Over the course of its 192 months of history, Slope has changed its business model once or twice. A while ago, I landed on focusing on premium membership and – – in a rather risky move – – completing abandoning all advertising. This got rid of a steady stream of revenue from non-paying readers, but at the same time, it allowed me to control the aesthetics (and speed) of Slope so that I didn’t wind up with something that looked like this:
A substantial percentage of Slope’s readers are, in fact, paying members, and God bless ’em, one and all. Slope is very much my baby, and I quietly cheer every time a new subscription comes in, and I feel a little piece of my soul torn out when someone cancels.
In the virtually USSR-level of market control we have experienced for years now, it’s understandable that some people just toss their hands in the air and give up on trading, and on their need for any analytical tools. I cannot control the market (or Powell), so I focus on the two things I can control: ONE, the content of the site, which means I write thousands of posts every year, and TWO, the quality and variety of tools, which is constantly on the upswing.
For those of you who benefit from the site, please understand that these are costs associated with providing the site to every person, whether they pay or not, such as:
- High-speed Internet;
- Professional-grade servers;
- Historical data licenses;
- Real-time data feeds;
- PHP Engineer (expensive!!)
- Database/Network Engineer (also expensive)
Yet I don’t want to inflict the “cost” of advertising on you folks. There are other revenue opportunities that I have steadfastly avoided as well. For example, I have never – – not even once – – sold the Slope mailing list (which is enormous) to anyone. Not a day goes by that I don’t get solicited, since obviously my readership base is terribly attractive to anyone pushing financial wares. But I refuse to be part of the spam industry. Never did it. Never will.
Having said all of this, I would like to respectfully ask you non-paying Sloper accounts to glance at the offerings below and see which of these may appeal to you. If nothing else, consider it a part of supporting what I’ve created here, if you visit the site regularly.
I appreciate your reading this post, and to those of you who are already members, you have my sincere gratitude.
- Bronze gets you five years of historical data, time perspective charts, full-screen charts, multiple chart modes, access to virtual trading, and technical studies;
- Silver includes the Candle Hunter service, continuous futures contracts, pre-defined public watch lists, ten years of back data, SlopeRules access, automated trendlines, and video library access;
- Gold provides access to exclusive trading ideas posts, unlimited daily data, access to earnings events, sector-based filtering, and the ability to publish/subscribe to the member-created watch lists;
- Diamond offers unlimited access to all the features, particularly focused on options tools such as price cones, implied volatility rank, reaction graphs, backtesting, volatility charts, option dots, and the future trend price projection.
Lastly, I would like to suggest that if the market starts the break down the way I think it will this year, Slope is going to be incredibly valuable to its paying members. So come join us!
