We’re introducing Ausdroid Supporter options based on user feedback

When we spoke to you guys about making our Android app — Ausdroid News — ad free, we had a huge response. In short, you told us that we’d made the right decision, and we agree. On a small screen (yes, even with phones up to 6″, the screen is still small) ads take up a lot of room, and they aren’t always relevant to readers tastes. I don’t like ads in apps myself, and I can understand why our readers told us that ads weren’t a good fit for our app.

So they’re gone.

However, there was a bit more feedback that you offered. Some of you told us that you’d like to be able to pay for the Ausdroid app. However, we don’t really want to go down that path — maintaining two apps on the Play Store is more than we want to do, and we don’t want to go down the more complicated path of having an in-app purchase for basically no reason. We’d rather remove the ads for everybody.

On the website though, we can’t just get rid of our ads, as much as we’d like to. They’re our lifeblood, and without those, the business that is Ausdroid would quickly come to a halt. However, your feedback is that some of you would like an option to support Ausdroid financially.

We’ve decided to give this a try. We sought some feedback on our Ausdroid Google+ community and settled on a couple of options for people to become Ausdroid Supporters.

Introducing Ausdroid Supporter options

First of all, there’s absolutely NO pressure or requirement for anyone to do this. Let’s make some things clear first. Ausdroid isn’t changing. We will continue to have news, reviews, opinions and more available free, forever, for everyone to read and enjoy, at no cost. That’s why we do what we do, and we’ll continue to do it. There’ll be no pay-walls here.

Secondly, know that there was quite a heated discussion about whether we’d do this, and we’ve had it over quite some time. We’re somewhat reluctant to go down this path, because frankly it feels dirty accepting money from our readers for doing something that we enjoy doing.

Lastly, please know that Ausdroid will survive with or without your support. This is not a last-ditch effort to stay afloat, and Ausdroid’s continued existence is not (solely) dependent upon lots of people taking up this option.

We’re offering it because you asked for it. If you want to sign up, great. If you don’t, no worries at all.

There’s a range of supporter options, from a $5 once-off (which gets you three months of supporter perks), and then monthly options ranging from $2 to $10. What do you get for your support?

• You won’t see ads on Ausdroid, when you browse on the web or on the mobile, when logged in with your supporter account.
• We will have some supporter-only competitions and giveaways, but we will balance these with competitions that are open to everyone.
• We may offer some supporter-exclusive content, outside of our regular Ausdroid coverage. You might get access to things like exclusive events, discounts on the Ausdroid Shop, and more.

Basically, this is a work in progress. We want to make it something worthwhile for you, and worthwhile for us.

What will we do with your support?

Ausdroid has quite a number of expenses, and we will apply your support to helping us cover those. Postage, couriering phones about the place, hosting and development expenses, you name it. We will also use your support to help us get to and cover events we might otherwise miss out on. While we’ve been able to obtain sponsored trips to some events (e.g. MWC and LG’s G4 launch), others we have to pay for (Google I/O) and we’d like to be able to make that a bit more sustainable.

You can view the available supporter packs using the ‘Support Ausdroid‘ link in the menu bar at the top of our site. It’s available everywhere.

You are welcome to sign up, change plans, or cancel your account any time you like. Payment options include Visa and MasterCard (through Stripe), or your PayPal account. If you cancel your supporter plan during a billing cycle, you’ll retain access until the end of that cycle. You can cancel and renew whenever you like.

As with any change or new function we add, we of course welcome your feedback. If you’d like to suggest something, a new feature, a change, or that we take something away, please let us know.