I dislike seeing lots of ads on our page as much as you do, but they are essential to sustaining Curbside Classic. Ad revenue makes it possible for us to hire top automotive historians like Aaron Severson and our Executive Editor Rich Baron as well as a few key part-time writers. We’ve been offering an ad-free membership for some five years, and we deeply appreciate all of you that have signed up. But we also understand that there is price sensitivity, so we’ve created an Ad-Lite version of CC with 50% fewer ads. Ad-Lite costs only some 20 cents per day, or $6 per month, so hopefully more of you will feel moved to subscribe and support the site. Click on the image above or the links below to sign up, and thank you all for your generous support.
I should point out that the Ad-Free membership price is going up to $12 per month; that increase is a bit less than the rate of inflation since we started it. You can of course choose to switch to the Ad-Lite version.
CC is on track for another good year, our best yet. But we did have a bit of a scare this summer when our Google Discover stats took a huge hit due to some change in their algorithm. We were hardly the only ones hit, but fortunately it has come back, although not quite as consistently as before. It is a bit scary to see and revenue take a sudden plunge, as viewers that click on our posts shown at Google Discover generate some four times the ad revenue each as compared to our direct visitors. Advertisers prefer those that come via a search, including Discover compared to regular readers.
That dip was the inspiration to offer the Ad-Lite version, to hopefully expand the number of CC membership substantially so that we aren’t quite as dependent on fickle ad revenue. For a mere 20 cents per day, you can play an important role in sustaining our commitment to authentic, original, high quality and accurate automotive writing (and images). No AI-slop will ever disgrace our pages, or blatant click-bait. And the 50% reduction in ads should significantly increase the quality of the time you spend here, especially without that pesky little sticky video player (which just happens to generate almost 50% of our revenue).
On behalf of all of us at CC, thank you for your support, whether it’s through a membership or just by visiting often. We appreciate it.
And while I have my used car salesman plaid jacket on, I also encourage you to sign up for email notifications. You’ll never miss a post and it helps support the site too.
All of the above images can be clicked on for the signups, but here’s the links if you prefer:
CC Ad-Lite and Ad-Free membership
Subscribe to email notifications
A big hat tip to Tom Halter for the tech aspects and to Don Andreina for the graphics.
The full zoot is well worth it – y’all do an incredible job with CC and it’s my multi-times a day visit. I just wish my iPad had the ability to keep me logged in. First world problems….
Done.
Same here, wish I could stay logged in on iPad.
I want to get a full membership because your work is worthy of support. However I don’t remember my password, and your system is not sending the password reset email. You should be able to see my email so hopefully someone will send the password reset email
I will send you an email with a new password.
I just tried manually triggering the password reset email. Let us know if you don’t get it.
I became a subscriber to the ad-free version a couple months ago (having been a reader for 5 years now), and initially thought I would be happy to support CC in this way — but I constantly get logged out when viewing the site on my phone, like once a day a least. The ads all suddenly reappear and I have to log in again. I’m using bog-standard Chrome on an Android phone. Interested to know if anyone else is experiencing this or has any tips to make it stop. It’s annoying to be paying a somewhat pricey fee to subscribe (once I convert it to Canadian dollars!) only to have the ads coming back on a regular basis.
There is a “remember me” box that I check when I log in on my Android phone. If I don’t check it, I get the experience you describe. When I check it, I’m good for several days.
Yeah, I always check it, but it seems to be a short memory…
Agreed. I have this problem on my laptop too.
Let me also add in my complaints on how I also get logged out while using the site. I’ve been a member for about a year and will continue to stay a full dues paying member even when prices increase.
But…. This site needs definite attention to this problem.
While we’re discussing faults, the home page seems stuck on December 4th, and I can only access newer posts via the dashboard, they aren’t accessible otherwise (Windows 10, same old HP laptop as before). Odd!
That’s not a fault of our site; that’s a cache (memory) issue with your device. Restart it or do something else to clear its memory.
Will do. Thanks.
Huzzah – ad-free makes the site wonderful again!
I have to say, the constant having to log in is pretty annoying, I get the WordPress log-in box, and can’t eben click the “stayed logged in” box to cal it so.
Is there a workaround for this?
Reading on iPad and iPhone btw.
It would be wonderfull if this was resolved, because when I log in I get in my dashboard, and when I open the mainsite I am logged out again and have ads.
Somehow I removed every little bit of cache and cookie, and now I stay logged in on the iPad.