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[bulletxt]

99% of the times I read your articles at the end of the day or when im at work in free time. Delaying articles even of 16 hours will never bring me to the point to say "oh I should go premium!"
At least for me, the value of your website is that you continue pushing and giving news.
You are like an aggregator for me so I can avoid going in 10 different websites. This is your value, this is why i'de be willing to pay for your service.

Soon or later ads won't be enough for you as they will pay you always less and force you to write more and more articles till you reach your daily limit.

If even only 10% of users pay you 1.29? a month you'll still earn more than what you're getting now.

[F1esDgSdUTYpm0iy]

Michael, how much control do you have over the actual traffic of Phoronix? As in, one easy example selling point for premium might hypothetically be acquiring a higher position in whatever queues exist for the website, for benchmark results, etc, etc, etc. I would caution against blocking content completely for all but premium members but simply making premium a more responsive, more immediate experience already might convince a fair number of people to pay for your work.

[bulletxt]

Maybe I'm totally wrong (I'm no Nostradamus!), but I bet at least 50% of users here are young people without a job so they'll never pay 1 cent no matter what you do. The remaining 50% is composed in this way:
- 25% have a good job (good salary) or at least good enough to justify 16? a year without saying "hey I won't pay!" . You'll loose at least 10% of these 25% because some of them may not find phoronix good enough to justify the payment.
- 25% have a bad job (low salary), they can afford 16? but they tend to spend money only if forced. You'll loose at least 20% of these if you force phoronix to go premium


RESULT:
you'll have around 15% + 5% of users willing to pay 16? / year for phoronix.

If Michael can live with these numbers then GO FOR IT, make phoronix 100% premium.

[ThrowAway3000]

One other premium item I've contemplated is delaying new articles/posts from appearing on the Phoronix home page or side panel for like a few hours if you're not premium....

I still think it's better to first try options that benefit everyone (for instance, Patreon), before doing something drastic like that.

[jeday]

Michael

I read the whole thread and I would suggest a slightly different approach. So to summarize:

1) First, blocking the content and allowing it to be accessible to only subscribed users would be not optimal (if not a huge mistake) - you want to attract more users not to repel them. Even if they do not pay anything sometimes they need to stick for some time on the website to see that it is worth supporting. It would be a big turn off for new users if they see right in the beginning that they must pay to access the content.

2) I started using addblock some time ago because the adds tend to load my CPU too much (especially when opening more than 1-2-3 tabs at the same time) and making the browsering experience a pain in the ass. Not to mention that at some point in time there were nasty adds windows popping up and virtually rendering my PC slow like hell. I would be happy to support your web site but the adds behaviour must be changed.

3) So my simple suggestion is: keep the content free of charge but change the way you require donations to the model of wikipedia. I mean every year or every quoter write to us a request for donations where you describe the amount of money you need to run the website, including the money you need to live a comfortable life. Just describe the core activities that need to be supported, how much you need for each of them and then at the end publish the statistics of the donations. Keep kindly asking for donations every day/week until you get all the money needed (sometimes the people needs to be bothered many times in order to see the problem as an important one). When you get all the money, thank the people and keep doing your awesome job

If 3) is successful you can think about asking for more money so that you can develop the website further, aka new paid authors, more content, more hardware testing, increasing article quality and scope etc

I find Phoronix a unique Linux and Open Source news website and would be happy to support it if you make it as in 3)

Also making 3) would turn the website more like a community supported effort (like wikipedia) and not just Michael begging for money I regularly give to wikipedia and some other blogs that I like and they rely more on 3)

Also it feels great to see how much exactly we contributed to you because now nobody really knows. I would be even happier if we succeed to give more than you need in the current year.