We're raising the price of a subscription ... but we're also not.
Meaning if you'd rather not pay more, you won't.
Here's how it'll work, plain and simple and skipping past any potential B.S.:
• Effective June 1, the price of an annual subscription will increase to $59.99, and a monthly will increase to $6.99. The current prices of $39.99 and $4.99 have been in place since 2017.
• The student and senior subscriptions will stay the same at $19.99. No change at all here.
• All existing subscriptions are honored, of course. Meaning nothing changes for you until your current subscription expires. To see your date, just tap on your profile -- top left corner of the app/site -- and scroll down to the MEMBERSHIPS section. That's the date right there.
• Here's the catch: If you can't pay the increase, you don't have to. No kidding. No catch. Just email me directly -- DK@DKPittsburghSports.com -- and let me know. No questions asked.
I can't stress this strongly enough: We're determined not to lose a single reader over this increase, and we'll take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that. We understand that it's a strange time right now and that not everyone's in the same economic circumstance. Trust me, we value your readership infinitely more than your extra twenty bucks.
In addition, and related to the extensive dialogue we had in last Saturday's Site Stuff, we're going to work with our Google ad vendor to more rigidly enforce the type of programmatic ads that make it through to the app/site. No one bats 1.000 with this sort of thing, but there are steps that can -- and will -- be taken. That'll result in fewer ads overall, which isn't awesome for the bottom line but also won't kill us. And if it makes the app/site a better user experience, it's more than worth it.
Thanks to everyone for the support, the dialogue and, as always, I'll be in comments for even more dialogue.
FULL-TIMERS TO EIGHT
For anyone who missed it, Chris Halicke, who'll cover Steelers and Pirates for us, gets started June 1. He'll round out our full-time staff roster at eight -- me, Dali, Taylor Haase, Alex Stumpf, Dale Lolley, Eddie Provident, Danny Shirey and soon Chris -- which is the highest it's ever been, and that's obviously not counting contributors, part-timers and freelancers.
We've still got the Pitt football/basketball beat to fill, but that's never been full-time. Neither has any college, as the coverage is too seasonal.
My point: We've got as many people under our actual roof as we've ever had and, as some will recall, part of our goal with the whole 2.0 ambition for 2022 was to achieve exactly that. More responsive, more flexible, more capable of helping each other in a pinch, more together than ever. And it's happening.
ARTS FESTIVAL SOON!
Every single day I'm at our new Downtown HQ/shop at 224 Fifth Avenue is a happy day for me, and that's almost all of them: We're open Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m., and I'm sitting right there inside the street-front window at my new desk, happy to say hello!
Oh, and this goes double during the upcoming Three Rivers Arts Festival, June 3-12, during which we'll have a setup out on the sidewalk!
Be sure to see us!
BACK TO BUSINESS
• Our page views for the past week were 443,984, one of our lowest weeks of the year. Our most-read original piece was Taylor's coverage of Bryan Rust's contract extension, at 16,400. Broken down by team traffic, articles on the Pirates brought 21.9% of our readership, the Penguins 19.5%, the Steelers 16.7%, Pitt 1.5%, and Penn State 0.9%.
• Our podcast downloads for the past week were 185,518.
• Our YouTube video views for the past week were 116,605.
• Our company social media accounts are at 45,106 followers on Twitter, 37,672 on Facebook, 14,530 on Instagram, 13,810 on YouTube.
• We make mistakes. If you see one, email: Typos@DKPittsburghSports.com
• Anything you need, including lost/forgotten passwords, email: Help@DKPittsburghSports.com