If you become an Autopian Member, doing so means that a bunch of the ad experiences on the website just go away. The banner ads? Gone! The little pop-up video player? Bye-bye. The auto-play in the post? No video is going to play unless you press the button. And even better, use the code “byebyeads” at checkout (or follow this link) and I’ll give you our biggest discount ever: 21% off. That’s less than $3.33 a month for a year of Cloth Annual! Just $79 for Vinyl!
Why are we doing this? I’ve written about it before, but relying on pure traffic and eyeballs for most of our revenue puts us in a precarious position. We have one of the largest reaches of any automotive site, and it’s mostly made up of people who actually like cars. However, to survive, some of our competition is tricking major platforms and search engines into sending them traffic with content that, if not AI slop, feels like AI slop. We don’t want to do that.
We don’t ever want you to wonder if one of our articles is AI. This place will never be a bunch of writers you’ve never heard of, who work for third-party consulting firms, propping up the value and traffic of this place by thirsting for clicks with stories like “She Went To A Dealer For An Oil Change, But She Didn’t Expect What Happened Next” or, maybe, “Here Are 15 Random Reviews Of Air Freshners.”
If you read a website that’s posting crap like that, it’s not because they want to, it’s because they have to; membership isn’t an option for sites that don’t build communities and put their loyal readers first. We do. We’d be grateful if you supported our website, but only because you think it’s great and you love the writing. We want to create something valuable, including a sense of community.
We believe in it so much that we’re willing to sacrifice the money we’d make from ads if you become a member. It just makes sense to us. So if you’ve ever thought about becoming a member, now is the time to do it. It’s never been cheaper, and it may never be again.
Photo: DepositPhotos.com
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