Apologies to our mailing list subscribers who have not received updates since Monday this week. There is a problem with the system, and we hope to resolve it by early next week. The interruption happened suddenly when our email service, MailChimp, told us we had run out of credit on the current plan. This, unfortunately, is a result of the increased readership over the past six months and the number of new subscribers to the list. The audience has grown by 50 per cent since the autumn.
Up to now, we have been sending a daily email to all subscribers. There is a notional charge attached to every email, and we are now right up against the threshold for upgrading the service. This would cost an additional $240 per annum. As a non-profit blog, Macfilos doesn’t have the resources to add yet more cost to the already considerable tally of subscriptions and hosting arrangements.
To avoid the additional cost, we have pruned the mailing list by removing all cancelled subscriptions, and we should be able to go into the new period, starting on February 28, with a clean slate. However, five emails a week, multiplied by the number of subscribers, is still a hefty operation. We have decided, therefore, to prune the overall number of sends by moving to three emails a week instead of the current five. We hope that this will be acceptable to subscribers and, indeed, that it is preferred.
If the system resets as we hope on Monday, the new regime should be sustainable without additional cost. We hope all readers and subscribers will bear with us until then. If necessary, we will have no option but to pay to extend the service.
UPDATE: We have now resolved the issue and mailings will start again on Monday, March 1. The frequency in future will be three times a week instead of five—but all the daily posts will be covered in these omnibus editions.
While the email service will continue whatever happens, and please continue to subscribe, some regular readers may prefer to subscribe to the RSS service. This ensures that every post is downloaded to your preferred reader application as soon as it is published. Click on the link below:
MACFILOS RSS FEED
A cup of coffee works wonders in supporting Macfilos
Did you know that Macfilos is run by a dedicated team of volunteers? We rely on donations to help pay our running costs. And even the cost of a cup of coffee will do wonders for our energy levels.
Happy to be taken off the mailing list Mike, if it helps, as others have said. It is part of my ritual to drop by when i have free moments – so it wont change my reading habits.
Thanks Dave and to other regulars for your concern. It looks like the panic is over because Mail Chimp has now told me that the account will be reset on the 28th and mails will re-commence. By reducing the distribution to three times a week we can ensure that we will not exceed the quota in any one month. It looks like we got to the threshold last Monday, probably because the number of subscribers had risen since January. All this will put off the evil day.
How about a donation button at the bottom of the page? A lot of blogs have that. I think you deserve some cost coverage! You publish valuable and interesting content of a professional grade. I also find many of the comments of value so pop back in on a random basis to look for new comments on recent or old articles.
Since your post virtually daily I do not think you need to send an email often and personally I do not subscribe to anything as I get too many emails.
I’ve been thinking of various options, such as joining Patreon, although I have investigated this. Your idea of a donation button linked to PayPal is a good idea. I’m not too much in favour of doing what some bloggers do in starting a sort of “VIP club” with access to special contact. I don’t want to go down that route. But the money isn’t such a big issue and I am reluctant to feel beholden in any way, such as feeling I have to meet deadlines. At the moment I do it voluntarily and it works. In the great scheme of things, the odd extra couple of hundred dollars isn’t make or break of it’s the logical thing to do. As I said to Farhiz, reinstating the Google advertising will bring in a small amount and that’s probably the least binding commitment. However, when in doubt, do nowt as we used to say. I’m hoping I can resolve the mailing issue without extra cost. And thanks for your concern and input.
I agree with Brian’s idea of a donation button. It is straightforward to work out how much each of my articles would have cost you to post and I would be very happy to make a donation to that amount.
As regards emails from Macfilos, I personally do not subscribe as I always try to keep the number of emails in my inbox to a minimum.
Great idea but how about we. Send $
Mike, just a thought, maybe some of us regulars could volunteer to opt out of the email if you could save something there. We anyway check in everyday.
I am happy to support this idea. Equally, I like Mike’s suggestion to reduce notifications to, say, Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Thanks, Farhiz. That’s a thought, but I don’t think it is a necessary sacrifice since it wouldn’t make all that much difference. By reducing the mailings from five to three every week I will save a lot of “credits” as MailChimp calls them. But I have about 400 subscribers to add before I will be forced to pay the annual $240 subscription, so I suppose that will eventually happen. I’m going to reinstate the Google advertising at the top of the page because that brings in a small bit of cash to offset the various subscriptions. All in all, the site costs about £2,000 which, frankly, I don’t mind because I get a lot of pleasure out of doing it. It’s almost like a full-time job and I can’t image what I would do with my time if I didn’t have it.