Your comments

It's not. We're reading and considering all the feedback, and also looking carefully at the data -- the number of sign ups for PRO and any changes to usage on the site.

Bea, you're right -- instead of writing "Receiving something free for a long period of time naturally creates a sense of entitlement", I should have written "It's hard to contemplate paying for something when you've been getting it for free for a long time, irrespective of how valuable it is." I apologize for that.


I also think your suggestion that we communicate more directly with our comment community is important.


And finally, a genuine "thank you" for your support and comments -- which I'm now reading! (https://seekingalpha.com/user/237658/comments).

Thanks for your comments. I know it's frustrating when something which was previously free is no longer free. However, we believe that the growth of Seeking Alpha, and our ability to reward our contributors for their work, requires subscriptions as well as advertising. 


I'm sure you've seen this from other publishers as well. There's a growing consensus in the publishing industry (other than Facebook and Google) that quality publishing is not sustainable with advertising alone. And we believe that Seeking Alpha articles are far more valuable than articles which many news sites charge for -- because Seeking Alpha articles help investors make profitable investment decisions. 

   

We understand that many of our users won't want to pay. Receiving something free for a long period of time naturally creates a sense of entitlement. And $75 a month is considerably more money than news sites charge (for their articles which don't help you make profitable investment decisions). 


So we've tried to design our paywall to maintain what we hope will still be a great free experience. All our news is still free. Analysis articles about broad themes or groups of stocks are still entirely free. And analysis articles that focus on a specific stock are still free in the first 10 days. Only analysis articles about specific stocks which are at least 10 days after publication now require a subscription to read. And for those, everyone can still see the article summary, and if you commented on one those articles and receive a comment notification, you'll still be able to see the comments without a subscription (but not the article itself). 


The net effect of this is that if you have a portfolio on Seeking Alpha, or follow your favorite authors, or find articles in sections of Seeking Alpha like Dividend Investing, you're probably reading articles within 10 days of publication, so your experience will be unchanged. 


However, if you want to research a stock, the most valuable articles -- those about the specific stock in question -- now require a subscription. But even then, many articles which discuss the stock are still free. Here's how to find those articles. if you're on a quote page (like Altria -- MO), click on "Analysis" and select "Related Analysis" from the dropdown.

I hope this explains some of our thinking about this issue.

Thank you for the feedback! A few points of apology (!) and clarification:


- I apologize for the repeat messages. I didn't personally send the message multiple times -- I would NEVER have done that. There was a bug in our system which resulted in that. Our tech team has fixed the bug and deleted the repeat messages, but not before many users had seen them. I apologize for that -- it's really unpleasant to be hectored by a message being sent multiple times.


- I hear loud and clear your point about not making changes to users' accounts without their initiation, and I apologize for upset caused. 


- To clarify a common misunderstanding: we did not sign anyone up for emails, this only impacts an area of the website which is new, and the accounts are only core Seeking Alpha accounts which we believe are an intrinsic part of our product, such as Wall Street Breakfast and Editors' Picks.

I hear loud and clear your point about not making changes to users' accounts without their initiation, and I apologize for the upset we caused you. 


Just so you know: we did not sign anyone up for emails, this only impacts an area of the website which is new, and the accounts are core Seeking Alpha accounts which we believe are an intrinsic part of our product, such as  Editors' Picks, but which many of our users aren't aware of.


If you want to unfollow those accounts, you can do so by going to "People", clicking on the "Following" box on the left hand side of the page, and unfollowing the 4 accounts there. 


I apologize for the extra work for you. 

Thanks for the feedback.