A new era for LWN
A new era for LWN
Posted Sep 25, 2002 17:32 UTC (Wed) by ksmathers (guest, #2353)Parent article: A new era for LWN
Ok, I signed up. And not even as an out of work hacker. I would however very much like to see a better discount for signing up for a year -- the current rate of $60/yr is just a straight sum of $5/mo, which is IMHO a bit excessive. Usually magazines give about a 40% discount for a year advance subscription, which would get us closer to my personal comfort zone.
In addition it may help you to place advertising if you poll your readership for their job positions, salary, age, and so forth. In aggregate those numbers shouldn't cause any fears of loss of privacy, but they do establish the demographic group you are serving so when you go to HP and ask them if they would like to place an ad they can tell what audience they will be reaching.
All IMHO naturally.
Posted Sep 25, 2002 18:28 UTC (Wed)
by corbet (editor, #1)
[Link] (4 responses)
If things look solid in the future, we'll reconsider all this.
About polling readers: we do that at account creation time.
Posted Sep 25, 2002 21:50 UTC (Wed)
by ksmathers (guest, #2353)
[Link] (1 responses)
Normally magazines will attempt to sell their mailing lists
to some competing organization when they die, often in exchange
for some coverage of the existing subscriptions, but that always
varies. Anyway, I still think you'd be doing both yourself and
us a big favor by encouraging the yearly subscriptions.
Posted Sep 26, 2002 13:28 UTC (Thu)
by AAP (guest, #721)
[Link]
Posted Sep 26, 2002 1:29 UTC (Thu)
by freelsjd (guest, #250)
[Link]
Posted Sep 28, 2002 4:18 UTC (Sat)
by tuxave (guest, #4781)
[Link]
Posted Sep 27, 2002 17:54 UTC (Fri)
by jhoyt (subscriber, #3927)
[Link]
The lack of a one-year discount is an explicit decision: we kind of want to encourage the monthly subscriptions, even if they cost us a bit more. Should LWN eventually end up closing down, we don't want to let down a bunch of people who have paid for a long time and don't get the service they paid for. Monthly payments also smooth out the cash flow, and force us to live within our real means.
Annual discounts
Yeah, I know that you won't be able to refund unused portions of
subscriptions if you go bankrupt. Of course I haven't ever gotten
a refund from any other news source, online or offline, that has
gone belly up either, so I don't exactly expect it. What are you
worried about, that I'll put a $40 lien on your house?
Annual discounts
I agree. I have too many monthly bills as it is. I'd rather pay for a whole year and not worry about annoying reminders for awhile.
Annual discounts
Play to win! Don't play "not to lose"Annual discounts
You should really book subscription income as a liability and only move small portions to revenue as you fulfill each week of a subscriber's subscription. This provides you the benefit of only having money from the current week's payments as expendable as well as building up a cushion with steady predictable revenues for the future.
Annual discounts
LWN is CHEAP at $60/yr. LWN as a magazine that is supportA new era for LWN
primaryly buy subscription. Printed magazines that have no
ads cost US$100+ per-year and there are not discounts.
The magazines that give 40% discounts make almost no
money from subscription, all of the revenue comes from
ads. And the price for the ads is based on the cirulation
of the magazine. Which is why you have the 40% discount, to
get the cirulation up.