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:Here's a "plum" idea.

[room101]

You already can.

Go to your preferences: Homepage, down about half the way, you will see "customize slashboxes". Check the stuff you want, leaving out "slashdot poll". (all of the default stuff is in bold.)

It really is that simple.

duh.

Re:Blackout continues?

[seann]

loser

My $.02

[jrwillis]

I think there are a couple ways to look at all this. Sure, I don't think paying for an ad-free site is worth the money. Personally, I consider the subscriptions to be more of a tip jar. I contributed not to get rid of the ads, but rather just to give a little back. The only thing that bothers me out of all this is though, is that I know Katz is going to get some of that money, and that REALLY gets under my skin.

Re:what were those #'s again

[Roto-Rooter Man]

the throwing-quarters-in-the-guitar-case dept.

That's odd. I've never seen a street musician who gets other people to volunteer to play for him, while he collects all the money.

Re:Here's a "plum" idea.

[room101]

Sure, seems like it.

btw, there is something between reading the comment and not reading the comment, its called mis-reading the comment.

Not sure I'll subscribe, I like the ads!

[NanoGator]

I'm having a bit of a dilemma. I'm happy to pay Slashdot in order to keep it going, but sometimes a banner pops up that's interesting. I know it sounds silly, but like 3 times now I've seen a banner pertaining to something I was seeking. For example, I want an MP3 player that can play mini-CD's to travel with. *Gasp* I saw an ad for one at ThinkGeek.com, and now I'm considering purchasing it.

So if I get the subscription, I lose the ads. I guess Slashdot wins either way, but if I pay for Slashdot I'd like to get a little bit more benefit than just no ads.

One idea is that I'd like to see who mods me down. I think somebody'd be more careful about modding me down as troll when they know that I know who's doing it. Here's an example:

http://www.nanogator.com/slashdot.jpg

See that, within 6 minutes I had several posts modded down as Troll. If you look up a bit you can see that my other posts take about 20 minutes in between to get moderated. Anybody else think this is a bit suspiscious?

I really don't care so much about getting modded down, but I do think the quality of the moderations would go up if some of the 'premium members' know who's doing it. Afterall, if I'm paying to visit the site *and* look at the ads, its less likely that I'm here to just cause trouble.

That's all it'd take for me. I'm not demanding typo-free articles (damn people are anal about that, heh) or anything like that. I'd just like my time spent contributing to Slashdot worth more.

Re:For only ...

[ibbey]

Your analogy is completely false. Sitting outside a coffeshop, drinking your own coffee, costs the coffeeshop nothing except a lost potential sale. Using Internet Junkbuster, you are directly using the resources /. provides, and not paying for them. This is legally known as "theft of services" and is a prosecutable offense. I'm not sure what Taco & the rest think about this issue, but legally, you are in the wrong.

Hey, Asshole... (this means you, Malda)

[Kozz]

Maybe if you lifted the $rtbl moderation-ban from the several thousand readers, they would consider subscribing to slashdot.

But until then, why would someone who is being treated as a second-class citizen care a whim to give you a dime? Lift the fucking RTBL ban already.

Mod me down. It's only Karma.