get their/company name in so much the better - a PDF file would often be acceptable.
* How much: the equivalent of a tank of petrol will get past any accountant, in the UK that is about £32 (=~ $50).
* Offer a box that they can tick to have a reminder mailed to them in 1 year - you don't want to go through all of this again do you ?
* Some people don't like sending credit card details over the Internet but are happy to fax things - allow this as an option - maybe a small file they download, fill in & fax.

The above will not be useful to everyone, but to some people.

Help people to help you.

Posted Jul 31, 2002 21:44 UTC (Wed) by BogusUser ((unknown), #399) [Link]

I would like to suggest several things:

1.) First, to me, the most valuable part of LWN is actually the daily edition. I really like the weekly edition, but the daily edition is one of my stops *everyday*. So, first off, why not do like Slashdot, and place larger (more appealing to advertisers) ads on the Daily Edition pages, and then offer a way to buy ad-free page views. This is something I would be really interested in.

2.) Delayed Weekly Edition, as others suggested, delaying public consumption of the daily edition is a good idea, especially if you give the headlines but no links or content - just to entice people. I think a one week delay would be good - the old issue becomes publically available one the new one comes out.

3.) Create an e-mail version of the Weekly Edition for subscribers (if they want it) that has the full content of the Weekly Edition in a nice big e-mail.

4.) What about a downloadable archive of all previous weekly editions, nicely formatted to fit into the KHelpCenter or GNOME 2's Yelp? That'd be nice.

5.) Adopt-A-Page: You know when you are listening to the radio, and they say "Now this from the Bob's Roofing Traffic-copter One" or "And now a look at sports at the Fred's Fine Dining Sports Desk?" Yeah, it all may seem stupid to a point, but what about allowing people and companies to adopt a page? For instance in the free version of LWN Weekly Edition, you could have "The IBM Front Page" or the "RedHat Security Page"...

-Tim