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   TidBITS Membership Ad-Removal Challenge Update

   Adam C. Engst

   In '[1]Become a TidBITS Member and Banish Banner Ads from Our Site' (7
   December 2015), I said that if we could increase membership revenues by
   the roughly $5,000 per year that we earn from Google AdSense ads and
   automatically generated affiliate links via Skimlinks, we'd eliminate
   those banner ads and accompanying trackers from our site for everyone.

   Although memberships rolled in throughout December 2015, we'll need to
   see an significant uptick before the challenge deadline at the end of
   January 2016, since the numbers so far have been slightly lower than
   last year. Even if we don't count those who joined at the $1,000
   TidBITS Angel level (four in 2014, one in 2015 ' and thank you so
   much!), the new and renewing member count was three people lower (1121
   versus 1118) and revenues were $50 lower. That's a minuscule drop, so
   I'm not worried about it, but it doesn't get us any closer to meeting
   the challenge.

   So if you believe that we should be showing that small Internet
   publications can rely on direct reader support, [2]become a TidBITS
   member this month!

   To sweeten the deal, note that we just added member-exclusive discounts
   on 17 highly regarded Mac apps from [3]Prosoft Engineering (Data
   Rescue, Drive Genius, Data Backup, and more) and [4]Plum Amazing
   (CopyPastePro, iClock Pro, PhotoShrinkr, and many more). It would be
   easy to save more than the cost of a TidBITS membership in software
   discounts alone.

References

   1. http://tidbits.com/article/16125
   2. http://tidbits.com/member_benefits.html
   3. https://www.prosofteng.com/
   4. http://plumamazing.com/

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