Comments on: Ars Technica Launches Paid “Premier” Service

By: Will Robertson

Will Robertson — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 10:42:49 +0000

Very interesting, I don’t read Ars so I won’t be signing up – but I wonder what I will do if a website I read does something like this. Not sure any of them are worth $50/a to me though.

By: Steven Hodson

Steven Hodson — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:51:35 +0000

Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins and I also discussed this whole idea of blog subscribtions in last night CobWEBs Daily Edition podcast just in case your interested Alan http://www.shootingatbubbles.com/index.php/2009/09/09/the-cobwebs-daily-edition-podcast-blog-subscription-model-will-they-work/

By: epc

epc — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:31:53 +0000

The nice thing with the PDF downloads is that they take the time to use a custom stylesheet so that the resulting document is worth keeping as a reference. They strip out all of the widget cruft for example. It would not be that difficult for sites to offer a print stylesheet that does the same thing but most don’t.

By: Allen Stern

Allen Stern — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:02:29 +0000

thanks epc – interesting that they have been using it for a few years – the pdf downloads sound great – wouldn’t work for most tech blogs as the posts aren’t that in-depth – most could be replaced with a 140 character sms :)

By: epc

epc — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:16:27 +0000

It’s not entirely new, Ars has had a paid subscription level for several years (the PDF download was a big reason I signed up for it a couple of years ago)