We’ve had a recurring question from a number of existing Prime members over the last few days. Let me try to answer it.
We’ve had a slew of emails asking whether you can contribute more to support TPM in addition to your subscription fee. We were already getting these emails before the election. We’ve gotten a lot more after the election. In so many words, yes, we do.
[Before proceeding, I want to make one thing crystal clear. If you are an existing Prime member you should have absolutely no guilt, sense of obligation or anything else. You are 100% solid with us. This is purely for people who want to do more. Really serious about that.]
Back when we launched Prime we also introduced what we call “credit subscriptions.” The idea is simple. For reasons I’ve explained elsewhere we want to expand the ratio of our revenue that comes from subscriptions as opposed to ads. It makes TPM healthier, more sustainable, more robust and able to do more. At the same time we don’t want to exclude people who can’t afford the subscription fee. So we also sell “credit subscription.”
You buy an additional subscription or two or three or however many you want and we assign those to readers who can’t afford the fee. They’re seniors on fixed incomes, people with various financial hardships, students, etc. TPM gets more revenue, people without subscriptions to access, you get to support TPM more. If you’re game and interested, it’s great for all involved.
We recently took down the credit subscription sign up form as part of upgrading our system. But I believe it will be back next week. When it is I’ll flag it to everyone here.
