• Join Us |
  • |
  • Sign in with:

Subscribe To /. ?

by Steve Gibson, Mar 01, 2002 11:27am PST
Related Topics – Games: PC

So here's one that is scaring a lot of people. Slashdot which you may have heard of is going to start offering a subscription. $5 per 1,000 page views. They are about to toss in some zany sized banners apparently but will offer the subscription system to the readers who dont wish to deal with big ads.

The rates are currently set at $5 per 1000 pages. To put this into perspective, $20 (typical magazine subscription) will be enough pages for 82% of our readers to view Slashdot without ads for a year. Another 15% will need to spend $5 a month to accomplish the same thing. 3% of our readers would need to spend more than $5 a month- but they could choose to see ads on comments and in almost every case, still pay around $5 a month. (As an aside, it's also worth noting that more than half of all comment posters fall into this 3%)
Seems all the hip places are up to this lately, EzBoard, Fark, Salon, IGN, etc. Some offer extra features, other just offer ad-free service. Currently I've got no plans to offer any type of ad-free service. Of course it wasnt even a possibility before, but with recent events I guess we could do something like that.. I just dont really suspect there is much of a demand for it here.


Read all the News


Comments

« Previous 1 2 Next »
48 Threads* | 168 Comments*
  • #90
    Refresh Thread
    By: Smackrabbit x
    Reply
    No one seems to understand what the $5 gets you at Slashdot. They know the new banner ads are fairly annoying and people might not want to see them. They are giving you the option to replace the revenue those ads would generate with money out of your own pocket if you really don't want to see them.

    If they had a flat-fee for a year without ads, they might lose money once you got past 1,000 page views without ads. They aren't Salon or IGN that are keeping special content for subscribers only, they are just offering the option of no ads. I don't care about ads enough to pay to remove them, but I don't believe they are making any more money off this than if they showed the ads.
    Mar 01, 2002 12:53pm PST