Do you find ads annoying? Obtrusive? As I mentioned earlier this fall, our team has been working around the clock on a general upgrade of our membership system, which includes a new ad-free version of TPM. That’s not banner ads, no cheesy ‘around the web’ nonsense below the articles. Just plain pure nothing but TPM. If you think you might be interested, please join me after the jump.
If you’re already a Prime subscriber, adding Ad Free is an extra $50 a year or an extra $5 a month. So Prime Ad Free is $100 a year or $9.99 a month.
A few questions and answers.
If you’re already a Prime subscriber, should I feel obligated to sign up for Prime Ad Free?
Absolutely not. If you’re a regular TPM Reader we really want you to sign up for Prime if you’re financial able to do so. We’ll even nudge you a bit and hard sell you. But if you sign up for Prime, that’s all we ask.
Why should I sign up for Prime Ad Free?
There are really two reasons. The first is if you don’t want to see any ads on the site. That’s a really good reason and Ad Free will definitely satisfy this need. The other reason is if you are looking for an additional way to support TPM. As I’ve described in various posts over recent months, we are transforming TPM from a business model with a near exclusive focus on advertising to one in which the majority of our revenues come from subscriptions. Prime Ad Free is a critical part of that effort. Subscriber by subscriber, it swaps out the revenue from advertising to the more stable and lucrative revenue of subscriptions. For some of our readers, paying $50 a year vs a $100 a year (or $4.99 a month vs $9.99). But at scale, that difference is a very big difference for the robustness and viability of TPM. So even if you don’t really care that much about ads but would like to toss in a bit more support for our efforts, definitely sign up.
Is there some fine print? Is it really no ads at all?
Believe me, it’s legit. Prime Ad Free has no ads whatsoever. That doesn’t just mean banner ads. It also means those paid links you see at the bottom of the articles. Hate those? Believe me. We do too. We already have Ad Free in-house and it’s pretty cool. Having no ads not only means you don’t see ads, it means that a lot of the code that goes into serving the ads isn’t there. So the whole site is a lot zippier. If you’re a regular reader, believe me, you’ll like it a lot.
Finally, if you think you’re going to want to sign up and want to be notified when Ad Free is ready, just click the thumbs up sign at the bottom of this post. We’ll be offering special benefits for readers who sign up during the first week.
Got questions, hit us at the talk (at) talkingpointsmemo dot com.
