Is it safe to say Non ST+ members will get less front page articles ?
I would say maybe a little. We always try to look for companies that ship internationally but yes some companies will only be US based.
Maybe a little.
Ah - so this whole “Here is the new forum shitstorm” was to be able to support this pay site feature (which I suppose would be too expensive to develop on the old ST platform). Interesting!
It´d be fun to see your top-line estimations for this. Can you share?
I think within the podcast realm, the “why” is as important as consistency. Why are yall wanting to put out a podcast? Atleast at times I felt like the version 1.0 was just checking a box to say “see we have a podcast”, which I think at this point in the game there’s enough triathlon content, that if your not answering the WHY correctly, it’ll just kinda fall off. Which I think is why interesting guests sorta can help fill content and take the pressure off you and Eric to have to weekly opine on all things endurance related (which then seemed to turn into “forced” commentary).
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Good luck!
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TLDR
I’ll be honest with you: I don’t like subscriptions in general and the + won’t bring me any value.
Full version
I’ll break-down the benefits using my own perspective. I hope it highlights for you, that you might not have thought through the value proposition well enough (aka. you don’t know why I visit SlowTwitch). This is intended to help you, not to mock you, although it feels like yet another time you decided to pursue with changes without asking the users / potential customers what their expectations are. IMO you should hire a marketing specialist, with some quant background, to help you run the market analysis.
- No banner ads - I use ad-blocker, so I don’t see any ads anyway
- Quarterly issues of the new Slowtwitch Press - even if it’s a digital version, I’m more interested in real fresh news than quarterly summary
- Access to more than 90 articles / month - it’ll be enough, as I’m not a big fan of the current tendency of articles (too much gravel, too expensive products)
- Access to our weekly podcast - I already listen to PTN, TTH, Scientific Triathlon, Triathlon Mockery, Talking Triathlon, TTL
- Exclusive deals in our shop - there’s a shop? Jokes aside, I don’t think I’ll be ordering anything from you to Europe, considering I need to pay customs and 50 USD flat shipping fee
- Exclusive deals from Slowtwitch partners - this could be interesting
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My 2c here. Paywalling the forum in any way seems rather pointless to me.
I’ve not been here a long time compared to some, but I’ve made the effort over the last 12-18 months to become a more frequent contributor to the forums. What I’ve noticed is that there’s really only 100-200 people who you could consider core contributors to the forums. These names pop up in almost every thread and are the key to the conversation flowing. Then there’s maybe that number again for those who are semi-frequent. I assume there’s (tens-of) thousands who post every so often, or just lurk and read the threads.
So now you’re introduce something that will in some shape or form isolate a select group from the others. Even if you get lucky and snag 50% of that core crew (which based off the feedback I don’t think you will) and then a scatter from the frequent posters and near 0 from the rest you’re essentially going to kill off the forum.
I know this only currently relates to the LR and reading between the lines it sounds as though the partners of the website are calling the shots on this particular decision, but, any major change to the forum where you put a barrier in front of participation is going to cause the place to be void of any meaningful chat.
As for the other perks, I’ve got to agree with @Michal_CH, nothing in that list screams out at me as a must have. Honestly, I’d be happy to pay $60 per year just to support the platform but this whole thing is coming across as kind of dirty.
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Yeah. We know. Not happy.
@Michal_CH I appreciate your breakdown. If I may: we’ve done a lot of work behind the scenes on this, talked with a whole host of our fellow media, and identified who our targets are. (Outside of ST, I’ve been a marketing / comms guy for the last 15 years of my career. 
)
We knew that many forum members (particularly over in the LR) would be fundamentally displeased. Whether you’ve been here for 20 years or 20 minutes before the ST+ launch announcement, it’s a somewhat large change in terms of how we operate.
Looking at your list of counters to our benefits, I start here: first, without you running banner ads, you’re hurting both our active bottom line (Google banners) and what we deliver to partners (because their banners are part of our partnerships). In fewer words – we’re losing money on that, so we have to make up for it somewhere else.
On Press / coverage – I’d love to pick your brain on what you feel is “real fresh news.” I don’t love the trend of product pricing, either (especially with how many shoe brands I’ve paid out of pocket to review over the last 18 months). Gravel is necessary; it’s where multisporters are flocking to.
Shop deals – understood.
Partner deals – especially for brands that have global distribution via their own network (instead of using third party importers, etc), we’d love to be able to have these applicable across each region.
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I was on the fence : “do I try it and see if the extra content is to my liking ?”
But the killng of the LR because the partners don’t like it, is a deal breaker for me. And very very seldom do I post in the LR
One of the issues here is there is like 3 articles in roughly the last 12 month on the front page I would be happy to pay for , so if you want to get me as a member you have to show me what you can do first ,as I only click on your articles , as we are told they keep the lights on for the forum , same with podcast , they were far from paying standard, I did not even listen for free after a few of them.
If you would offer a half price pay for the forum great but for the other stuff 0 interest based on past performance.
My 2 cents .
Ps having said all this I guess it’s the way forward but do offer more options what people want to pay for and what not.
And overall the pricing is very fair for the full package if it’s is somewaht decent ,but IAM not interested in the full package.
We’re not going to kill the LR.
The proposal was to move it to membership tier – so that it could pay for its own existence.
But we’re taking everyone’s feedback over there quite seriously.
It’s factual that we’ve been told time and time again to kill it.
We haven’t. We aren’t.
Our idea was to move LR participation to the membership tier. Whether or not that happens, given the feedback from the participants there, is another story. It might be something where we delay that offering. It might be something where ST+ members have their own subforum instead and the LR remains. We’re thinking every option through here.
We knew that many would have negative feedback; anytime you’re no longer fully free for reading / participation there’s a lot of movement on that front. We also have an extremely passionate forum user base – which is good! And we knew we’d get a lot of feedback. Also good.
Sounds pretty reasonable, good luck!
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How long until the LR gets quashed for the non-paying members?
Can we finish our Survivor game?
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Very happy for you and your group
I’m sure this took a ton of work and a good chunk of money
Congratulations!
I’ve always been firmly against membership for sites. I don’t pay for nyt, wsj, or anything like that. Especially forums.
But, I’ve been here long enough and have thoroughly enjoyed my time here since 2011. I’ve learned more here than any other resource. I will give it a go.
And thank you for doing something about the LR room. It really needed an overhaul.
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It’s sorta a no win situation I kinda feel like. Which is why I asked if this is going to sorta turn into a “verified” users vs the peasants who are now going to be viewed as mooching on the site for free moving forward type of feel/vibes.
Within the paid perks, there isn’t all that much benefits I see personally, other than almost feeling obligated to help friends keep the lights on so to speak.