Today is the last day of the 2013 Membership Drive. The window of opportunity to win something from the more than $3,000 in prizes in the giveaway closes tonight at Midnight CST.
Update: The giveaway drive is now over and winners will be contacted during the first week of March. The ability to sign up for a Membership to shawnblanc.net and all the perks that includes, of course, always open.
As a member, you get access to the Shawn Today daily podcast, the new Coffee Methods section of the site, and The Members Journal.
You can sign up for your awesome membership right here.
As a reminder for the giveaway, all active members (new or longstanding) are eligible to win — it’s not just for the new members. If you want to toss your name in the hat for a specific prize from the list please fill out this form. If you end up winning something I’ll do my best to hook you up with the prize you’re interested in.
I am so incredibly grateful and honored by all the friends of the site who’ve generously donated something to to the giveaway. And thanks to all the members who have signed up already over the past two weeks. Without an ounce of hyperbole, I mean it when I say I could not do what I do without your support.
I tend to enter into these drives with two expectations: a low-end expectation of how many people will “probably” sign up, and an optimistic goal of how many people I “hope” will sign up. This year, my low-end expectation was for 100 new members to join. And my hope was for 250 because, well, my wife and I have our second kid on the way and she’ll be quitting her part-time job this fall.
There is still a half-day to go, but already this year’s membership drive has been a success. As of this writing, there have been 115 new member signups. Which means the future of this site continues to look bright. Thank you!
Moreover, quite a few members who were on the PayPal system have migrated their membership over to the new Stripe system. (To those still on the fence about if it’s worth it to migrate your membership, I say go for it. Everything about the Stripe system is just better and easier.)
Something that’s interesting to me is the ratio of Annual Membership signups versus the month-to-month signups. For the previous PayPal-based membership system, about 10-percent of new signups were for the annual membership plan. But on the Stripe-based system, it’s just over 20-percent. I can only attribute this change to the fact that the Annual Membership plan is much more visible on the new signup page.
On the old sign-up page, there was just one button and it was for the standard $3-month plan. And down the page were some text-link options for the Executive Membership and the Annual Memberships. When building the new signup page I was very concerned that showing all 4 membership plans so prominently would actually dissuade people away from signing up at all. But, so far as I can tell, that has not been the case.
Another concern I had was with the price increase. I effectively raised the cost of a membership by 33-percent, from $3/month to $4. But I have not received a single complaint that $4 is too much. Not even from the longstanding members who voluntarily migrated their membership from the $3 PayPal subscription to the new $4 Stripe subscription.
All this to say, I am once again blown away at the generosity of this site’s readership. The membership continues to be the primary source of income allowing me to write here full time. Thanks to everyone who has supported this site over the years through a membership or through simply showing up to read. It means the world to me.
And, though I wanted to, I decided not to post any cute pictures of my 1-year-old son announcing his unborn sibling as a way to tug on your heartstrings and maybe guilt you into becoming a member. I mean, come on. Who would do a thing like that?
