As near as I can tell, my monthly reading limit is ZERO articles. I guess Seeking Alpha just doesn't like me?

In that case, it's definitely a bug -- the print function only prints out one page EVEN IF YOU'RE SIGNED IN.

Sadly, I fear many of the commenters here are resisting the reality -- and SA staff is enabling their delusion.

The public beach where we all used to gather has become private. If you don't pay the membership fee, you cannot use the beach.

"Community" will continue without you, with maybe a smaller number but higher-income beachgoers enjoying the campfires.

If you want to hang around the gates, there are forums for you there at the Internet rabble level.

That sums up SeekingAlpha's commitment to community.

Thanks for making the effort to ameliorate the complaints in this and related threads. Have you ever seen the discussions attached to stocks etc. on Yahoo Finance? Worthless.

Offering a platform for general comment only replicates other areas of pointless blather on the Internet. But I guess it's a stab at maintaining "community" here.

SeekingAlpha is simply applying the principles of capitalism to publishing. If you are an informed investor, you will recognize that it is maximizing revenue from a product that is in demand.

If you know about marketing, you will assume SeekingAlpha has done audience analyses with income segmentation, possibly surveying specific segments, and produced projections of what people will pay for the product.

Management then looked at the cost-demand curve and set the cost ($900 per year) at a point where revenues would be maximized despite some loss of readership. It's not a charity, it's a business.

Reading complaints is a low-cost consequence of making this change, sudden or otherwise.

If the projections are not accurate and revenues do not meet expectation, SeekingAlpha may occasionally have reduced-rate specials to boost sales.

SeekingAlpha is a business first. The nurturing of so-called community with free content and social media aspects built site participation and popularity. That phase is over.

If, as an investor, you are knowledgeable about how businesses work, you already know this.

The lack of notice for the change, however, was inelegantly handled. But maybe SeekingAlpha management saw no reason for it, giving notice would only prolong the complaint period, which will unwind in time. I hope whoever among the staff is assigned to read the complaints and comment sympathetically gets a bonus for it.

I feel a little odd commenting here when marketing plans have already defined target segments, made projections, and analyzed competition.

The bottom line is: How does Seeking Alpha differentiate from its competition, what is the value-add that justifies a subscription that's so much more expensive? Devotion of the community will only go so far, as probably the majority cannot afford $900/year.

The paywall and 10-day limit on articles very much reduce the value of SeekingAlpha to the occasional researcher who is not a subscriber, thus constricting the universe of those who might become regular readers or subscribers.

As I said elsewhere, if I'm Googling something and frequently run into a paywall at a site, such as Barron's, I just don't bother to click on it. (A Barron's subscription is less than $250/yr, they run frequent specials for a lot less, and the columnists are, arguably, more reliable.)

It looks like the intention is to turn SeekingAlpha into a entirely different product, one that is for a more elite audience that is probably smaller but more profitable in membership fees. They will cull out the less-popular columnists and pay the rest more.

The customer base is the more dedicated investment DIY-ers, finance hobbyists, and maybe investment advisers not above cribbing from others' research. There will be fewer clueless commenters. A smaller contributor and reader base may also mean reduction in staffing and expense.

$900/year gets you the ability to research among the archives and the curated columnists. If you only use SA occasionally, say every quarter when you rebalance, I presume you can pay $75 for only a month's access.

Running ahead of subscriptions sales projections does not mean great numbers of sign-ups, it means SA is hitting its projected revenue target for this business plan.

It's a business, not a community.

So long, and thanks for all the CEFs.

I believe it's exactly that value for research that SA wants to monetize. Ingenious, given that much of the SA archive is mulch.

This policy is going to kill SeekingAlpha in Google results. Why click on any SeekingAlpha link if you're likely to hit the paywall?

Of course, that might not be a problem if enough $900/year subscriptions are sold. SeekingAlpha has gone behind a paywall, farewell and good luck.