Slashdot Subscription Update

A few things have changed in the Slashdot Subscription System since we originally announced it a few months ago. Most important to many of you is that we now can directly accept Credit Cards in addition to paypal. We also added some control to allow subscriptions to be time based instead of page view based. Read on to see how.

By far the biggest complaint that we heard was from users who either hate paypal, or simply don't want to mess with it. I'm not going to go into the politics of that issue here, but it's a valid complaint. As we've explained countless times, we picked paypal first because it was simple and quick and planned to support credit cards directly as soon as we worked the kinks out of the system. And now that's happened. I'm still interested in other payment mechanisms and I'm open to suggestions as to what they might be.

Complaint number two was from people who didn't like the metered subscriptions. Again, this is a very valid complaint. I've already explained why it was essential that we impose some sort of limits, so what we've implemented is a new option called Max Ads. What it does is limit the number of pages you choose to view ad free on any given day. By default, that is 10. So even if you view slashdot 20 times a day, your $5 subscription will still last 100 days with the default setting of 10 Max Ads. Of course, you can up that number too.

Subscribers still have the ability to choose what page classes you suppress ads on. Simply hiding ads on Articles and Index, but seeing them on Comments is enough for the vast majority of readers to never hit the default Max Ads settings. At those settings, the subscription fee for a year on Slashdot would be on par with a typical magazine.

So far we've been really pleased with the turnout: 2% of our logged in users have chosen to subscribe, and we really hope that number will increase since such a huge number of readers expressed support for the subscription system, but distaste for paypal.

As we explained earlier, a large part of our decision to suppress banner ads was so that we could start accepting other ad formats, but give users an option to support Slashdot, without seeing these new ad formats. These other ad formats are highly desirable and should allow our sales folks to get contracts that we would otherwise be ineligible for. Web Advertising is a highly competitive field, and these ad formats make it possible for us to compete.

The last thing I'm mentioning here is Subscriber Plums. We have a variety of things that subscribers will eventually have access to. We're certainly open to reasonable suggestions, and we'll announce them as they come online. As I've said before, we won't be taking away things from non-subscribers, just rewarding those who are throwing quarters into the guitar case. More on these plums at a later date.

Thanks to the subscribers, as well as to those who click on our ads and support us by supporting our advertisers. You guys are helping to ensure that Slashdot sticks around for a long time.

Comments

Re:End of paypal?

[rodbegbie]

Nah, the credit card option's been on the subscribe page for about a week now. They only just got around to announcing it today.

rOD.

Re:Accepting credit cards

[theCURE]

First i think you mean some sort of check card, right? a debit card usually requires a pin number entered. (ie-> going to the grocery store or an ATM machine) Secondly, i think a credit card is more appropriate for online transactions because once those bastards get their little mitts into your account, the money is gone. Using a line of credit to make the purchases, i think you have a bit more security against fraud, as the ccard companies will back your purchase, and fight for your case should something arise. Either way, do you _really_ want mr. taco to have your special 16 digits in some file somewhere? you know how those people are!

Re:Subscriptions and Moderating

[Bastard Operator Fro]

Nope, I've have the abillity to moderate several times this month and haven't even thought about subscribing.

I'd say there's no correlation.

Re:Making subscriptions worth it

[Hemos]

Most of the ads are from DoubleClick becuase our advertisers usually use DBCL as their ad serving software.

I'm philosphically opposed to putting in what I think of as "exclusionary" features - but perhaps early story reading is a good thing. Dunno. Need to think about it. But I understand your point about not subscribinig just for no ads.

Re:Ad blocking becoming commonplace?

[Hemos]

Actually, if anything, I've seen the percentage of it *drop*. Odd, that.

Personally, as my livlihood is dependent on ads, I'm obligated to dislike them. *grin*

Re:Here's a "plum" idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Other great idea for improving slashdot:

- stop lifting stories from Arstechnica or HardOCP three days after they first appear

- stop duplicates, it's easy to avoid with just a little attention

- stop telling us the MPAA is evil in one story and then promoting their latest DVD in the next

- don't allow webmasters to submit links to their own sites (i.e. that loser from icrontic)

- dump Michael Sims and Jon Katz.

Do all that and I'll pay.

Re:Blackout continues?

[Hemos]

We don't know the plums yet - that's what we're trying to solict.

Re:Terrible Business Model

[Hemos]

Try reading the stories. We're specifically ASKING what features it is readers want. We're not done with the system - we want input from you.

Not true...

[damiangerous]

And it hasn't been for over two years now. Why is this particular piece of FUD so hard to stamp out? Debit cards from Visa/MC have the exact same level of liability, specifically none, with no limitation on how soon you need to report the card lost/stolen.

Visa:
Card Comparison chart, notice that all the check cards are covered by Zero Liability.
Information on Visa's Zero Liability Policy.
Mastercard:
Debit MasterCard features, notice their own Zero Liability Policy listed.
Information on the MasterCard Zero Liability Policy.

Re:Blackout continues?

[alexjohns]

You've probably got signatures disabled. A bunch (at least 10, or so, but not more than 50) of the biggest whiners on here decided that this week "we" would have a blackout to show those evil, conspiratorial slashdot editors that the aforementioned whiners are a force to be reckoned with and should be listened to. Can't say that I notice anything different today, other than a little less whining.

I think they should extend the whine-out indefinitely and go bug some other online forum. Plastic's still going, right? Or maybe one of them can buy 'imawhiner.com' and start some discussion there.

Anyway. They were all advertising it in their sigs. That's likely why you missed it. Consider it a bonus for all the good kharma you've been racking up lately. Or something.

Re:Un-bitchslap me first?

[real_b0fh]

make another account, dumbass.
or be a troll, since yer karma fits the requirements.