You asked for it, you got it. Many readers have commented (some complained) about the advertisements that appear on our content, saying that sometimes, it was hard to read the actual story with all the advertisements popping up.
Sure. We could remove the advertisements– which were our primary source of income, but then how would we pay our expenses to main and run the site? How would we cover the costs, the time, the countless hours, the high server costs to keep The Pappas Post running 24-7 and 365 days a year, so that every month, hundreds of thousands of you could continue receiving your news and information?
Someone’s got to pay for it, right?
One option was to add a paywall and charge a subscription for our content and remove all ads. That would have greatly reduced our ability to be the voice we have become because not everyone can afford the “luxury” of paying for content– especially the quality content we publish.
Furthermore, from the beginning, I’ve been ideologically and fundamentally opposed to it. I’m not saying that sites that have paywalls are wrong in doing so. I even subscribe to some.
But what I am saying is that it is my belief that information should be free– especially to those who might not be able to afford it.
So the idea of a paywall was scrapped as an option.
Enter technology. New programs have since come about offering publishers like The Pappas Post the opportunity to use something called browser cookies that are automatically placed on a user’s computer, that will– like magic– give you a completely advertisement-free experience while reading our content on your browser.
Of course, the ad-free plan does come with a cost, and we’ve set up several options for our readers to choose.
In a nutshell, any reader who selects to support our efforts through a monthly subscription of at least $5 or an annual subscription of $50 will get an ad-free experience while reading The Pappas Post on any internet browser (with the exception of articles read within the Facebook app). The technology we’ve enabled on the site will add a cookie to your browser that you use. If that cookie is ever removed, you can always login to your very own personal login page on the site to resume your ad-free experience.
The ad-free experience is (unfortunately) over-ridden by Facebook when you’re viewing content on your Facebook app and click and open an article via the Facebook app. Of course, you always have the option (in the top right corner of the post you’re reading on Facebook) to view it on your browser, which will give you your ad-free experience after all.