LWN update

[Posted October 23, 2002 by corbet]

As of this writing, the LWN.net subscriber count has just passed 2100. That's a far cry from our (near-term) goal of 4000, but the trend is in the right direction. Many thanks to all of you who have subscribed, you have gone a long way toward putting LWN on a solid financial foundation. For the rest of you, will you consider subscribing now?

For those of you who took out monthly subscriptions: we are now one month into the subscription experiment, so the first round of automatic billing is beginning to happen. We have recently added a transaction list to the "My Account" area; if you have bought a subscription from LWN you can see a summary of all charges there. It is also possible to generate a printable receipt should you need one.

We are continuing work on the site code to better support the subscription features and our readers. Near-term plans include a gift certificate capability and the integration of the text ad system into the main LWN server. There have been a few requests for a stable (constant) link to the most recent, freely available Weekly Edition; we will be hacking that one up shortly. (Remember also that there is a mailing list available for those who want to know when content becomes free; you can sign up in the "My Account" area). Oh, yes, we haven't forgotten the search engine problem either. Before too long, however, we want to start putting less effort into site code hacking and more into providing the best content we can.

For those of you wishing to pay with American Express: we have an AX merchant account now, but the process of getting it connected up to our credit card gateway is taking a little longer than we had hoped. With luck, that will get sorted out soon.

That is where things stand for this week. Thanks to all of you for your support.

LWN update

Posted Oct 23, 2002 16:30 UTC (Wed) by Manny_Calavera (guest, #2846) [Link] (6 responses)

What about the promised European bank account?

regs,
Manny

LWN update

Posted Oct 23, 2002 16:41 UTC (Wed) by jwharmanny (guest, #971) [Link]

Yes, please, please, open an account in Europe.

I don't have a credit card, so the standard paying methods (including PayPal) don't work. A European account would solve the problem for most of us, because a direct transfer would then be possible.

Euro account

Posted Oct 23, 2002 16:46 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (4 responses)

There is somebody working on it, but this isn't going to be a trivial thing for us to do. Opening an account is easy; figuring how to hook it electronically into our subscription system so that it associates transfers with purchases will be harder. So it's high on our list, but I really can't promise we'll have it anytime soon.

Euro account

Posted Oct 23, 2002 17:30 UTC (Wed) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

Having seen other US companies deal with setting up account transactions in Europe and trying to tie it in I can understand completely. One company found that for a quick transfer they ended up paying about $10.00 per conversion. When you are only charging $10.00/month for the subscription.. it is a problem.

There are also all the tax implications, the setting up a European subsidiary so that EU taxes get paid, and any customs paperwork (which may not be a big factor since there isnt a physical component).

Here is a possible solution that might not take the usual 6-8 months to deal with paperwork, conversion costs, and legal work that might eat up all the payments anyway.

It would be to work with an established European Linux company that would act as a middleman for a fee. People in Europe mail in their checks etc, the company oks the payments and pays the taxes, and then once a week 'buys' from LWN subscriptions for these people. Of course, there would have to be an additional cost for Europeans to pay for the physical people to do this.

Euro account

Posted Oct 24, 2002 11:07 UTC (Thu) by gerard (guest, #1478) [Link] (1 responses)

>> Opening an account is easy;

Actually no, depends on which European Country. Some (like Germany) require you to have a "pressence" in the country.

Also there is no Central European Clearing system, so it can be expensive to transfer monies between Euro Countries.

Euro account

Posted Oct 24, 2002 15:28 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

I had forgotten about the physical presence in countries to do business. In the end doing business outside of your own country (no matter what the country) is still pretty byzantine (sp). I would say that people outside of the US who really want to subscribe and not just whine should just look into getting the funds converted and sent over via bank check. [I have had to do it to send to funds outside of the US.]

Euro account

Posted Oct 24, 2002 12:46 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

One other little comment. If you do this, your European setup should allow charging credit cards as well as banks. My biggest beef about subscribing is that if I'm billed in dollars, I get stung badly for forex charges, which is why I'm not thinking about a monthly sub - possibly quarterly? Seeing as you can bill (most) Europeans in Euros as their native currency that gets them out of that trap. Unfortunately, we're not in the Euro zone :-(

So to recap - billing in native currency is (for me at least) as important as not having a credit card ... (although my government is part of the problem here)

Cheers,
Wol

No subscription meters yet?

Posted Oct 23, 2002 21:17 UTC (Wed) by TheOneKEA (guest, #615) [Link] (1 responses)

Like others have said, I would like to see a subscription meter on the front page or easily accessed from the front page which shows the projected number of subscriptions (4000) and the current number (2100) and how much money you are making from your subscriptions. That would spur people (like me) to subscribe.

No subscription meters yet?

Posted Oct 24, 2002 2:08 UTC (Thu) by eread (guest, #1918) [Link]

So you have now, right? ;)

Thanks for the Amex support. This enables me to subscribe!

Please make it front page news when it is enabled.

Show the source, Luke!

Posted Oct 24, 2002 5:50 UTC (Thu) by tekNico (subscriber, #22) [Link] (1 responses)

> Before too long, however, we want to start putting less effort into
> site code hacking and more into providing the best content we can.

And that's when you publish your Quixote code, right Jon? :^)

Show the source, Luke!

Posted Oct 24, 2002 13:54 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Yeah, exactly. That's when we get other people to do our site hacking for us... :)

In reality, a few things have to happen before the source goes out; I want to stabilize and clean it up a bit (though it's not bad now), do a security audit (I've been careful, but there's bound to be something we'd like to catch before ending our obscurity period), package up a release, set up all the supporting infrastructure, and simply have the time to deal with the distractions of having the code out there. We really want to do it, but it's not yet at the top of the list.