If you’re going to build a paywall around your web content, you really should try a little harder than this.

The New York Times is putting a $15/month paywall around their website, starting March 28th. I say more power to them if they think they can make this approach profitable.

I note that the Times says links from Facebook, Twitter, Google, and blogs will still show the full article, which is a decent way to mitigate the inherent unlinkishness of paywalls. But I also note that they don’t say how they’re determining what a “blog” is, and which sites will qualify for that designation.

Related:
Everything You Need to Know About the New York Times Online Paywall

I’ve just finished integrating the PayPal Instant Payment Notification system with our ad-free subscriptions, so that ad-free viewing is now automatically enabled if you subscribe while logged in to your LGF account. (And if you cancel your subscription, the ad-free flag will also be turned off automatically.)

This means you no longer have to contact me and let me know your username after subscribing, and I no longer have to manually set your ad-free flag in the LGF database. Easier for everyone. Yay!

Here’s the link to subscribe at PayPal, if anyone would like to help test this cutting edge new feature. (How’s that for a tricky way to hype subscriptions? Did I mention that LGF loads 2 or 3 times faster with the ads turned off? And it’s only 33 cents a day to subscribe? OK, I’ll stop.)

Note that you must be logged in to a registered LGF account before clicking that link for the automatic feature to work.

Meanwhile, here we have the tech geek/open thread for a Tuesday afternoon.

I’m excited to announce a new feature; starting today, if you subscribe to LGF through Paypal for $10 a month, all of the advertisements on all LGF pages will be turned off.

This isn’t just a cosmetic improvement; to display those ads from Google Adsense and Amazon, we have to make several calls to external web servers, which take quite a bit of time. And if those servers are slow or offline, it can cause the entire LGF page to load more slowly or even time out on rare occasions.

When you view our site with advertisements turned off, every page loads more quickly; it’s a very noticeable speed boost. (And as the designer of this mess, I have to say it looks a lot nicer too without the visual clutter.)

So, for the very low price of about 33 cents a day (less than the cheapest cup of Starbucks coffee), you can read LGF without the ads, at super-charged speed.

In order to enable this feature, you will also need to have an account registered at LGF; that’s how our code knows that you’re a Paypal subscriber. Registration is now open, and will remain open except for maintenance.

Here’s the link to subscribe at Paypal. Sign up now to start surfing LGF without ads right away!

Important: after you subscribe, please use the contact form in our left sidebar to let me know your registered LGF username, so I can enable your subscription flag. (I’m working on making this procedure more automatic, but for now I’ll be doing it manually. Update: The process is now automated! See below.)

UPDATE at 9/13/10 11:29:19 am:

Here’s a list of all the ads you won’t be seeing if you subscribe:

• The top banner ad next to the logo
• The right sidebar “skyscraper” ads
• The two Blogads slots in the right sidebar
• The 300x250 ad after the first post on the front page, and after the post on each individual page
• The Amazon interstitial ads
• The bottom Amazon banner
• The “partners” ads at the bottom of the left sidebar
• The “sponsored links” at the bottom of the right sidebar
• The ad for the LGF Cookbook

UPDATE at 9/13/10 11:37:38 am:

Some testimonials from subscribers:

avanti wrote:

It works!!! I can load a several 100 post thread in an instant, well worth 30 cents a day.

reine.de.tout wrote:

Gone! The ads are gone!

Wow. That’s great.

Worth it, folks, it’s really really worth it!

A mere pittance brings you freedom!

wrenchwench wrote:

It’s lovely. I thought it was all the videos and something about my “plugin-container” that made things slowish sometimes, but clearly the ads were contributing.

ausador wrote:

Yep, the page loads much, much faster. (And this is while I am running two iterations of Convertxtodvd and a torrent download), even with the computer being very “laggy” the page loaded probably three times as fast as it usually does.

Surabaya Stew wrote:

Hey Charles, the improvment in speed and visual impact that comes with a subscription is very nice. Thank you, good sir! :-)

UPDATE at 10/26/10 5:24:46 pm:

Ad-free viewing is now automatic when you subscribe! For more information, see: Tech Note: Automatic Ad-Free Subscriptions.