By turn all old aricles 'Pro' you have just limited your user experience and will lose users

Avatar
coroscant72
  • updated

In an attempt to monetize your product you just pushed your users away.  You're best bet is to monetize through advertisement and have as open a community attracting as many users as possible.  By instead trying to monetize the content from the user rather than advertising to them, you will limit how often an article is viewed, lower the amount you can charge for advertising, frustrate the users and encourage them to get their information somewhere else, and would encourage a rival page that doesn't suffer from the audacity of charging their users for what used to be free content.


You don't have to believe me.  I know you track your users.  See how many less articles are loaded over the next month or the next quarter.  See how much less your advertisers are going to want to pay for such limited exposer.  See your business model crumble by one incredible stupid mistake.


I hope you don't take a full quarter to figure this out.  It might start a spiraling trend  that you won't be able to get out of.  I wouldn't want to be the one how came up with this idea....

Replies 11
Avatar
4
redta1977

Agreed.  SA has been my go to site but with this change, I am currently looking for other sites.  I generally read every article I am interested in within 10 days but as time progresses, I like to look back at older articles for reference and comparison.  I have accounts at Merrill, Fidelity and e-Trade so I have other options but I like the authors on SA.  Maybe they will go to other sites as well.  It's disappointing that a great site will now likely decline. Whoever came up with idea should suggest it to Facebook and Google.  How silly of them to be funded by advertising and not charging their members....SMH

Avatar
2
Warren Longstockings

I too am going to add my voice to the growing list of discontent SA members. SA has always offered a very unique website and community to those wishing to learn more about individual securities and investing in general. Among the vast sea of heavily monetized-investment advice on the Internet, SA has always stood out from the rest by offering a viable free membership for most articles. Now SA is just another undistinguishable wave in the ocean.


If SA was in financial difficulty, or if the owners/administrators did really need to more effectively monetize the content, then I can fathom paying $10/month or maybe $15 at the high end. Going from $0 to $30 (with very little notice, IMO) is inexcusable and short-sighted strategy. 


I will look diligently for other websites and online investing communities. If anyone else finds one, please let me know. 

Avatar
4
coroscant72
Quote from redta1977

Agreed.  SA has been my go to site but with this change, I am currently looking for other sites.  I generally read every article I am interested in within 10 days but as time progresses, I like to look back at older articles for reference and comparison.  I have accounts at Merrill, Fidelity and e-Trade so I have other options but I like the authors on SA.  Maybe they will go to other sites as well.  It's disappointing that a great site will now likely decline. Whoever came up with idea should suggest it to Facebook and Google.  How silly of them to be funded by advertising and not charging their members....SMH

When researching a new stock, I like to look back and read some of the old articles about it.  I'm not just interested in stuff put out in the last 10 days.  I want to see what the thoughts were 6 months or a year ago.  They have just eliminated the ability to do this and have decreased their value as a place to do research on new stocks significantly.  It is a truly baffling decision. I guess i'll just have to do my research on another site.  I guess everyone will just have to do their research on another site.... 

Avatar
3
sulmer

I agree that this is a very bad idea. I use SA because it is informative and free. I now have three subscriptions from the marketplace but you have made the site less useful. When i do research through past articles I discover authors I follow and then sometimes subscribe. I will not pay for the pro plan, Your marketplace authors will suffer. Your user count will fall. 


I think if this is necessary then the charge should be 10 dollars/ month.


I also think that marketplace subscribers spending over a certain amount per year should be given full access. This will encourage marketplace subscriptions. You can take the revenue you need from the marketplace authors.

 

Avatar
1
Signup22

This new policy is ridiculous, I will be visiting Seeking Alpha a lot less in the future.

Avatar
0
Fcfrag
Quote from Warren Longstockings

I too am going to add my voice to the growing list of discontent SA members. SA has always offered a very unique website and community to those wishing to learn more about individual securities and investing in general. Among the vast sea of heavily monetized-investment advice on the Internet, SA has always stood out from the rest by offering a viable free membership for most articles. Now SA is just another undistinguishable wave in the ocean.


If SA was in financial difficulty, or if the owners/administrators did really need to more effectively monetize the content, then I can fathom paying $10/month or maybe $15 at the high end. Going from $0 to $30 (with very little notice, IMO) is inexcusable and short-sighted strategy. 


I will look diligently for other websites and online investing communities. If anyone else finds one, please let me know. 

Where'd you get the 30/month?  It looks like 75 to me (not that I'd pay the 30).

Avatar
0
Fcfrag

I find it incredibly sleazy to just pull this scheme on us.


Not until today did I finally get a message about why I couldn't get into any of the older posts.


Also, the clowns that run SA say they read everything in the Feedback Forum; I guess they just don't reply unless it's positive.

Avatar
0
Steve-0

One of the core values of Seeking Alpha has been to shed light on less followed stocks, usually stocks in the small/micro cap universe. As someone who typically looks for investments small/micro caps specifically, my main use case for SA was to use older articles on micro caps found through other filters to gain perspective on the company history, as well as find arguments for a long term bear/bull case. 


By barring users from these articles, SA has deliberately reduced exposure to these small caps and reduced it's use case to finding the hot take of daily events on the largest and most followed companies. Authors who post great ideas on less followed stocks with longer investment horizens won't be able to drive enough traffic in the 10 day window to justify writing content, and stocks with < 5 posts per year of analysis will lose any semblance of coverage. My use case for SA has essentially been reduced to earnings calls and announcements, which is a commodity offering and can be found elsewhere.


By making these changes to the PRO articles SA has essentially lost me as a user.


Avatar
0
jacks7777

Shocked to discover that I suddenly lost access to "older" articles. SA is now a significantly less useful tool. I'll spend my time accordingly. 

Avatar
1
SarasotaLady

Just wanted to add my anger at the misguided policy change regarding "old" (!!) articles more than 10 days old.  Just cause you CAN do it doesn't mean you SHOULD. You've alienated your long time readers who use your articles as part of their due diligence. and when you read an article, it often refers to earlier articles-- which are now blocked unless we pay some outrageous fee.  Yyou've lost me.  will look to other sources.