When we launched the Rathe Times in 2021, we wanted to ensure we could pay our writers a decent rate for their contributions. Our approach to raising revenue was to put a small percentage of our monthly content (about 3 articles out of the 12-15 we published per month) behind a paywall in order to cover those costs.
Monetizing a fan site is always a difficult prospect, and there are pros and cons to all approaches. Advertising, for example, intrudes on the aesthetic experience of visiting a web page, and requires much more traffic to make the endeavour worthwhile - this route would have made compensating our authors to a respectable degree impossible.
Since our launch between Crucible of War and Monarch, the game and its community have changed drastically. At that time, we were one of only 2 major content publishers for Flesh & Blood (the other being Channel Fireball - a website that also uses a paywall model with some of its content), so it was relatively easy to achieve our early revenue goals. We rapidly developed our base of recurring and guest authors (all told, we've given a voice to more than 50 authors to date).
Fast forward to today, and the community has grown massively alongside the game. From that has arisen a vast array of writers, YouTube creators, podcasts, and other content, giving players many choices - and many voices - from which to get their Flesh & Blood fix.
This has made our business model more challenging as a result.
To that end, as of May 29th, the Rathe Times will no longer lock content behind paywalls to the exclusive benefit of our subscribers as a matter of general practice. Instead, we will be moving to an Early Access model, whereby subscribers will be able to read articles 5 days in advance of the general public.
Author's note: Narration will still only be available to subscribers of the Rathe Times.
What this means is that all content will be freely available to the community after 5 days. This rewards our subscribers with the high-quality content you've come to expect from us at the Rathe Times before anyone else, without limiting the reach and audience of our authors' work (content that both our authors, and we at the Rathe Times, are immensely proud of).
I'd like to give you an idea of what that will look like. When you click on an article that hasn't moved to general audience yet, there will be a portion of it visible, to give you a sense of the writing style and the content of that piece. After a few paragraphs, readers who don't subscribe to the Rathe Times will encounter a prompt to subscribe, along with a countdown to the date of general release.
What about the Pro Series?
At present, we have 75 articles published under the Pro Series banner, from players like Michael Hamilton, Isaac Jessen, Nitya Kalaichelvan, Hayden Dale, Tyler Horspool, James Adams, Kevin Brayer, Sean Knowelden, and Drew Cordell. Pro Series articles represent the best of our writing, with deeper examination of strategy and side-boarding, accompanied by audio narration.
Some of these articles will be moved out from behind the paywall and made available to the community as we make the transition to our new business model.
Moving forward, the Pro Series will be utilized irregularly - but we reserve the right to, when we consider it in the best interest of the Rathe Times, utilize subscriber-exclusive content releases.
The best content, just ... different.
We are extremely proud of our reputation for high-quality written content from a wide variety of voices. We believe that, as an aggregate platform for dozens of authors (from a roster that is constantly growing), we offer something unique to the Flesh and Blood community.
That will not change.
But we've recognized that a change is necessary for the Rathe Times to remain relevant and to continue to grow. We want readers to be confident they'll find what they're looking for when they click a link to an article we've posted - though for some that will mean circling back to it later that week. And we want to assure authors that we're doing everything we can to help them reach the widest audience possible.
While we're no longer producing content exclusively for subscribers, we hope that the benefits we offer serve as a thank you for believing in us and supporting the work of community members.
Subscribers get:
- Early access to every single piece of content that we publish.
- Content narration from our amazing voice artists.
- Access to irregular, select Pro Series pieces.
Subscribing supports the free content we produce every week. Our authors are paid for every article they write, and we're continuously making contacts in the community to bring in new perspectives from cutting-edge players.
We hope you enjoy the diverse slate of articles we assemble each month, and that you've found insights that make you reconsider your strategies, that hone your skills, and broaden your horizons. And if you're in the position to do so, consider supporting us with a subscription.
One major caveat
Changing the business model is very risky. We rely heavily on the community - now moreso than ever - in order to ensure that the Rathe Times keeps running. By making all our content free to everyone while still maintaining an ad-free experience and high quality content, we run a huge risk of reducing our revenue and actually destroying what we've built over the past 2 years.
To that end, we hope that this change appeals to everyone and that more players are able to support what we, and our artists, do every day to bring you the highest quality Flesh & Blood content found anywhere.
