As you may have noticed over the last few days, we’ve published some new content under the PS Premium banner. This is something that has been in the planning and experimentation stages over the last year to two years.
Project Spurs always aims to provide the best reading experience for Spurs fans, and that comes from the content we choose to cover, a lot of the original graphics we make and the layout of the page and keeping a tight threshold on the number of ads we display. When we made the switch to going fully independent, we reduced our ad spots by more than half to make for a better experience.
We took another step in that direction recently by choosing a different ad balance strategy and taking our ad fill rate from showing ads in our ad spots 100 percent of the time to now 65 percent of the time. While that will make a difference in ad revenue, we think it’s worth it for the experience.
It’s also important for us to always have great free content on the site. Project Spurs has always been completely free and we have only charged for special coverage, like in-depth draft guides that go beyond the scope of our regular daily content. But there are expenses to running a site from dedicated hosting, domains and providing resources for our staff. Along with that, we’ve been paying our full-time longest-tenured staff based on an ad revenue share model for the past 5+ years. But the amount we are able to pay doesn’t come close to fair compensation for the amount of work they put into producing quality content, which they all do in addition to their regular jobs.
PS Premium is a way for us to do more for our staff while also not taking anything away from the regular, free coverage you’ve been used to getting on Project Spurs for close to 15 years now. PS Premium content, which will start at $5 per month, will be completely unique, and aside from including access to several members-only, regularly-updated databases, will also include special content like video explainer pieces, longform features, pieces on trade and free agent ideas. We have ideas for much more as well.
In the near future, we will also be introducing a premium tier that give you access to the site without ads, and we are planning members Q&A sessions, mailbags and more. We’ll also add you to our premium newsletter list, which you can opt-out of.
What stays free?
Our regular weekly content stays free, including news reports, rumors posts, game coverage, draft profiles, the Spurscast, short videos, and some longform content.
We will also be adding more to our social media channels, so make sure you’ve added us.
What about Patreon?
Patreon is something we’ve worked with over the past two seasons. It’s more of a donation-based system with some perks, like early access to some podcasts and videos, and being on the members-only newsletter list.
We will still keep our Patreon open for people that want to support our writers. We have a tier starting at $1 for that. If you are a member on the $5 and above tiers, you have the option to cancel your Patreon and re-subscribe through a PS Premium Membership. If you’d prefer to keep things going with your payments going through Patreon, we can set you up with account access to the premium content without changing how you pay.
Patreon support has allowed us to purchase some needed equipment in the past and pay for resources we’ve needed, and we’re grateful for everyone who has supported in that way.
This is a new direction for us, but the only real change will be the addition of some content that we think will add some value and be worth the membership.
If you have any questions, feel free to use the contact form and get in contact. For all the latest premium content, look for the PS Premium tab in the site menu.
