It's been a year like no other. And for this little community here, it's been a holiday season like no other, only I mean that in the best way.
With Christmas having passed yesterday, we sold a total of 1,126 gift subscriptions, including an incredible 953 that were bought to put into a pool to keep existing subscribers experiencing hardships due to the pandemic. It's the most gift subscriptions we've ever sold.
Whether the purchases were a single or in big bulk, every single one was appreciated and, far more important, every single one is being applied. We continue hearing from people who can't afford to stay with us, and we continue rejecting each such cancellation or expiration. And we're actually expecting dozens more of those today, which annually sees us lose people who had gift subscriptions from the previous year. Dali projects that'll be 202.
Bottom line: This was, and continues to be, beautiful.
We'll still have lost too many people through this pandemic, and we're projecting to close out the year down in subscription revenue -- currently down 11% with a week to go -- but the damage that could've been done without any of the above happening ... I don't even want to consider it. Like a lot of small businesses, we all probably made the best of a bad situation, and it'll ideally benefit everyone down the road.
Thanks yet again to everyone for sticking by us.
If you've got any questions at all about this program, which we'll continue for as long as it's needed, just shoot me an email directly: DK@DKPittsburghSports.com
ONLY 11 LIFETIMES LEFT!
Of the maximum 100 Lifetime subscriptions we're offering this month, we've now sold 89. If you're interested in one of the final 11, email me: DK@DKPittsburghSports.com
This offer will expire Dec. 31 whether we reach 100 or not. And I genuinely don't know if/when we'll do it again.
THREE APP TIPS
Hoping to make this a recurring element to Site Stuff, just sharing ways to make your app experience even better:
• Turn on your alerts/notifications for news and new content. Go to your profile (your smiling face in the top left corner), thumb down to Preferences, then Notifications and choose Select. Pick the material you want. Boom. (Please note these aren't the alerts/notifications for when someone replies to your comment. That feature's not active yet.)
• On the blue horizontal bar that stretches across the middle of the home page, choose TODAY to find a daily rundown of all our events and all team events for the day, as well as my daily What's Brewing feature and our staff locator map. On that same blue bar, find the day's videos and podcasts.
• One thing I ensured in the production of this app is that you'd always have an easy path back to the home page. And an equally easy way to refresh. Get to the home page by pressing either the house on the bottom bar, the site's logo at the very top or by just going back. Refresh with a good, solid tug.
GET THE APP!
I'm always surprised when I hear from a reader, as I did last night, that he or she is subscribed but doesn't yet have the app. I can't implore you strongly enough to get it. It's a big part of who we are. Here's Apple, and here's Android.
They're free, of course, and they're both completely new, as of August. If you ever had a lousy time with our app before that, forget about it. This has nothing in common with that.
BACK TO BUSINESS
• Our daily page views averaged 46,822 over the past week, up 2% from the the previous week. The most-read original piece was my Grind from Cincinnati on the Steelers' loss, at 9,910. Broken down by team, the Steelers brought 27.4% of our traffic, the Penguins 11.1%, the Pirates 8.4%, Pitt 1.06%, Penn State 0.96%, and Duquesne 0.36%.
• Our podcast downloads were 51,171, up 1% from the previous week.
• We're at 38,861 (+130) followers on Twitter, we're at 36,963 (-1) followers on Facebook, we're at 14,783 (-1) followers on Instagram. These figures are just for our official company account on each platform, not for us as individuals.
• We make mistakes. If you see one, email: Typos@DKPittsburghSports.com
• Anything you need, including lost/forgotten passwords, email: Help@DKPittsburghSports.com