LWN: Comments on "An LWN status update"

RSS Feed of LWN ?

csamuel — 2005-10-22T10:30:41+00:00

I don't know if anyone's going to read this as this article is old now,
but it's worth a try.. :-)

I'd suggest promoting the including of the RSS feed on readers websites,
that would hopefully attract more readers to the site.

I didn't realise it existed until I googled for it (I missed the little
RSS icon Konqueror).

Chris

An LWN status update

malex — 2005-10-21T07:04:40+00:00

I used to be a LWN subscriber and would've probably kept the subscription for a long time, yet. However, the never fulfilled promise of lwn code release was important to me. I'd love to have seen how a site like this is done even though the code has probably not kept up with Quixote development. I think Duncan's other points were very well thought out, too. For instance, the inability to send a private or publishable link to a handful of developers of an OSS project I participate in was very annoying. Hopefully, Jonathan will consider at least some of the points raised by Duncan and others. I would definitely consider re-subscribing if the above two items were addressed.

An LWN status update

Zenith — 2005-10-12T22:58:12+00:00

Further ACK's from here :-)

I'm actually a starving hacker (ie. a student at university) and as my first year of subscription was running out, I opted for the next "level" of subscription, to show my support, even though money is limited.
I treasure everything I read at LWN, thus makes it more than worth it.

Subconscious subscription level description issues?

Klavs — 2005-10-10T15:41:51+00:00

I'd buy a cool LWN t-shirt too - an easy way to do some advertisement for LWN, and ofcourse the T-shirt should be for "subscribers" only.. :)

Enable non-US citizens to subscribe

csawtell — 2005-10-09T01:30:02+00:00

You can use an International Visa Debit Card. I have one, it's not very expensive and has the convenience that your purchases get debited off your account immediately.

Increasing the lockout period

ElMiguel — 2005-10-08T15:31:12+00:00

I think before considering a longer lockout period you should reflect very carefully on what you are trying to achieve. If your targets are increasing revenue and improving financial sustainability (as opposed to the perhaps more emotionally satisfying goal of punishing us freeloaders) I seriously doubt longer lockouts are going to help and they might well hurt LWN's chances of long term survival.

Most people who haven't subscribed by now probably don't find LWN valuable enough or don't possess suitable credit cards (in my case it's the former, I like reading LWN's kernel articles now and then and, while they're great, I don't feel they justify the hassle of subscribing). How many of these people can you force to subscribe by reducing the value of the free edition? I suspect it would be quite a small percentage.

Non-subscribers at least know of LWN's existence and like it enough to visit occasionally. That makes us, I think, the best hope of selling more subscriptions in the future. We might change our minds about subscribing, get more Linux-related jobs or, at least, spread word about LWN to others who might become readers.

Now, my suggestion to help finance LWN is giving the possibility of reading the free edition without any lockout by riddling it with ads as much as you like. That would solve the problem of not being able to send links to the content and would increase readership, hopefully without hurting subscriptions.

Enable non-US citizens to subscribe

santosh — 2005-10-07T04:45:42+00:00

You have acknowledged in the FAQ, that over half the readers are outside the US. But no alternatives to pay have been found yet.
Please let me know how can I pay in Indian Rupees, and I would be very happy to subscribe.

ADVERTISE!

xoddam — 2005-10-07T02:53:28+00:00

Searching for the word "advertise" on this page (full of comments) found
*two* instances and one was the link for advertisers *on* LWN. While
word of mouth and Google are reasonable enough ways for LWN to find its
way to new readers, surely you must have considered paid advertisements
in other media?

You won't increase subscriber numbers (much) without increasing
readership, and there's only so much you can increase subscriber prices
by without turning away new subscribers. You need new readers more than
anything -- and they won't subscribe until they've learned to appreciate
the value of the site.

Ads aren't cheap but they do generate traffic; put them in the trade
press. Places people who weren't in the first wave of Linux adopters
read regularly: Wired, ZDnet, The Register, etc. You provide them with
enough referrals, ask for some back!

Have both donations and subscriptions?

mn_dave — 2005-10-06T20:22:33+00:00

I've been reading LWN for about 7 years, but probably wouldn't subscribe at $60/year rate even if you took away the free version, just because although it is interesting it is not worth that much to me in terms of practical value, and there are enough other Internet sites for me to spend time reading. I could be interested in donating a smaller amount; maybe even a larger amount if I didn't think of it as a subscription that had a definite period of time attached to it.

Also, it should be easier to donate. At the time you were deciding whether to do subscriptions you could only donate by credit card, so I didn't, and then you went to subscriptions which I didn't want to do. Is it still that way? I should be able to either pay online by check or just mail a check.

I like the idea of being able to donate to specific "funds". This could include the fund to get a certain article written as suggested earlier. There could be a "yacht fund" for people who think the editors deserve more money without expecting it to be spent on improving the site. How about this: Have a "free-as-in-beer" fund which determines how long the free version is delayed. Evaluate it every three months, and if there was less than, say, $500 donated that quarter, there is no free version at all; if less than $1000, it's a two-week delay (for everyone); $2000 buys a ten-day delay, and so on. I think that would appeal to anarchist types like me who would like to get some benefit to the common good out of a donation rather than helping only the subscribers and the private-property paradigm. It would be interesting way to test the effectiveness of the subscription-based system and a donation-based system at the same time.

An LWN status update

icculus_98 — 2005-10-06T15:43:16+00:00

Two things I think you should focus on:

1) Better articles in the "Development" category. Right now it seems most
of the time the feature article is just a quick synopsis of some Linux
software project that has released a new version. Focusing on adding some
regular content to this category will help.

2) Better website integration. I know you rehashed the code to add all
sorts of features...a few years ago. But the development and look/feel of
the site itself seems to have stalled. I think a fresher and more
innovative approach at this would be a huge boon to the site as a whole.
I'm not saying you need to make it web 2.0 flashy, but more polished would
add a lot of value.

Some reactions so far - a guest's view

tyhik — 2005-10-06T14:35:23+00:00

Until now mostly subscribers have expressed their opinion, for obvious reasons. I'd like to add here a one of a potential subscriber.

The truly distinctive and valuable readings have been the weekly Kernel pages. Therefore I have contemplated subscribing for years. Years ago I even tried to get our small company to subscribe, but the value of linux was not yet clear to magagers back then. I might try again now, when managers are much more 'linux-prone'. Also, the salaries of developers here in Eastern Europe are growing so that the subscription would be well affordable already.

I think there may be many potential subscribers out there in a similar position due to the growth of linux use and linux-related jobs. And also because of continuing economic growth in quite some areas of the world.

1. Please extend the access restriction to the weekly Kernel pages. It should become at least 2 weeks, but I wouldn't mind more.

2. If making more subscription levels, please keep also the current lowest-fee level present as salaries of developers may well differ an order of magnitude between countries.

3. Don't bother with translations. After all, we non-English developers want to be able to read the cool comments in kernel ourselves, don't we.

It would be interesting to hear little bit about the statistics of guests as well. How many of them are regular readers (log in more or less regularly)? How many of them are there compared to subscribers?

The Grumpy Editor articles are very good ones compared to many of the software comparisons and overviews available on the net. But to be honest, most of the time they just save us just time and hassle to learn these things ourselves. The weekly Kernel pages, in contrast, provide overviews that are available nowhere else and often give insight to things which weren't graspable to a mere mortal developer without guidance. I have enjoyed also very much the Kernel articles written by other authors, the well-known kernel developers. Shortly, every effort put to extend and enhance Kernel pages would make LWN even more distinctive and would bring you more readers and of course more subscribers.

Jon, I would really like to thank you for all that excellent work, and also for the LDD work. In not so distant future I will subscribe, for sure.

Some revenue earning ideas.

skx — 2005-10-05T11:59:45+00:00

Put Google adverts in the unused area to the left. Make this a configuration option if you are a financial member.

I run a Debian focussed website which has just over 2100 members.

One of the only benefits to joining the site is that you can choose to disable adverts upon article pages.

Right now I have around 80 members choosing to view the adverts despite being logged in. That is a pretty tiny percentage ..

I'd suspect that this is typical, and that offering subscribers the ability to turn on adverts isn't going to buy you much.

However adding more adverts and saying "If you subscribe you'll see none" might be a good approach.

Google Ads

skx — 2005-10-05T11:43:47+00:00

My understanding is that the adverts that google shows are unrelated to the cookies *you* might have.

Instead they are based upon the page contents, as spidered by Google.

Some revenue earning ideas.

csawtell — 2005-10-05T00:52:19+00:00

How about these ideas?

Put Google adverts in the unused area to the left. Make this a configuration option if you are a financial member.
For a fee, by debitting their account, members should be able to d/l an article as a nicely formatted PDF file, or have it emailed to them, or anybody else, as an attachment. Non-members sould be able to do the same, but for a higher fee.
Collate the major articles, such as the "Grumpy Editor's" series, every month and produce an e-magazine in both screen and print formats distributed as pdf files. This could carry some adverts and earn extra subscription revenue. I'd subcribe to this in a trice because much of the LWN content is head and shoulders above many print magazines which cost approximately $100 or more per year.
Request firmly that you be given quid pro quo links back to LWN from the e-journals to which you link. Similarly the home pages of the Linux distributions to which you link in the Distributions listing linked in the top RH corner of the LWN header.
Set up a "share float" starting with the existing subscribers to finance the exercise.
Spend some money advertising in Linux oriented print journals.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head at the moment.
What do other readers think?

Late thoughts

gerardmcglew — 2005-10-04T21:40:45+00:00

I am not interested in micropayments, and in fact would not subscribe if you even imply you will keep my credit card number beyond the time needed to charge it for the subscription. I doubt I am the only paranoid person around.

I would buy a t-shirt, but you would have to ship it to me, and I would probably only be interested if you offered them when I wanted to resubscribe - now a year away again.

I think ideas like forwarding a link are good. You may get the word of mouth gains. Equally, asking LUGs if they would agree to contact their members on your behalf is interesting. Perhaps some LUG members can suggest if there is an acceptable exchange, such as hosting contact details or even just web addresses for interested LUGs.

From my point of view, you have to become visible to more people. 3k people is nothing compared to the linux user base. I also subscribe to a paper magazine. I do not imagine that this would function with so few subscribers, and wonder if there is a cross advertising deal which you could do. I tend to read news on-line, but prefer the magazine for articles on how to do stuff, like deal with encrypted data systems or set up a WLAN. I think there is little enough overlap that a deal might work. Maybe even some of the Grumpy Editor articles could make it to print, citing LWN.

Or else just take out a page advert in a linux (or computing) publication, giving free access for a month with a code from that magazine. You could even put "this is a free trial", or "your free trial expires in XX days" notices on the page.

I hope you suceed in keeping LWN alive. Please be sure to share your thoughts going forward in the next issue.

An LWN status update

nicolas@jungers — 2005-10-04T18:55:49+00:00

But I don't think the incremental gain multiplied by the number of generous people is going to add up to any significant boost.

I'm not so sure. Anyway, I think that it could be implemented quite swiftly (hint: my subscription expires next month) and a one month sample should be enough to give an indication. Which hopefully would give more time to do more complex changes.

I, for one, would appreciate the ability to send an url valid for restricted articles to friends/colleagues. And I wouldn't mind to be tracked/trackable doing so.

Some reactions so far

ekj — 2005-10-04T08:33:20+00:00

Subscription levels: I suppose we could always implement a higher level, though I already feel bad that we don't really have much to offer the project leaders now.

That's the wrong way to think about it. I am certain that a large fraction of the Lwn-readership send you money not so much because it gives them any tangible benefit as simply because we *like* what you are doing and want you to *keep* doing it.

For me, any advantages, time-limits, one-time-links whatever are completely irrelevant to if I subscribe or not. What is important is that I want to support what you do. I did so by sending you money as a donation even before subscriptions existed, and I'd keep doing so in the future even if *all* advantages for subscribers where removed.

If someone *wants* to send you more money every month (seems to be the case based on a few comments here) then I don't see any reason whatsoever not to allow that. You need the money, and there's people who are happy to give it to you, where's the problem ?

It's not as if those people aren't perfectly aware what they're doing with their money. They're a) increasing the chanse that Lwn will stay around and b) helping people who do an excellent job get paid more in line with what you deserve.

An LWN status update

sfink — 2005-10-03T23:40:05+00:00

I have also wanted an option to pay more -- but I'd recommend against simply adding options to pay more with no other changes. I and a number of others would be willing to pay more for no return: willing but not eager; I don't even remember what level I am subscribed at, and can't be bothered to check. But I don't think the incremental gain multiplied by the number of generous people is going to add up to any significant boost.

I would rather there were higher prices that were associated with some kind of return, even something that is obviously unequal to the extra price. Two ideas: (1) when someone posts a comment, make it clear to readers at what level the commenter is subscribed at; or (2) eliminate all variant pricing. Charge everyone $10 or $15, but offer up the option to "sponsor a starving hacker". Then publish the size of the sponsorship pool, and allow anyone who wishes to partly fund their subscription from the pool. If you think too many people will take advantage of this, require them to submit a paragraph about why they think they're deserving, and send those paragraphs to the sponsors (matched up randomly). Or not. You don't want to be forced to spend time moderating them. Perhaps just send the login id of the starving hacker to the sponsor, with no implied obligation on the part of either.

This still feels like squeezing more out of an existing base, though, so increasing the size of your readership is a better plan if feasible.

I would also echo the call to open up your codebase, just to make it possible for people to make suggestions in the form of patches.

An LWN status update

ikm — 2005-10-03T14:54:05+00:00

Still, it's analysis and views mostly in response to the current events; besides, when you know it's a week old, you don't really care -- it's OLD regardless -- some people have already read it before you week ago :) Well, at least it's what I feel, and people tend to care about what they feel :)

An LWN status update

ogj — 2005-10-02T20:19:26+00:00

1. Higher subscription rates
2. Special T-shirts for subscribers, have to be übercool, though.

Those are good and easy ideas.
Unfortunately for you, I recentry extended my subscription period another 12 months.

Corporate subscriptions

kreutzm — 2005-10-02T17:00:08+00:00

Actually I was trying to do this back at university. But the guy responsible for the funds said: "Well, you can read it for free after a week!". I really like to be able to send *individuals* (e.g., fellow admins) a link, because I firmly believe they would read (and also subscribe). But right now I can only give them an idea about the contents, and they say: Ok, but I don't think they wait a week for reading.

An LWN status update

gregwilkins — 2005-10-01T23:19:42+00:00

Firstly I think you can do a bit better with your google ads.

I think people are getting used to the standard formats of google ads and
the fact that they are often highly relevant to the content... thus can work quiet well - perhaps not enough to pay somebody, but enough to fund your own
google ads.

So I'd start by putting a standard block of 4 good ads down the right hand
side of the page for non-subscribers.

For your own ads - blow your own trumpet a bit in these LWN updates.
Give some stats about how your ads do and invite more subscribers to place
relevant ads directly with LWN. I place some ads on LWN and am very happy with the cost per view and click thru rate.

Then....

I'd think extending your not-open period to something like 4 weeks
would be fine - but only if you also implement a mechanism for an
easy 1 month free trial subscription. Non-subscribers should be
able to see the first paragraph or two and then a little form that
says:

email: __________________________
[X] Read more now with 1 free months subscription
[ ] Send me a reminder when this article becomes visible in 4 weeks.
[[Submit]]

An LWN status update

dvdeug — 2005-10-01T23:04:47+00:00

Most of the week-old content isn't news; it's analysis and reviews. It's not really getting stale in that week period.

Subscriber Links

lutchann — 2005-10-01T04:22:30+00:00

Yes, it would be terrific if you could do this, and I don't think anybody would be offended if the forwarded page contained a "please consider subscribing" insert or even an interstitial page with a blurb about LWN. Often when I've wanted to forward a subscriber-only LWN article it has been for folks who work with Linux daily but do not follow the open-source world, and they likely have never even heard of LWN before. These sorts of referrals might help your subscriber base grow further into the market of hackers who only care about "Linux the product" and not "Linux the community".

Corporate subscriptions

bignose — 2005-10-01T01:45:12+00:00

You already have the opportunity for corporates and other groups to pay for a group subscription. Given the turnover common to many IT groups, this seems like an excellent way to get new subscribers: a geek will join a group with such a subscription, and be able to take advantage of reading LWN.

Then some time later our geek leaves the group and thus loses access to LWN. They're highly likely to see the value in an individual subscription -- and may be in a position to convince their next group to get a subscription too :-)

If you do have a marketing push, I think pushing for subscriptions from groups and corporations that are well aware that their members benefit (or profit!) from free software would be much more effective than pushing for individual subscriptions.

Subscriber Links

corbet — 2005-09-30T20:52:11+00:00

"Do you trust us enough to let us try?"

Seems like maybe I'm going to have to. I'm pondering implementation details now. I'm thinking about allowing magic links for individual files, but not the weekly edition summary pages. Privacy policy implications are worth a thought. One could do cool things like track how many new subscribers resulted from the links sent by each subscriber, but I'm leaning against keeping that much information. I may reserve the right to interpose a "try a trial subscription" page occasionally.

Anyway, something will probably happen here. Just a matter of finding some hacking time...

An LWN status update

gerv — 2005-09-30T14:34:03+00:00

I think LWN subscribers want to help you, but they are limited by the lockout from telling people "Hey, check this great article out". So how about this variation on the micropayment idea?

Part of each subscription (say $5) compulsorily goes into a pot for that subscriber. All the URLs a subscriber visits have their ID encoded in. Subscribers can send those same URLs to anyone they like; every time it's viewed by someone who isn't them, the page says "Page recommended by person X; please subscribe if you like our stuff" and the pot decreases by one cent. Once the pot is empty, all the URLs stop working. People can donate to recharge their pots if they like.

So, subscribers can share LWN content with their friends legally and immediately, thereby publicising the site, but not in an unlimited way.

Advantages:

- Gets LWN read by non-subscribers in a limited way.
- Gives people an incentive to send LWN links around; if they don't, that pot is "wasted", as it gets emptied and refilled at renewal time.
- Prevents the "Slashdot a free article link" problem - the pot of the person whose link it was would empty very quickly and then the link would stop working.

Gerv

Delayed link sending

mitchskin — 2005-09-30T07:21:35+00:00

Rather than setting up a reminder, and then one or two weeks later trying to remember who it was I was going to send the link to, I'd rather just have a tool that would automatically send the link once it was publically available.

I like Salon's idea of having non-subscribers sit through a full-screen ad in exchange for a day's worth of access. On the other hand, they certainly haven't gotten (m)any /. links lately.

Content for companies

zmi — 2005-09-30T04:52:17+00:00

The most _missing_ point in Linux, and therefore in news about Linux, is
the view from a companies point. There are lots of nice articles about
stuff individual users need/want (me too), but far too less about "how to
draw stats on a Linux system", "which tools exist to check how the server
is running", "what about clustering", "which databases can be used in
clusters, and how to do that", "eGroupWare and who is better", "how to
switch from MS Office to OpenOffice" and so on.

By writing such articles, you could possibly gain a lot more company
subscribers, especially if there's a "for companies" series. I imagine
admins going to their CIO saying "look, they got news about Linux for
companies, costs only 300/year".

I prefer cups over t-shirts :-)

There were a lot of good comments, and the idea of "sponsoring for an
article if you liked it" sound good. The "cannot send link" is a really
big problem - I tried to force some people buying LWN by sending a link to
a page which is "only avail in 1 week", but I guess people never look
again after a week. So something like a sponsored link would be nice.

LWN is fantastic, I especially like the kernel news.

With all the tips from the community, you should earn a lot more soon.

mfg zmi

Stepping back a moment

pm101 — 2005-09-30T03:50:55+00:00

Okay. Lets step back a moment. If I really wanted to cheat, I could spread my username and password far and wide. Indeed, I seem to recall that at one point, there was a subscribed "cypherpunks" login that did just that. Let us assume Mr. Corbet, rather than announcing the cypherpunks login on the front page, decided to ban all people who logged in more than a dozen times in a week. At that point, I could grab an entire issue of LWN with wget, and forward it by e-mail. Worse, I could stick it on a pirate web site, or even Kazaa. Mr. Corbet could then embed watermarks and infiltrate pirate networks to figure out who was cheating. I, in response, could subscribe from multiple accounts so that I could try to remove the watermarks... To make a long story short, if people really want to cheat, they will. Right now, I think most of the readership wants to help out Corbet. Indeed, many of us donated before subscriptions, and are now subscribing. I don't believe cheating will be a significant problem.

The problem LWN has, and this is pretty fundamental, is illustrated in this graph:

[Insert picture showing exponential growth
of Linux userbase, superimposed with plot
of flat LWN readership base]

If those two lines tracked, Mr. Corbet would be well on his way to buying a small yacht. Sadly, they do not, since there is no convenient way for new readers to find out about LWN (as in, find out about the superbly high level of articles posted on a regular basis, rather than the mere existence of Yet Another Linux Site). While it may be possible to milk some additional money out of the current readership, that amount is pretty minimal. To be truly sustainable, LWN needs to find some way to draw in the additional readership from members who joined the Linux community in the past 3 years, as well as those who will join in the future.

I don't know the best strategy for this. A big part of it is to let people who are not members of the LWN community view some content. Sharing links is part of this. Another idea is a free trial subscription (on the facist end, this can be done by verifying credit card number; middle ground would be verifying non-free e-mail address; hippy end would consist of verifying any e-mail address, and having cheaters need to go through the hassle of getting a new e-mail address every few weeks).

Again, I do not know the best strategy. If I were Mr. Corbet, however, I would try opening up the site a lot. I'd probably go for the extreme -- links to articles can be viewed by anyone, and only the main pages are locked (so people cannot find the articles without subscribing or having someone forward a link). People can get a free 2 week subscription by verifying their (potentially free, potentially only non-free) e-mail address, but people cannot use the same e-mail address more than once a year. I would then monitor:

The level of abuse. Referrers could point out patterns of cheaters in links being accumulated on some web page. Free subscribers using 26 different Yahoo e-mail addresses could be tracked with cookies.
Growth vs. shrinkage of the number of subscriptions.

If the experiment fails, so be it. If it succeeds, Mr. Corbet gets his yacht (or more likely, a decent level of income).

(On a sidenote: I think the free subscriptions idea people suggested below is brilliant -- give out a free 3 month subscription to new FSF/EFF/LUG/Slashdot subscribers/etc. under what was listed as the drug dealer model...)

Two suggestions

pimlott — 2005-09-30T03:40:15+00:00

By opening to far up, you will remove all pressure to subscribe, except for the "feel good" donation aspect. In principle, this is a sustainable model, but it has been explored by LWN in the past without overwhelming success.

I'm not sure how true that is. IIRC, when LWN went through its big "we're closing" crisis, the number of donations and offered donations was one of the factors that made Jon believe that subscriptions might work. I instead took this as evidence that LWN could survive on donations, and I don't believe this hypothesis has ever been seriously tested. My memory says we went straight to subscriptions without giving the donation model a chance. (People could donate before the crisis, but they were less aware of the need, so that doesn't count.)

I further have a strong sense that LWN was more a part of the free software community before subscriptions, and was for example slashdotted regularly. I think the donation model would have preserved that integration. (On the other hand, LWN now has a nice little community of its own.) In the same way, I think the "send an article" idea is terrific. It would serve to generate awareness of LWN in addition to bringing in subscribers. I would make it free for members, with a few measures to limit abuse. I also think making a few articles free from the start in hopes of getting them slashdotted would create buzz, though ISTR Jon was lukewarm on that idea at one time. (Of course, slashdot can link to older articles today, and doesn't. I wonder why. Does anyone submit them?)

Some reactions so far

pimlott — 2005-09-30T00:54:17+00:00

More grumpy editor articles. We want more content like that, but those articles are a lot of work.

But that's a positive: it keeps you grumpy.

Subscriber Links

GreyWizard — 2005-09-29T21:07:55+00:00

Some way for subscribers to pass out "read this article free" tokens. That's a new one, we'll have to think on how it would be implemented. Not sure how useful it would be without the ability to post to a mailing list, though.

I have a suggestion to address both these concerns: give each restricted article a link with an embedded token that only LWN could convert back to a subscriber account number. A subscriber could right click, select "Copy Link Location" (or equivalent) and then paste into an email client. Anyone who clicks such a link would get the article, even while the restriction is still in effect. How many times can such a link be clicked? As many as bandwidth and server capacity allow, so mailing lists present no special problem. How many of these could an individual subscriber issue? As many as he or she wants to use.

Why bother limiting these things? Would having a token link accepted by Slashdot really be a bad thing? Sure, one could post such links for every article to some public place. But one bent on mischief could also post the article contents instead. At least when a subscriber abuses link tokens the editors can easily detect it and take disciplinary action such as suspending the privilege for that account. The point of restricting content at all is to give casual readers an incentive to pay. Do they lose this incentive just because one of us occasionally sends links to the most interesting and timely articles?

Actually, getting links from friends who subscribe is a better incentive than access to undifferentiated week old articles. Subscriber links will be sent right away by people in a position to know what that particular reader is likely to find interesting. Doing things this way empowers subscribers to be better evangelists. Considering the torrent of replies every article on the status of LWN recieves many subscribers are eager to do this kind of work. When subscribers have the power to decide which articles should be more widely read the editors can remove themselves from pointless marketing discussions.

Where is the downside? This could be done on an experimental basis. Repealing the feature if subscriber totals begin to decline would be simple. Do you trust us enough to let us try?

An LWN status update

kh — 2005-09-29T20:57:58+00:00

Since you already do a weekly Security section, how much work would it take to turn that into a paid daily security alert newsletter service for network administrators?

Two quick thoughs on "advertising":

1) Maybe you can pull more eyeballs to the site with more authorative content (like the Penguin Gallery, book reviews, and Distributions List). Maybe an additional section could be Free desktop software sorted by category or Grumpy Editor reviewed software (star rated, subscribe to read the full reviews). You may even be able to utilize subscribers to create some of these sections, maybe WiKi style, and leave them free to others as a source of advertising for the rest of the site.

2) I don't think most people object to ads so much as poorly written ads or obtrusive ads (I believe this is why google's ads work so well, they keep editorial control of the format (maybe they would do even better if they took editorial control of the content also, rejecting ads with anoying text) and also why so many people tune into the superbowl....) Maybe you could come up with some sort of directory of software and service providers that you would have editorial control of, but would be provided by sponsors as really clever ads. (e.g. Looking for a HA cluster solution, check with Linux companies a, b, and c)

Some reactions so far

Alan_Hicks — 2005-09-29T19:39:39+00:00

Subscription levels: I suppose we could always implement a higher level, though I already feel bad that we don't really have much to offer the project leaders now. Somebody asked about distribution: approximately 18% starving hacker, 76% professional hacker, 7% project leader.

I'm frankly proud to be a "project leader" subscriber. When I chose to subscribe I thought this site's content was easily worth $10 a month, and I was by no means long on cash at the time. If you consider a higher tier of subscriptions, allow me to make these suggestions:

Starving Hacker International (intended for readers in countries where $5 USD per month is still a substantial amount of money): $2.50
Starving Hacker: $5
Professional Hacker: $10
Uber Geek: $20

That gets out the idea that $2.50 levels are geared towards those type of people specifically unable to afford $5 a month because no one in their area makes enough to pay that.

Early on, the starving hacker and project leader levels had almost equal numbers of subscribers, but that has changed over time.

Is that because you've gained starving hackers at a faster clip than project leaders, or have project leader subscriptions fallen? Here's one option to increase your number of project leaders: LWN mailing lists.

LWN mailing lists could be as simple as an e-mail on the most recently published article as they came up. This could even be offered to the $5 professional hackers. $10 memberships would also get access to LWN mailing lists on a variety of topics, like say desktops, servers, clustering, or just one general LWN-discussion mailing list. I suspect that your $10 subscribers are among the best and brightest in the community, and having such a mailing list to ask questions that don't easily fit in other places is a valuable tool.

For at least a couple years now I've been a subscriber to the slackware-OT mailing list, a mailing list that the best and brightest Slackware users of the newsgroup alt.os.linux.slackware have all subscribed. It is undoubtably the best all-around reference for any linux questions I have ever had. Such a mailing list that only LWN $10 subscribers could join would likely be a major boon for them and encourage higher fee subscriptions. You could keep this in everyone's mind by including sumaries of important discussions on the mailing list in the weekly paper just like you do for the LKML.

Opening up LWN

oak — 2005-09-29T19:30:53+00:00

> I do share the frustration about the inability to send someone a link.
One "simple" tool would be to allow me to set some kind of reminder, where
lwn would send *me* an email when a particular article becomes available
to non-subscribers, at which point I could forward the link to some folks
who might be interested.

This sounds a great idea! I'd had a similar frustration. :-)

Do not under estimate your value to some people

Stephen_Beynon — 2005-09-29T18:43:44+00:00

I work as a contractor/consultant at a company site where a software
product running on Linux is developed. Over the years I have seen many
other contractors come and go, but so far the client has always asked me
to stay. I put much of this down to the fact that I can offer suggestions
and help to people with vast ranges of problems from lvm to networking.
From scheduler issues to broken boot loaders.

A vast amount of the knowledge that keeps me in this well payed contract
has come from me reading Lwn every week since 1998. I consider the Lwn
content to be vital for my future employment. As such I think you
underestimate the value that you provide, and certainly should not feel
bad about not providing value for money at the higher rates. I would be
very happy to pay a higher rate for the content if only I had the option.
I suggest either a range of higher rates for people in my position or a
'name your own rate' option.

The ability to give people tokens to read articles would also be very
handy. I frequently want to refere people that do not subscribe to recent
articles, but often forget by the time they are free. On at least 1 of
the occations where the article was allready free you gained a new
subscriber.

love LWNs low fat content

eru — 2005-09-29T18:32:22+00:00

Sure, but supporting both the lo-fat and eye-kandy views well is a lot more work, and wasn't part of the original problem that LWN staff lacks resources?

best of LWN

stefie10 — 2005-09-29T17:54:45+00:00

What if you made a "best of LWN" page? Before I subscribed, I would try to satisfy the LWN craving by browsing older editions. A lot of it was dated but sometimes I'd find one that was really cool. If there was a "best of" page with articles that were either timeless, or historically interesting, newcomers would be able to easily access interesting content, and would be more likely to get addicted to LWN.

Related to this, maybe you could publish a book, similar to Stallman's "Free Software, Free Society", with a compilation of great LWN articles. It would be cool to trace the evolution of the kernel development process for example.

Have you considered advertising on slashdot (or other places too)? I don't know if it would be worth it, but if you had a text ad with that week's article headlines, I bet you'd draw a lot of people to the site. Seeing the next week's headlines on LWN when I couldn't read them yet was a powerful motivation to subscribe.

LWN: Comments on "An LWN status update"

RSS Feed of LWN ?

An LWN status update

An LWN status update

Subconscious subscription level description issues?

Enable non-US citizens to subscribe

Increasing the lockout period

Enable non-US citizens to subscribe

ADVERTISE!

Have both donations and subscriptions?

An LWN status update

Some reactions so far - a guest's view

Some revenue earning ideas.

Google Ads

Some revenue earning ideas.

Late thoughts

An LWN status update

Some reactions so far

An LWN status update

An LWN status update

An LWN status update

Corporate subscriptions

An LWN status update

An LWN status update

Subscriber Links

Corporate subscriptions

Subscriber Links

An LWN status update

Delayed link sending

More on article previews

Content for companies

Stepping back a moment

Two suggestions

Some reactions so far

Subscriber Links

An LWN status update

Some reactions so far

Opening up LWN

Do not under estimate your value to some people

love LWNs low fat content

best of LWN