Our company's growing, and so's our staff.
Please join all of us at DK Pittsburgh Sports in proudly welcoming Jeff Hartman, longtime architect of the Behind the Steel Curtain blog, to our family. He'll be our content manager, organizing what we create and how we get it out to the world, as well as contributing articles/analyses of his own on the Steelers.
Read more about Jeff right here. And in this personal farewell to his readers at BTSC. He'll start with us June 1.
We'll have more hires to come in the weeks ahead, including another to announce in next Saturday's Site Stuff.
Plain and simple, things are about to get real around here. We've been building toward the launch of the new app for half a year and, along the way, we've been plotting, planning, storing away, and we're about to embark on something that's a lot bigger than any piece of technology. More reporters. More coverage. More visibility.
How's this happening?
Principally, it's because of your support. That's not intended to be sappy. It's as real as real gets: Our subscription revenue in 2020, amid a global pandemic, is up 31.2 percent from the same stage of 2019. Our renewal rate's as high as it's ever been, we've had an encouraging influx of new sign-ups, and we've also had a consistent stream of gift subscriptions. It's been great.
Yeah, really.
Now, this hasn't compensated for the overwhelming loss in programmatic advertising -- which is down as much as 75 percent this month alone -- but the underpinning of this venture has always been the subscription base. Without that specific support, we're nothing at all. And we've never felt it more strongly than we have this year.
So, as ever, we're reinvesting in the product, working to build it into even more. Just in time for the restart of sports.
THE APP'S TARGET DATE
The app took its biggest step yet in being sent out to our 25 volunteer beta testers -- thanks again to all of you! -- last week, and we've appreciated all their feedback. Adjustments are being made even as this is typed.
The best news: We've got a target date for the full release, and it's the week of June 15. Again, just in time for the restart of sports.
THE VISION THING
Part of this reinvesting, rebuild, whatever anyone would care to call it, has been formulating a vision. That'll sound hokey to some, but people who manage companies will smartly put up big bucks to have that conceived by consulting firms.
We're fortunate to have Jeffrey Zink, a longtime reader in Colorado, and V2LS Consulting on our side in this regard. Jeffrey's been after me for years to do this for DKPS, and we finally got around to it this month:
We strive to be the premier source of Pittsburgh sports journalism, through our original reporting, expert views, passionate fan engagement and pioneering technology.
Happy to hear your thoughts on this.
MILITARY DRIVE TO 1,500: 707
We sold 19 military subscriptions in the past week, including a bulk purchase of 10 to the one, the only Erich Cushey at Curtis Pharmacy, the sponsor of this very feature.
In the four months since Josh DeNinno at Moon Golf Club challenged our subscribers to step up with 1,500 veteran subscription purchases in 2020, commemorating his course's 15th anniversary, our count is at 707.
They're $19.99 for the annual and can be bought individually right here. Or, if you’re interested in making a bulk purchase, please email me directly: DK@DKPittsburghSports.com.
JOIN OUR SOCIAL ARMY!
We need your help: As the launch approaches, we're working to build up our social-media muscle to maximize promotion. And, if you aren't aware of the inner workings of Twitter and especially Facebook, you can't imagine how big an impact you can make with the simple tap of a button.
If you'd like to help, please email Hunter Homistek at Hunter@DKPittsburghSports.com.
BACK TO BUSINESS
• Our daily page views, averaged out over the past week, were 52,149. The goal with this figure is to average 100,000, but that's obviously not going to be realistic for a while.
• Our most-hit original article of the past week was Ramon Foster's column on the Steelers' faith in Mason Rudolph, at 10,224. The Steelers accounted for 103,529 page views, the Pirates 61,508, Penguins 54,714, and Pitt 1,680.
• We're at 36,420 (+78) followers on Twitter, we're at 33,037 (+673) page likes on Facebook, we're at 14,346 (+104) followers on Instagram. These figures are just for our official company account on each platform, not for us as individuals.
• Get our free newsletter with a simple signup! We send out a new one Monday-Friday at 7 a.m.
