LWN Update [LWN.net]

This week's LWN.net Weekly Edition comes out one day early, so that the LWN staff can go off and enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday. With luck, we'll have finished digesting in time to put out next week's Edition on Thursday as usual.

The individual subscriber count stands nearly constant at 2370. The number of expiring subscriptions is increasing; so far, the flow of new subscribers has been enough to keep the total count from going down.

The statistics-gathering capability of the site has recently been enhanced a bit. So we can now note that, for example, about 11% of the content traffic on LWN.net (excluding the RSS files) originates from logged-in subscribers. So the bulk of our readers, by far, have chosen not to subscribe. There is a relatively high percentage of subscriber traffic from the US, Germany, Britain, and Sweden; on the other hand, Japanese, French, Italian, Australian, and Austrian readers tend not to subscribe.

(For the curious, we got this information by feeding IP addresses to the GeoIP package. GeoIP is licensed under the GPL, and has a Python binding. The statistics are kept as simple counters; we do not track individual readers. The real purpose of this work is to evaluate the idea of offering country-specific text ads; the jury is still out on that one).

Enjoy this week's Edition, and we'll be back on our regular schedule after the holiday. Thanks, as always, for supporting LWN.

to post comments

LWN Update

Posted Nov 27, 2002 4:20 UTC (Wed) by simon_kitching (guest, #4874) [Link] (8 responses)

One point your stats analysis doesn't take into account are those visitors who have cookie lifetimes set to short periods, or "this session only" (as I have). The effect is that I am an anonymous user of your site except when I have to log in to see the latest weekly news.

Given the (presumably) high awareness of privacy issues for the average LWN reader, this might be a fair proportion of your traffic. In other words, the percentage of subscribed visitors may be > 11%. I can't think of any way to measure this effect, though....

LWN Update

Posted Nov 27, 2002 14:51 UTC (Wed) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link] (4 responses)

Indeed. There are a lot of folks that would prefer NOT to be logged and potentially
tracked with more precision than IP, when reading other than subscriber only content,
and unless posting comments such as this one.

I'm like that, only now that I've customized my site colors, I may log in more.

(BTW, why can't I customize comment background color? I prefer light on dark,
almost white on black, so I have text set to light/white, and background set to
dark/black. Unfortunately, there remains no way I can find to set comment
background, which remains un-optionally, and for me, un-optimally, white, so I can't
use TOO light a text, or I can't read comments! The site menu at the top of the page
also remains uncustomizable, unfortunately, so I am seriously limited in what link and
read-link colors I can choose, without making it unreadable, or some other part of the
page with backgrounds I CAN customize to my preferred dark, unreadable. This is
"less than optimal" from this subscribed user's perspective.)

(PS: The comment preview honors my background color choice. Why can't the
comment displays themselves?)

LWN Update

Posted Nov 27, 2002 17:13 UTC (Wed) by dbreakey (guest, #1381) [Link] (1 responses)

Use a browser, such as Mozilla, that allows you to override site style-sheets. Check here for information on defining a user-based style-sheet in various browsers, including Mozilla. Note, I haven't actually tried any of these, since I personally use Galeon, which makes it relatively easy to use a custom style-sheet. Now, if somebody would come out with a browser that allowed definition of custom styles on a per-site basis…

Not the most convenient option, I know, but until they enable that kind of feature as a site option, that's probably the best you'll get.

Customized site colors -> user-side solutions

Posted Nov 27, 2002 18:26 UTC (Wed) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

> Use a browser, such as Mozilla, that allows you to override site style-sheets.

I do, Konqueror, for normal browsing (incl. @ LWN). Unfortunately, that doesn't work
to well, because there are to many sites that for instance set the text/fg color w/o
setting background color (as is the problem here <g>), and I prefer to let the site
override, as in some cases, it adds to the presentation.

This is actually a problem big enough to be specifically mentioned in RichInStyle.com 's
CSS tutorial (before the reading of which, I thought I was the only one to find this
extremely annoying <g>), and I've repeatedly noticed it, even on widely read and
professionally designed commercial sites. Site/page designers will set one attribute,
often foreground, without setting the complimentary attribute. I use an off-dark-green
mid-brightness default background color, browser default, not because I like it all that
well, but because it doesn't glare at me like white does, but both black and white
stand out well on it, as do various other commonly used foreground/text color choices
(nobody chooses this color for foreground, because it's not exactly pretty, but at least
I can SEE the text, in most cases <g>).

One alternative I used to use on MSWormOS was a personal filtering/rewriting proxy
(The Proxomitron), with user creatable/changable filters. Unfortunately, I haven't
found a similar utility for Linux that works for me, and that I am comfortable with. (I'm
currently learning Perl, my first venture beyond shell scripting in Linux, which I only
upgraded to from MSWormOS a year ago, to see what I can do with FilterProxy. The
maintainer could use (and has asked for) help, as last time I checked, the available
newest version used an outdated Perl module and wouldn't function correctly with the
newer version of that module. Working with him on that is likely to be my first
volunteer development project in Linux. I was a hobbiest programmer using Visual
Basic in MSWormOS, and one of the reasons I switched was in ordered to be able to
continue my development under the software libre environment I have become far
more comfortable with. There's a similar project using Java, and others.)

LWN Update

Posted Nov 27, 2002 17:19 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (1 responses)

"why can't I customize comment background color?"

Nobody's asked for it. It won't be a hard feature to add, I'll put it onto the list.

Customized site colors -> Thanks!

Posted Nov 27, 2002 17:26 UTC (Wed) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

Thanks!

Tried to post with just the title and a (n/t) note, but it wouldn't go. Then
added the single word Thanks! and it still wouldn't go. Maybe it will, now? <g>

LWN Update

Posted Nov 27, 2002 15:25 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (2 responses)

In fact, I was curious to see how the balance would change on a weekly publication day. So far, today, traffic is running about 25% subscriber.

LWN Update

Posted Nov 27, 2002 16:48 UTC (Wed) by proski (guest, #104) [Link]

Maybe it's because people like me normally check daily updates in lynx without persistent cookies, but enjoy the weekly edition in Phoenix or some other full-featured browser with tabbed browsing, and, coincidentally, persistent cookies that indicate the subscription.

LWN Update

Posted Dec 2, 2002 16:48 UTC (Mon) by a9db0 (subscriber, #2181) [Link]

Jon-

Bad week to check - You published early, but not early enough for at least some of your regular readers (and subscribers) who are catching up after a long weekend.

Check the stats next Thursday, and see what the % is.

Casual user subscriptions?

Posted Nov 27, 2002 5:10 UTC (Wed) by hyandat (guest, #5740) [Link]

I suspect that the reason so few of those visitors are subscribed has to do with them only being interested in the daily news - they don't want what the weekly edition provides. They're only casual browsers to your site, and it seems to me you should be able to talk a few of them into paying money for a better LWN experience. ;-) What if you made that section more customizable to subscribers? Maybe add an option for 'Notify me when news containing one of these keywords is posted' or 'hilight news of these categories' - features to facilitate fast skimming. I suspect a hilighting system would be pretty useful for me, especially if I could get a sidebar tab that does it... And since there's such a huge number of these people, if you could convince 10% of them to pay $2/mo for a 'casual user' subscription... well, that would be something.

Just throwing some ideas out.

LWN Update

Posted Nov 27, 2002 6:18 UTC (Wed) by ctg (guest, #3459) [Link] (2 responses)

I tend to be logged on at home - but anonymous at work.

LWN Update

Posted Nov 27, 2002 7:41 UTC (Wed) by amikins (guest, #451) [Link]

From what I've heard of other friends, this is common practice -- not everone has the option of strewing cookies across several browsers.
I personally can be using up to five individual computers in a single day, all but one of which clear cookies when I log out.
So, unless I've logged in to read subscription-only content, I'm 'anonymous'.

LWN Update

Posted Nov 28, 2002 2:34 UTC (Thu) by acristianb (guest, #1702) [Link]

Indeed, at, work I might browse from different machines and I am not logging in except occasionally. At home I do log in but I do some development and I reglarly dump my cookies for that.

Further statistics?

Posted Nov 27, 2002 16:18 UTC (Wed) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

Hey Jon,

Have you done any mapping to see how many times a person comes to the page on average per day? Paying versus non-paying..

How about the following:

Limit non-paying members to seeing 5-8 articles on the front page period.

I once heard that an NPR had to use a last ditch effort to get funds up.. so they went off the air for a week to save expenses. They got a lot of new members from people who didnt realize how much their freeloading was costing. Maybe a week or two closed to non-paying members to remind them that they stand to lose this resource permanently.

Anyway.. just a comment from the peanut gallery.

LWN Update

Posted Nov 28, 2002 3:21 UTC (Thu) by cyanide (guest, #2236) [Link] (3 responses)

With regard to different countries having different subscription rates, think twice before assuming Australians are all penny pinchers. 1 aussie dollar will buy you 2 USD or 3 pound sterling. On the other hand, your average australian will get paid a similar amount of aussie dollars as americans get paid US dollars or poms get paid pounds.

Effectively LWN is twice as expensive for australians as americans, whilst the british will have change for a soothing ale.

LWN Update

Posted Nov 28, 2002 9:44 UTC (Thu) by avingar (subscriber, #4249) [Link]

I think you meant 1 USD will buy you 2 AUD and 1 pound with buy you 3 AUD :)

LWN Update

Posted Nov 28, 2002 12:06 UTC (Thu) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, the values of the valutas really tell you nothing, the italian Lire for example is almost nothing worth, but this does not mean that Italy is a particularily poor country.

A more relevant notion is that of the GDP/capita, or the average income for each person in a country. If we look at this, then we see, for your examples:

US: $36.300
AUS: $24.000
UK: $24.700

So it's real that LWN is a bit more expensive for the average Australian than for the average American, but the difference is not as large as you think. (all the numbers above are in US dollars, and according to the 2002 CIA world Factbook)

On the other hand there *is* many countries where the income is sufficiently much lower that it *does* make a big difference. I strongly suspect that Lwn has almost none, or none subscribing from these countries though, and I think that would be the case even with a much reducded price.

For example, the average income in China is about $4.300, or a factor of 8.5 under the US, so to a average person from China Lwn is more than 8 times as expensive as for the average American, expensive enough to be prohibitive. Worse yet if you are for example an average person from Benin (not that the average person from Benin would have internet-access or heard about Linux...), there the national average is $1040 a year, so Lwn would cost 36 times what it costs in the US.

I think it'd be too complicated to do much about this though, if Lwn really wanted to welcome aboard those from the poorer countries I would recommend something much simpler such as stating that subscription is free of charge for people from countries with per capita GDP less than say $10K. I doubt there'd be many takers for such an offer though.

Italian Lira

Posted Dec 2, 2002 2:00 UTC (Mon) by gproux (guest, #8286) [Link]

Died a peaceful death in the beginning of 2002 with the advent of the euro
currency.
Effectively, its value is now 0 or +++ depending if you are a banker or a coin collector.

Per-country subscription plans

Posted Nov 28, 2002 9:45 UTC (Thu) by pavel (guest, #7318) [Link] (2 responses)

I believe that many people around the world are very sympathetic to LWN's cause and would like to help it stay afloat, but what may seem a ridiculously low price in Northern America and Western Europe is a prihibitive cost to many others. Perhaps it is worth considering a different subscription pricing for poorer parts of the world? After all, it's better to get something than nothing. Also, I tend to support the opinion of another reader from a week ago who stated that delaying the paid-for content release even more should motivate more people to subscribe. A week isn't really such a long time.

Best regards,
Pavel

Per-country subscription plans

Posted Dec 2, 2002 0:32 UTC (Mon) by njhurst (guest, #6022) [Link]

Perhaps rather than providing preset subscription fees, simply present the fixed costs(credit transaction costs, e.g.) and ask people to put in as much as they think subscription is worth?

If the website told you what percentage of your money actually makes it to lwn you might consider higher rates - If I subscribed 50c per month then maybe only 5% of my money would make it through the various taxes/fees whereas if at 2$5 80% of the money goes to lwn, then I would choose the latter rate.

That approach works for several other groups to which I'm involved.

Per-country subscription plans

Posted Dec 4, 2002 7:23 UTC (Wed) by xorbe (guest, #3165) [Link]

"Also, I tend to support the opinion of another reader from a week ago who stated that delaying the paid-for content release even more should motivate more people to subscribe. A week isn't really such a long time."

Ditto, I redundantly agree.

LWN Update

Posted Nov 28, 2002 18:34 UTC (Thu) by godfrey (guest, #4646) [Link]

I would like to see LWN can feature some technical articles, from beginner to advance level, something like linux-mag. I think that is time to have a change, in order to stay alive. There might be enough linux related technical site out there, but for a subscrption pay bases, there is non. Both LJ and LM are printed publications. So there is a market for it. So Linux Expert or those Linux God can find another place to write their next high impact articles. So reader can come to LWN not only for news articles, but also for technical info. This might attract more people to read LWN, and will eventally increase subscriber. This could be a chicken and egg problem, but could be started from a small step first.

The LWN front site might also need a face-lift. The current format is fine, and can stay, but a more sexy look at the home page might be better if not needed. That might attract more readership.