There’s something of a kerfuffle over on PinkBike about them being bought out by Outside Magazine. Users are worried that all their free content will go behind a paywall – and certainly some of it seems likely to go that way.
Here at Singletrack we’ve had a paywall for a while. We print a magazine, and we also create a digital version of it, alongside all the stories that you see on the website. We do that as an independent publisher, with a small group of staff sitting alongside the two owners, Mark and Chipps, in the office. We’re pretty proud of what we achieve with our small crew, and we hope you enjoy reading our work.
Advertising is a bit rubbish as an income stream: you never quite know what’s going to happen through the course of the year and it makes your website and stories look less attractive. So we have a paywall. This lets us deliver the best stories – the ones our writers have put time and effort into, and been paid to write – to our Members. We love our Members – they’re the people who pay to read our work. Our Members are also really loyal – year after year you sign up to read our stories, so we know we can keep paying our staff to write them.
We’re sure that some of you will want to keep reading PinkBike, and that some of you will be happy to pay for that (It’s $49 a year for Outside’s cheapest membership right now). But if you’re looking for something different, or somewhere new, or somewhere small and independent, then we think we’ve got a home for you.
Our Membership packages start at just £2.50 a month or £20 a year for digital access. We think that’s a great deal, that gets you ad free browsing on our site, full access to our digital archive, 6 digital issues of the magazine a year, and a host of membership discounts and benefits. But we know that you’ve probably got used to reading everything for free on PinkBike. So we’d like to give you a free sample so you can see what you’ve been missing out on. Join us today with the code “PINKBIKE” and we’ll give you a month of free access.
To get your FREE Singletrack digital membership, simply click here and use the discount code PINKBIKE at checkout. Your first month is totally free, and we won’t charge you unless you choose to continue at the end of your free month. No weird subscription trickery here, just a good honest offer.
