Current Events > Tumblr starts letting bloggers charge a subscription

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/21/22586765/tumblr-subscription-blogs-post-plus

Tumblr is finally offering its writers a way to make money off their work: charging a subscription.

The 14-year-old blogging platform is starting to add the ability for writers to put their posts behind a paywall. The feature, called Post Plus, lets creators offer a $3.99, $5.99, or $9.99 per month subscription, which will give readers access to any posts they decide to designate as for subscribers only. For now, the feature is available in a limited beta for select creators only.

The formula sounds a lot like what Substack offers a blog and an easy way for writers to charge for it minus the whole emailed newsletter component. Facebook is also starting to test the waters in this area and is starting a subscription newsletter product called Bulletin.

While Tumblr is still a big network, the platform has been shrinking. It now gets 11.3 million daily posts, according to Tumblrs press information page, down from 14.8 million this time last year, and 67.7 million this time in 2012, according to archives of the page. Tumblr struggled during the shift to mobile, and it later stalled after being purchased by Yahoo in 2013 and Verizon in 2017.

Automattic, which runs WordPress.com, bought Tumblr in 2019, but it hasnt done much with the service since. Its hard to imagine a paywall feature, for a site that is often used for pseudonymous fan blogging, will be what brings people back. But its a step toward making the platform a more flexible option for writers and gives existing ones another reason to stick around. The network is now highlighting its continued adoption by younger users, saying that just about half of its users are part of Gen Z.

A wide launch of the feature is planned for this fall, a Tumblr spokesperson tells The Verge. Tumblr will take a 5 percent fee from subscriptions, which is competitive compared to Substacks 10 percent cut. If readers subscribe on iOS or Android, though, those platforms 30 percent app store fees will come out of what a creator gets to keep.

I'm sure this will go just as well as anything else Tumblr has tried in the past.
---

Charging money to not even see porn

---

I didn't even think tumblr still existed in any real form, I thought they all fled to twitter after the porn ban.

Bring back the porn!

---

Sounds like the parent company is desperate to turn a profit with Tumblr. I'm sure they'll be taking a percentage.

---

Crazyman93 posted...

Sounds like the parent company is desperate to turn a profit with Tumblr. I'm sure they'll be taking a percentage.

They are, they're taking 5%.

Also they're passing off the 30% cut the various app stores take onto the person who's charging for access to their blog.

So for a $9.99 sub the blog runner is only seeing $6.49ish hahahaha
---

Hold on... did Tumblr figure out a way for simps to actually get laid?

Like all things tumblr, this is a train wreck before it's even left the station.

I only know of a couple blogs that could support themselves purely on tumblr support, and one of them has already said they won't because

A) Everyone on the site is broke as shit.
B) Everything on the site is broke as shit. Why would you willingly give your banking information to a site that frequently deletes blogs without warning and has the most broken search feature I've ever seen?
C) 30% for mobile users is highway robbery. Patreon takes 15% max and even has Tumblr integration.



Also, a user going by Kaijuno opted into the beta to try and pay off medical bills. The result was that a post of theirs--not anyone else who opted into the beta--was automatically put behind the pay wall, without notifying them or their userbase. Here's what the post looks like now:



This of course pissed off everyone and led to death threats being hurled at Kaijuno, at which point tumblr made a new announcement decrying harassment without actually addressing why any of this happened.



I would like to point out that the initial announcement about Post+ was not made on the official staff account, but a less popular side account. This means the announcement gained less attention than Kaijuno's post, effectively drawing all the negative attention away from staff.

This brings me to another point,



It will be easy to stalk and harass someone with this. There are Nazis/terfs/etc who will gladly pay a few dollars just to abuse someone who needs to go directly to staff for help.

There's a lot to be said about how shit this decision is. I get that tumblr has always been a huge money sink but this is maybe the worst way to go about it.

---

Another thing that comes to mind is that tumblr is like 95% fandom stuff. They're really going to try and monetize copyrighted material, and they apparently see nothing wrong with this since they put a Destiel reference in the damn pitch.

---

There aren't enough people left on tumblr to make this worth anyone's time. Most of the blogs I follow have stopped posting entirely at some point since the porn ban (and most of those didn't even post anything banworthy themselves). Also I can't imagine what kind of blog would be worth paying more than zero cents for.

---

[You need a Gamefaqs Gold account to view this message]

---

[You need a Gamefaqs Gold account to view this message]

---
sig

[You need a Gamefaqs Platinum account to view this message]

---

[You need a Gamefaqs Plutonium account to view this message]

DEKMStephens posted...

Charging money to not even see porn

So true, lol. Also, note how they lost more than 80% of their audience from before the porn ban.

The only way they could salvage this would be to bring the porn back, but Automatic has already said that's not happening. Maybe Patreon and OF starting to turn their backs on sex workers will change that but I doubt it.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


It still is.

---

Please dont kill tumblr. Its one of the best sources for cringe posts with people being super dramatic about every single little thing.

Its a special kind of cringe you cant get anywhere else.

---

Tumblr died the moment they got rid of the porn

Now it's just... I dunno, a worse version instagram? Or a collection of blogs.

---

It's mind-boggling that tumblr was sold a few years ago for under $3 million.

---

this is so fucking stupid
---

Literally half the people I talk to on a daily basis are people I "met" on Tumblr lmfao.
---