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First Pitch: The Future of Online News, and Why We’re Switching to a Subscription Site

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It may surprise you to find out that I never attended a minor league baseball game until after I started this site. I followed the minors closely, and lived close to Lynchburg for years while the Pirates had a team in that town. But every attempt I had usually ended in the same way. I’d want to go see an emerging pitcher (Zach Duke, Paul Maholm, etc.), and by the time I found a day off from work or school where I could go see them, they had been promoted to Altoona.

I remember the first trip vividly. I was looking forward to the game that upcoming Monday, and looking forward to providing a report for this new blog I had started about prospects in the Pirates’ system (if you’re reading this, you’re probably familiar with that site). But the economy was horrible at the time, and the Friday before the game I was laid off from my job.

There would be no reporting at the Monday game. There would only be drinking cheap beer while watching baseball.

Throughout that summer I searched for work daily, getting rejected in the form of being ignored. I received zero job interviews, mostly because I was fresh out of college with a business degree, a year of sports writing under my belt, a ton of student loans, and living in an area where you needed 3-5 years of experience for any available position. I was either under qualified for anything that needed a degree, or over qualified for anything else because of my degree. I couldn’t even get a minimum wage job anywhere, because there was just nothing available. So while I was searching for a job with no success, I decided to keep that blog running, just to keep up my work ethic.

I’m not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the way I had a crazy idea that could only be brought on by many unsuccessful months of searching for employment: What if I could make a career out of this blog?

I gave up looking for work. I put all of my eggs in this basket. If it didn’t work, I was screwed, but then again, I was out of work for years with a ton of student loan debt. I was already screwed. Might as well go down swinging for the fences. And it worked.

It wasn’t easy. I sold everything. There were times where I searched through my house looking for things to sell, just to make sure I wouldn’t go bankrupt a week or two later. I lived in my now late-grandma’s vacant house for free, on the condition that I deliver lunch to her every day (she was always understanding when I was late because a trade broke around noon, even though she didn’t know what that meant). I was taking short-term loans from family and friends, just to get by rough stretches. And I was annoying the shit out of anyone close to me by repeatedly explaining my spreadsheets of projections showing how the site could work out if it reached X amount of page views per year, and how that number was totally possible.

The site worked. I went from being unemployed, selling anything I didn’t use on a weekly basis, and depending heavily on friends and family, to being in a position where I can live a normal life with the security of a regular income. So why would I throw that away?

I explained my goals for the site in my announcement earlier today. If you haven’t read it, check it out now. I’ve got big plans for the site, and I’m optimistic that the plans will work.

But there are other reasons why I moved away from the ad model. It was unreliable, and I can only see it getting worse in the future. Ad blockers are becoming more common. Revenues are dropping as the inventory in the industry increases. Intrusive ads get the big payday, which means I would eventually be left with a choice between roll over ads, 15 second displays before you can see the site, and a ton of video ads (which are apparently starting to show up already) — or I could just ditch the ad model altogether.

I plan to eventually phase the ads out. For now, they’re going to be insurance as I kick things off. I’ll quickly be cutting down on the number of ads on the site, and when it grows big enough, I’ll be removing them completely. I’m not ruling out that we won’t have sponsors in the future. But I feel that’s a totally different animal than having a ton of ads all over the page.

The ad model also restricts creativity and content. It puts you in position to strive for page views, and if something doesn’t bring in ad revenue, it’s not worth doing.

We’ve been getting questions about having an app for years. I’ve never done it, because an app would kill the business. An app would drive people away from the site, and we’d have no way of getting revenue for those readers. Under a paid site, we can charge a subscription, and you can read the content in whatever way is most convenient for you. We will be adding an app in the future. I’ll be researching that soon. On that note, if you’re a developer, send me an e-mail at tim@piratesprospects.com.

I had a lot of questions today about the podcast. We did one in 2013, and it got decent results. It started out strong, with about 1000-2000 weekly downloads. But in terms of ad dollars, that equals about $4-8. And it would take about 4-5 hours of work for me to put together a podcast. You can see how a podcast wouldn’t be worth the time. A podcast is now an option again, and we might bring it back once everything gets going this year.

Then there was a situation that came up last year. I was approached by Baseball America about writing stories for them, and wrote one about Tyler Glasnow’s progress. And I found that I could make a lot more money sending big articles to places like BA, Baseball Prospectus, and other places than by posting them on the site and relying on ad revenues. But that wasn’t a situation I wanted to be in. Why even have the site running if the best content was better off posted elsewhere?

In short, the ad model was preventing me from adding high demand features. It was limiting quality content, just because the work for that content might not be worth what it brings in as far as ad revenues. And it would have eventually led to me having to drive content away from the site, which means you’d have to subscribe elsewhere to read that content. Then there’s the fact that I probably would have only had three more years, maximum, under the ad model due to its lack of reliability. At that point, the site would have either shut down, or made this switch. It only made sense to make the change now.

As someone who has been on the ad side of things for over six years, it’s my opinion that this model won’t be lasting much longer. In a few years, more and more sites and outlets will be forced to go the subscription model, for all of the reasons I outlined above.

I liken this approach to what I did a few years ago with the independent approach. I was one of the early adopters when it came to running a professional independent site and trying to get credentialed to cover events. It was difficult at first to get credentials, because no one knew how to handle a situation where someone had a job writing about sports, but didn’t work for a newspaper or a TV station. It was always a battle to get credentials in the beginning. Now? It’s so easy for small independent sites to get credentials, because it’s a much more common thing.

I think subscription sites will be the same way. The format has been out there for a few years, but it’s still early. There are more and more people making the jump from traditional outlets to the independent outlet, with Dejan Kovacevic being a local example. People are still hesitant to pay for anything on the internet, but I think eventually there won’t be a choice. It’s going to be common to pay a small fee to access content you enjoy, just as it is for television (Netflix/Hulu Plus), movies (Redbox/Vudu), and any other form of entertainment. I’d rather be on the right side of this trend, picking it up early, rather than waiting until it is too late and hurting the future of this site.

I thank everyone who subscribed today, and who plans to subscribe in the future. For those of you who said you won’t be subscribing due to financial reasons, I definitely understand how $2.99 per month can be too much. I was in that situation myself a few years ago. For those who said they don’t want to subscribe out of principle, I hope that you reconsider and decide that the content we produce is worth more than the price of one cup of coffee or two sodas per month. In either case, I thank you all for reading up to this point. We might offer a way for people to donate subscriptions in the future, although I’d rather that be for people who want to subscribe but can’t afford it. And there will definitely be gift subscriptions, so you can put that on your wish list for Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, Christmas, Hanukkah, birthdays, Valentine’s Day, Columbus day, or any of the other big gift giving holidays.

For anyone looking to subscribe, you can use one of the options below.

[mepr-group-price-boxes group_id=”96507″]

And now, back to the grind. I’ll have a few articles tomorrow morning from minor league camp, including a look at what Nick Kingham has been working on recently, and a look at the development of the three over-slot prep pitchers from last year’s draft. I’ll also have any news on cuts, if there are any cuts tomorrow.

**Here was the announcement from earlier today: The Future Of Pirates Prospects.

**My friend Dave Bryan, who runs the outstanding site Steelers Depot, has purchased a one-year subscription to be given away on Twitter. I’ll have the details tomorrow on my Twitter account. While you’re at it, you should also follow Dave for great insight and all of the latest news on the Steelers. I haven’t had much time to follow the Steelers in recent years, but anytime I’m looking for an update, Steelers Depot is always where I go.

**Pirates Prospects Is Looking For Paid Writers In Altoona And West Virginia. Part of the site expansions. On that same note, I’ve already planned out some early season travel, which I will announce later in the week when I get everything finalized.

Tim Williams
Tim Williams
Tim is the owner, producer, editor, and lead writer of PiratesProspects.com. He has been running Pirates Prospects since 2009, becoming the first new media reporter and outlet covering the Pirates at the MLB level in 2011 and 2012. His work can also be found in Baseball America, where he has been a contributor since 2014 and the Pirates' correspondent since 2019.

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