Since OSAlert’ inception in 1997 – yes, this site is that old – a lot has changed on the internet when it comes to earning income. While for a very long time a site like OSAlert could sustain itself through revenue from basic ads alone, we’re now far beyond the point where that is feasible – unless we were to introduce ever more intrusive ads, which we’re obviously not going to do.
Our readers are, of course, keenly aware of how expensive it can be to run a website like OSAlert, and as such, many of you have asked us over the years for methods of supporting the website financially. We’ve always had a subscriber program for an ad-free version of the site, but we never really advertised it very heavily. Today, that’s going to change.
You can now support OSAlert by becoming an OSAlert Patreon. With your support, we can keep posting stories every single day, pay the hosting bills, write more interesting articles, access interesting hardware to review for your amusement, and possibly expand into new territories like video reviews to accompany the regular written reviews. Your support will enable us to write reviews of older, vintage devices and software like Palm PDAs, Psion devices, old operating system versions, and much more.
We’ve created three tiers – Silver, Gold, and Platinum – and at each of these tiers you’ll get the ad-free version of OSAlert, as well as a silver, gold, or custom comment flair to show off your status as an OSAlert Patreon. All of our readers are equal, of course, but OSAlert Patreons are just a little more equal.
If you want to support the continued work we do, head on over to the OSAlert Patreon page and become an OSAlert Patreon. Thank you – all of you, not just OSAlert Patreons – for supporting the site!
Important note: since Patreon has ended support for their API, we are not investing engineering hours into full integration of Patreon into OSAlert. This means we have to add the rewards to your OSAlert account manually. As such, it may take a few hours before your rewards are added to your account, depending on time zones, availability of OSAlert staff, and so on. We will obviously do our best to make this process as quick as possible, but please bear with us.
Frequently (?) Asked Questions
Does this mean OSAlert will start putting content behind Patreon-only paywalls? No. All of the stories and articles we post will remain freely available as they always have been, and even future articles made possible through Patreon supporters will always be available to everyone. The goal of the OSAlert Patreon is to support OSAlert as a whole, not just a small part of it.
Can you give some examples of the kinds of articles you want to write that are impossible to do without more financial support? Sure! A great example of an article – or, more likely, series of articles – that I’ve been dying to write is one about one of the last Sun UltraSPARC multiprocessor workstations, fitted with one of the later SunPCI cards. I’m a huge fan of Sun’s workstation hardware, but getting access to relatively old and outdated hardware like this is surprisingly expensive. A successful Patreon could make this a reality.
I also have a massive collection of PDAs, from the late 80s all the way up to the 2000s, that I would love to write more about. That takes a lot of time, and with the support of the OSAlert Patreon I might be able to set aside time from my regular job to focus more on writing articles for OSAlert. There are tons of other interesting topics that require expenses too, such as SGI’s IRIX, or Psion devices, or even modern computers like the new M1-based Macs.
Will you introduce more tiers and benefits in the future? Possibly. We have a few other ideas that we need to flesh out further and reconsider before making any commitments.
Why is the pricing in euros, and not in dollars or Canadian rubles? The pricing is set in euros, but Patreon shows the amounts converted to your local currency. Some users may still see the euro pricing, however, for instance when using a VPN.
Can I cancel my Patreon or upgrade/downgrade to a different tier? Yes. Patreon as a platform offers all of these options at any time, so you’ll never have to feel tied down or locked into or out of a certain tier.
Three cheers for OSAlert Patreon supporters!
Can you open up a minimal tier in the $1-$2 range. I don’t need ads removed or any other perk; but I wouldn’t mind throwing a buck or two a month for all the hard work you do.
You can do a custom pledge. I don’t see the option in the mobile version, but it is definitely there in the desktop version of the site.
The trick is to go to https://www.patreon.com/join/osnews as opposed to https://www.patreon.com/osnews . The first link has a custom option and no description, and the second has the description with no custom option.
This is great! I’ve become a true believer that advertising isn’t enough to keep services alive.
I threw out my UltraSPARCs ~6 years back, if I’d known you wanted one I’d have sent it to you. Perhaps if you want something it might be worth asking the readers, since we’re likely to have older things that we might not want.
It was nice to have hardware that was clearly designed to be a workstation/server, but being older, it was big, heavy, loud, and slow (shipping would cost a fortune.) It didn’t use VGA (although later models do have graphics cards for that), so it needed a proprietary monitor, and mine was a heavy 20″ CRT. The disks were SCSI, and it was always a challenge to be able to buy large enough disks for a sane price – I think I ordered a *new* 74Gb disk into my local store which cost about 3x the price of a new 250Gb SATA device (in 2005.) Although things like SunPCi existed, they weren’t widespread, because it amounts to paying a premium for an older version of a commodity device; it was cheaper to just get a second device and use X/VNC/RDP etc.
Pragmatically it was hard to justify keeping, because a Linux machine of equivalent capability is a Raspberry Pi. By the end the CMOS battery died (not unexpected) but in these devices it was integrated into an IC (wtf?) so it reset settings on each power cycle. The default settings are basically “paranoid check of all peripherals” so it took about 15 minutes to start. But the really silly thing is that I bought 3 Ultra2’s (2 x 400MHz) and I think I paid around $90 each, and today the same devices on eBay are around $600. Since workstation UltraSPARCs haven’t been made for 15 years, apparently now there’s more demand than supply.
Before I add myself, I handle recurring payments on an annual basis, as I hate recurring payments in general. Is there, or will there be an annual Patreon payment system?
+1 to this.
I used to be an OSAlert subscriber back when the site supported it. I don’t mind contributing financially, but having a company remember payment information and do recurring billing adds risk that I’d rather not have. I’ve never used Patreon before but it implies that everything is recurring monthly, even custom pledges. If there’s no integration with Patreon anyway, can we just skip this step and pay directly? In the past subscription used Paypal to an osnews account.
I usually subscribe on patreon, and cancel it on the next day. Doing so allows me to make a one-time payment. In the country I live, the DAILY minimum wage is approximately $10. I simply don’t have the means to dole out that kind of cash every month to the sites I like and would like to support.
One thing OSAlert could do if it commissions pieces is to ethically use people in low wage economies. The money would go further and make donations from low wage economies feed back as well. Just an idea.
I’m staying clear of Patreon given their recent behaviors of censorship and abuse of their TOS. It’s calmed down for now, however I still don’t want to put my money in a business that has shown themselves willing to do such a thing. Now, if you had something else like a SubscribeStar account in addition, then we’ll talk.
Seconded
Could we have a lower teir were just the interstitial ads go away? $6 a month is a bit dear for what you are offering. However if I could pay $1-2 a month to get rid of the new pain you just added, I would see that as being worth it
I’m really happy OSAlert is expanding into video and expanding financial support options. Youtube algorithms are very iffy. I have no problem with Patreon or any platform which openly takes a position against hate speech and misinformation and conspiracy sites. I personally like the social commentary Thom has posted in the past and would welcome content which explores creativity and how people use technology and R&D. If editorial integrity and ethics can be maintained would extra content of this kind attract manufacturer sponsorship or government grants? Would OSAlert be able to reach out to researchers and think tanks to contribute material too?
Happy to contribute, manually, once a year.
Not interested in (yet another) yearly/monthly/weekly/daily subscription scheme.
There are already far too many of those.
Agreed.
Easy decision for me; OSAlert has been my go-to news site since 2006 or so!
Done. Least I can do for all the interesting content this site has provided me over the last 15-20 odd years
Yep, I totally agree. Having visited OSAlert regularly for decades, I can’t imagine a site I’d rather support. It’s had quite an impact on my view of technology.
And since I’ll go on about the evils of tracker-based advertising to anyone who’s willing to listen, it’s great OSAlert is providing an alternative.
One question just struck me. Is there an ethical and environmentally responsible way OSAlert can sell merchandise? I have no idea what OSAlert could sell but it could be anything from a curated lst of ergonomic mice to handmade pots for desk plants.
Done, Well Deserved
OSAlert may be interested in this essay. It outlines policy measures being put in place to allow news media to have charitable status. This opens up avenues for funding and tax advantages which would otherwise be closed. This is an essay specific to the UK but the ideas are universal so there may be something in this OSAlert could use.
https://theconversation.com/finally-there-might-be-some-good-news-about-uk-journalism-151254
Joined. Been a member, avid reader and sporadic commenter since the mid 2000’s. As others have said, well deserved.
I’ll do it. There are very few periodical e-mails that I open nearly every message. OS News might be the only one!! We need ways to not force the entire planet into the ad blitz game. It would be nice if Patreon had annual or less automatic options, but it is what it is for now.
May I ask where and to who the money goes? (Not criticising here, just wondering) I hope it is towards hosting first and then who will benefit? Is it only Thom or Thom and Adam or any other arrangement?
Wondercool,
Hosting is comparatively cheap, It’s human labor that is expensive. I’ve always preferred to help with skills than money, but they never ask for help with the site. I’d still really like for osnews to consider deploying the chronological ordering scripts I wrote for osnews a couple years ago to improve comments. IMHO the commenting system got worse with wordpress. Anyways there’s a lot of cool things we could do as volunteers to improve osnews, but I’m not sure what, if anything osnews would be willing to green-light. I suspect the move to wordpress was done with the intention of getting away from customization.
My point of view is probably a bit skewed as a developer though – I’m guilty of focusing too much on the website itself rather than the content, haha. Still, user comments are a big reason I’m here.
Colour and layout have an impact on framing perception which can affect mood as well as comment ordering which can effect cognition. This can be fairly subtle but as it feeds in to things like what audience is attracted by what content and social attitudes it can have a cumulative effect. I found the old OSAlert design better because it was less intrustive and clearer and calmer. I feel this has been lost with the new design. (I’m not a big fan of Windows 10 or Linux for similar underlying user interface and technical design reasons. I find “UX” designers and coders are the tail wagging the dog.)
Is it possible to make a donation without using Patreon?
For a number of reasons that I will be glad to go into if anyone is interested, I believe that there are many people who would be glad to donate but are unwilling to sign up for recurring payments directly removed from your account.