It’s been over three months since my reflection on (what I view) as a lacking year content-wise concerning Monday By Noon. I vowed to make a more consistent effort in upping the post frequency without sacrificing quality. I didn’t want to shift into high gear for the sake of fluff & I’m really glad I made that decision.
I’ve heard some great feedback from people since the new year and I’m so appreciative of those kind words, so thank you everyone. You truly inspire me to keep it up and continue posting. I’m really happy to share links and start conversations with everyone so I want to thank you for taking the time out of what I know are super busy schedules to be supportive, it means a lot!
I’ve been especially fond of the habit I’ve found myself in when taking a look at my Asides routine that’s formed over the past few months. While I need to get better at staggering things out, I’m glad that it’s becoming instinctual to note my thoughts on a piece and post them. I do need to apologize for the periodic influx that would happen as a result of my getting backlogged for a few days, but I’m going to continue working on that.
I really like that it’s been the Asides which are attracting conversation in a number of ways. It’s awesome to see that you guys are into them and see value there.
A couple things are changing
As a result of this revised direction, I’m making a few alterations to Monday By Noon itself from today forward. In an effort to raise the bar even further, I’m introducing Memberships.
Before I explain what it is a Membership gains you, I’d like to explain that access to all of the content will remain the same insofar as the site is concerned. Things on the RSS end are changing a bit though.
For the past 6 years I’ve offered a full content, all access feed. There was a week or two during which I offered only excerpts, but that was primarily a knee-jerk reaction to a haughty increase in content scraping.
Starting today, the public feed will be excerpt only, requiring that the full article be read on Monday By Noon the site. That is of course unless you sign up as a Member. Additionally, Asides will no longer be included in the public feed, but they will continue to be readily accessible on the site. The final piece will be the continuance of advertising in the public feed, as you’ve likely noticed already.
These are two of the bigger changes being made as Monday By Noon begins the adoption of Members.
Monday By Noon Memberships
Membership at Monday By Noon is brand new as of this morning. The deal is pretty straightforward: $1/mo for a Standard Membership and $2/mo for a Supporter Membership. That’s it. Here’s the scoop:
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The primary benefit to having a Monday By Noon Membership will be a full content feed. If you (like many) rarely read an article on the originating site anymore, that will be something to keep in mind. If you decide against Membership, you’ll just need to click through to the full article (and Instapaper it if you’d like).
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The secondary benefit to becoming a Member will be Asides integrated within the full content feed. Asides will be full content as well, so if you’re used to reading everything in your feed reader, you can continue to do so.
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The next benefit to having a Monday By Noon Membership will be that your feed will also be ad-free. I opened up the RSS feed to ad spots a few months ago and you’ve likely noticed them. If you are ad-averse, becoming a Member will help to avoid it.
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The final benefit to Membership will be support of Monday By Noon. Membership accounts will help me facilitate spending more time curating more links and finding that much more to link to that I hope you’ll all find valuable. I’d sincerely appreciate your support and I felt starting Memberships would be a nice way to accomplish that.
It’s not a huge change, but I wanted to make sure and outline each piece that was getting adjusted as of this morning. I’m planning to add on more Member-specific benefits as time goes on, but just little things here and there (e.g. weighted entries in book giveaways).
Let’s keep this going
I’m honestly not sure how the Memberships are going to work out, but I’ve decided to give it a shot and see what everyone thinks. If you’ve got an opinion on it, I’d love to hear from you, but I’m going to close comments on this thread in an effort to have a more personal conversation with those that would like to voice a concern.
My plan is to get even more involved with the site and further branch out to lesser known authors in an effort to expose even more of the awesome stuff that’s happening every day. In turn I plan to parlay that discovery into more involved and adaptive articles as the main feature piece every week. If you’d consider becoming a Member to help push that along, I’d appreciate it very much and do my best to make it happen.
For all I know this idea could completely crash and burn, but I’m putting it out there to see what you guys think about it. My core principal with going forward was to not remove access to any content should people not want to become Members, and I’m glad I was able to do that. I recognize that I wouldn’t have this choice to make if it weren’t for you guys reading, so I’m hoping you’re as excited about the change as I am.