News Introducing the Tom’s Hardware Premium Beta: Exclusive content for members

[voyteck]

Good direction, I could be willing to pay but can't afford a one-time payment and have to be sure I won't see any ads in case my ad blocker stops working.

BTW, I don't even want to block ads but I can't read (and understand) anything longer than a few words without mental breakdown with non-static ads nearby. I'm not autistic or something but for many years I've been honing my skills of absolute focus on my work (copy editing; disclaimer: not in English) without any distractions (not even the e-mail icon on the task bar) and often in earplugs, maybe that's why.

 

[Nekroh11]

Nope, bye. And now you won’t even get the ad revenue I would have added by just casually visiting the site either.

 

[Mad_Ad]

Seriously?!?!! Just days ago I moved my homepage from Anandtech to here and now you're putting exactly the content I came looking for behind a paywall? And no small paywall at that.

I guess I'm looking for another site to patronise. Thanks but no thanks.

 

[stonecarver]

How will the behind the paywall be policed. If every aspect of the paywall is new fresh players. I might have some interest in giving it a try. Price is on the high side but still open to look.

 

[Geef]

I could go for it if it was a flat 20 for a year. Anything more than that and your asking too much.

---

Additional suggestion: Lower # of stories for China tech that has 'big claims.' Or maybe only do the stories IF they allow benchmarks before release. Try not to think of this as political. Those claim stories happen a lot around here.

 

[Jame5]

The big "Nope" from me is that there is no mention at all of fewer/no ads for the high price they are asking.

I'll be honest, if I'm directly subsidizing your content, I don't want to see ads. (I mean, I don't want to see ads anyway, but they were the way the site was getting paid with no direct contribution channel, and thus a necessary evil.)

 

[razor512]

I am afraid your pricing is completely detached from reality.

Ars Technica $25/year (no ads)
The Verge $50/year ("Fewer, better ads")
Washington Post $40/year (1st year deal)
New York Times $4/moth (6 month deal)

I have been reading Tom's Hardware for well over a decade but there is NO WAY it is worth $69/year to me.

I agree that paywalls are better than advertising and are a necessary thing for any media site in the coming AI-slop apocalypse, but you need to be realistic in your pricing.

For advertising, the industry needs a major course correction order to restore more trust in that area. Many websites have done the ad doom spiral similarly to doom spirals that some stores will have where in an effort to boost profits, they increase prices above the going rate, and that leads to them losing customers, but not wanting to accept that they made a mistake, they instead look at the remaining customers and how much they buy and adjust prices even higher to remain profitable given a smaller customer base, which leads to even more customers leaving.

In the case of ads, some sites went from basic banner ads and sponsored stories, to invasive video ads that hover over content the user wants to read, and follows as they scroll, as well as using a ton of scripting and content carousels to increase ad revenue in between page loads, as the cost of high CPU usage on smartphones and rapid battery drain as well as wasted screen space. That brought on the advent of ad blockers, and the use got cranked up to 11 when advertisers could run custom scripts thus leading to a flood of malvertising.
Instead of a reversal on those trends, some sites pushed anti-adblocking measures as well as paywalling previously free content. In the case of some news sites, if often started off as a paid premium section of additional content, but then it gradually spread to previously free content.

For Tom's hardware, they have done the script heavy CPU intensive ads that made mobile versions of the site virtually unusable (in-line video ads as well as video banner ads, thus often 2 or more video ads playing at the same time.

While a premium subscription can help offset the need for advertising, such a high price will effectively guarantee only a very small subscriber base, as for news content, they rely heavily on the user having ample disposable income since it is impossible to get a constant stream of premium content that will appeal to every subscriber. At lower prices, e.g., the $15-20 per year range, users are more likely to impulse buy, especially if they see a series of articles that strongly appeal to them, or they have a sudden need for some of the premium tools. Think how some people end up singing up for UPS My Choice Premium, most ignore it, but the moment they need some of those features, when they see $20 for the year, they end up just purchasing a year subscription

 

[About30Ninjas]

Mark this message for the future - this idea will be a complete failure. No one is going to pay a subscription, for a tech site.

 

[Thunder64]

The writing was on the wall when they made their survey back in April or so.

 

[rolli59]

Tom's has been on a decline and this will be the end of it.

 

[YSCCC]

IMO the paywall is a really bad idea, which starts to sway off the newbie just wanna search and go into computer DIY, I have been reading Tom's since like early 2000s since my first Athlon build, and IMO, having more ads or even selling Tom's gadgets like Tom's screwdriver set, T-Shirts, waterblock etc. are a better way to fund your staffs, creating more exciting, innovative gadgets as well as generating income from Ads like affailate links to B&H, Newegg etc are fine, if I am wanting to buy something, I have no objection to pay a few bucks more from the links from THG to support.

But paywall is a great idea to shrink your audience massively, and then fold up altogether. In current internet status, it's better to generate cents from every 10 visitor for ads vs collecting a $100 annual fee from a thousand loyal readers

 

[chikatana]

Sound like it is time to ditch this site after 20+ years of reading.
I just can't imagine who is going to pay for contents widely available for free.

 

[93QSD5]

> We’re committed to continuing that legacy: no-nonsense, independent coverage of the latest PC hardware and everything that shapes the industry





BWHAHAHAHA hilarious good joke.

 

[ottonis]

So, here's the thing: A website, in particular a news tech & review site, costs money to run. There are people spending uncountable hours of installing, testing, tinkering and comparing all sorts of computer hardware. For sure, these people cannot do that for free as they have to make a living and pay their rent, food, clothes etc.
Now, with the internet in general and social media in particular being flooded with AI-generated contents, mere news outlets are going to operate at a loss, as a human editor will always cost a lot more than a bunch of ChatGTP-agents that can instantaneously search the web, extract relevant news and write a compelling article.
So the difference between AI- vs. human driven sites narrows down to practical testing and benchmarking of hardware, which is tedious and extremely time-consuming - and thus costly - work.
But it comes even worse than that: AI will literally "steal" the information from such humane made reviews and integrate it into their knowledge base, further reducing the traffic to such review sites.
So, what worked for 2 decades, is not going to generate enough revenue to feed efitors and reviewers and their families.
The only way to survive is to go the membership route.
You can thank AI for that.

 

[wussupi83]

I've been reading Toms Hardware and a few other tech sites for around 20 years now. During that time all tech review sites have had to make changes and adjustments and TH has done the best imo. This site has definitely been too liberal at times with site banners and video ads. Also turning Amazon prime deals into articles that dominate the site is too much. But what has kept me coming back to Tom's was your journalism. The reviews are usually good and I felt TH made a good effort to not get too caught up in politics. Those things are valuable to me. I also don't care to watch long YouTube reviews regularly.

That being said, the idea of a TH premium is a bit strange to me. I'm not saying it's a hard no but this old mind needs time to process the idea and current realities. I certainly don't want this site to be relegated to the archives.

Could a crowd fund raising model like Wikipedia work? There'd be less friction with content access. it also would allow people who have subscription fatigue to still contribute.

 

[alexbirdie]

I will see. I did read tom's for years, and short time ago a renewed my account.

But obviously everybody wants to pull money out of our bags, and everything becomes more and more expensive. Where from should normal working people take the money?

I will look, and could be, I might leave this webpage for ever. It will depend how good the rest of postings and articles will be.

 

[anemusek]

If you want to lose most of your readers by hiding the only valuable content behind a paywall, then go ahead. Just remember that this trend involves millions of eager readers who aren't made of rubber – 95% will have to disappear from the market. Tom's Hardware as a niche industry in the first wave 😉

 

[Cookielover]

here six months after pay wall beginning

 

[MKnott]

Hey folks,

We're starting to see questions and discussion split between 3 different places and will lock this thread up to make it easier to follow and join discussion.

Please click here for the ongoing Premium Feedback Thread