I’d like to “type out loud” for a bit about the site (notice I don’t say “blog” anymore…….).
Slope is my livelihood. As such, I am continually focused on how to make it better, how to make it more popular, and how to make it – – not to put too fine a point on it – – more profitable.
There are two distinct revenue streams from Slope. One is advertising. The other is premium memberships. Back during the crazy days of 2008, advertising was HUGE. I didn’t even have a premium membership in those days. The ad revenue was breathtaking.
These days, ad revenue is worse than piss-poor. As I was thinking about the new site, I figured I’d really amp up advertising to try to make up for its weakness with (a) more ads and (b) activating the system which screams at you to turn AdBlocker off, or else you aren’t allowed to see anything.
I am quickly cooling to those ideas. I’m not here to annoy people with messages about allowing ads through, and the serving-up of even more ads slows everything down. So even for free users, I am seriously considering removing ads completely.
But how to make up for that loss? I’m kicking around a couple of ideas. One is the Patreon-type approach, which lets people contribute a small portion each month as a “thank you” for my hard work 365 days a year. Another would be a much cheaper subscription service (kind of a Slope MINUS), like $9.95 a month, which would be required to use most of the features of the site, like comments. If you have strong feelings about these, or other ideas, I’d love to hear from you, so click here to drop me a line.
In the meantime, I am focusing most of my efforts on PLUS members, and I remind you that I am (briefly) promoting a coupon that lets you get a free month. The coupon code is newslope, and you just type that on the subscription page. Having said that, here is the latest PLUS post, which has seventeen – – count ’em, seventeen – – trading ideas for subscribers.
