Readers,
It has been a fantastic journey for us all so far.
Since we moved over and created totalfootballanalysis.com back in April 2018 we have delivered over 750 pieces of analysis.
You will have noticed that we have more and more content going up on a daily basis for you now.
We also have the magazine. Thank you to everyone who has supported that so far.
It is time for us to take the next step as a business, and that is to put our website content behind the paywall.
Don’t panic: we hope the monthly investment we are asking you to make (£2) will not put you off. After all, I think that is still less than a cafe latte in your favourite coffee house. For your £2 a month, we commit to delivering you 100+ analysis pieces a month, a relaunch of our podcast which will become weekly and, whisper it quietly, we shall venture into YouTube.
Please note, this is different to the magazine – the magazines and the website are separate “products” if you were.
The question is, why?
Almost every football media company has to make a decision at some point about how they can make enough revenue to stay in business. I considered covering the site with adverts but that would, I am sure you’ll agree, take away from the excellent work my team does – we want to keep our content as reader-centric as possible.
The other issue with focusing on advertising revenue as a business model is that you end up having to chase “the clicks” so that you can generate enough advertising revenue – and again, that takes the focus away from you, the reader.
So, after several long conversations internally and with people I respect in the world of football media, we’ve decided on this path.
I know this means we will lose some of you, and that is totally your choice; and I respect that.
On the other hand, I hope that the vast majority of you will understand that for us to continue providing the work that we provide, we have to do something – and £2 a month to get 100+ pieces of top-level analysis will hopefully be considered something of a no-brainer.
So you can understand what the system will look like – as of 1 February every reader, new or otherwise, will get to read three pieces of content free before being asked to take out a subscription or to login to their membership. Please note, this is different to your magazine subscriptions if you have one. We are talking about the daily website content here.
We are keeping it as simple as that at this stage, although like anything we are probably going to uncover a few gremlins along the way.
I would like to extend the invitation to anyone who wants to give me feedback etc. on the next stage of our journey to email me at [email protected]
I would like to finish by thanking everyone that has helped us become what we have become so far, and I hope that many of you will support this decision and follow our progress.
Thanks,
Chris Darwen // Editor-in-Chief
