Happy New Year everyone! It’s been a while since I wrote anything on here, so apologies if you’ve been worried 🙂
Textise goes from strength to strength. In 2017, 228,810 users viewed the site 3,935,222 times, which is extraordinary. Not every view was a text conversion because included in that number are visits to the home page, but it’s still a really healthy total. Of course, you can imagine my disappointment when we didn’t quite make 4 million visits, but bearing in mind that last year I was moaning that we didn’t quite make 3 million, it’s not so bad.
I’ve made a few changes recently, and more could be in the pipeline. One thing you might have noticed is that there are more ads, both on the home page and (occasionally) on the text-only output. As you can probably imagine, running Textise takes time, energy and cash, so adverts allow me to claw a (very) little back. I’ve increased the ads very reluctantly, to be honest, because I don’t like them much myself, but revenue from subscribing web sites hasn’t increased as much as I’d have hoped and costs do tend to go in one direction only (up, they go up).
One option I have is to offer subscriptions. Subscribers would be able to use the site ad-free and, I think, have access to extra features like PDF conversion or web article identification. If enough people subscribed, the cost per user could be kept pretty low.
I’m wondering how many people would be interested in becoming subscribers…
And, if you’d subscribe, how much you’d be willing to pay on a monthly basis…
I’d really appreciate your feedback on this, so get voting! I run Textise on a part-time basis at the moment but, if more money were coming in from it, I’d be able to devote more time to new features and performance improvements.
Please leave comments on this post if you have questions or want to add to the discussion.
Subjunctive Software 
great product textise… but would like to be able to textise web pages from australia.. do you have aussie contact office/ number ?
LikeLike
Many thanks for your comment.
To be honest, you shouldn’t have any problems accessing Textise from Australia. If you are having problems, could you let me know exactly what the problem is?
I don’t have an Aussie phone number, I’m afraid, as I’m UK-based.
LikeLike
I like textise because it “cuts thru the clutter.”
The ads/extra java/third party data slows down the experience. especially on DIAL-UP. If more sites had a text-only portal (as http://text.npr.org/) it’d be grand
keep up the good work. thanks and cheers
LikeLike
Hi Matt,
Thanks for the positive words. My intention, as I hope you appreciate, is not to add the clutter back in to Textise but I do have to balance that against commercial realities. I hope that the subscription idea (which will allow you to remove the ads) will offer a sensible compromise.
I’m impressed you’re still using dial-up. Any particular reason?
The npr.org solution looks good – but why aren’t they using Textise?! 🙂
LikeLike
There are a number of other sites like text.npr.org, such as CNN Lite (lite.cnn.io) and Weather Underground Mobile (mobile.wunderground.com) – BestLinks.win lists a lot of them. Still, Textise is great for the remaining 95% of the internet, esp. conducting resarch.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for providing this service. Please try to avoid changes that will make the pages load much more slowly. I use Textise to speed up browsing on dial-up internet, so that is important. Perhaps you could offer a yearly or one-time subscription so that we don’t have to keep track of monthly payments?
LikeLike
Hi Zach,
Many thanks for your comments.
I appreciate your concern about performance-reducing changes. The idea of the subscription, as you’ve probably gathered, is at least partly to allow users to remove the ads. There’ll be other advantages too, as I’ll probably make some of the current features subscription-only.
And yes, absolutely, my intention will be to offer an annual subscription with a discount on the monthly price.
I’m intrigued that you still use dial-up…
LikeLike
I see… I might consider it, depending on the price. It would be nice if having to log in every time could be avoided somehow. Yeah, dial-up still has its advantages – more secure, less expensive and you can use the same connection/account from any place with a phone line.
LikeLike
Hi Ian. I would not have a problem with adverts in the textized pages for freeloaders and an advert-free option for subscribers. It costs money to develop, maintain, and operate your service and we need textize to be around for the long term. DuckDuckGo has proven that advertising doesn’t have to be intrusive.
Thank you for creating and sharing textize. I sincerely hope you make some serious money. You deserve it.
LikeLike
Hi Neil,
Many thanks for the supportive words – they’re genuinely appreciated.
LikeLike
I use textise to get around internet filtering
It’s a big help.Ads would be Ok.
LikeLike
Same here! And avoiding the colourful, attractive layout of a page just makes browsing at work that much safe :)Thank you so much.
LikeLike