Trade Rumors Front Office: Changes To Article Delivery

Four years ago, I created our Trade Rumors Front Office subscription service.  Facing some challenges with the online advertising revenue model, we launched a premium version of MLBTR with a paid subscription.  For $29.89 per year, a Trade Rumors Front Office subscription removes ads on all our sites and in our app, grants access to tools such as the Contract Tracker and Agency Database, and provides exclusive articles and chats from Tim Dierkes, Steve Adams, Anthony Franco, and Nicklaus Gaut.  I think we’re offering great value for the price.

To date, the exclusive articles and chats have been delivered entirely via email.  This has resulted in a missed benefit for new subscribers, who had no access to previously-sent articles.  Sometimes people sign up specifically because they hear about a certain Front Office original we sent out.  They would inquire about it and I’d forward the email to them along with other recent exclusives.  This was not an efficient system, so I’ve decided to create an archive of Trade Rumors Front Office articles on MLBTR itself.  New subscribers will be able to go back and check out previous content as soon as they sign up.

This will be accomplished in the form of a paywall.  Roughly once per day on average, a paywalled Trade Rumors Front Office article or live chat will appear on MLBTR.  We averaged 16.6 posts per day on MLBTR last year, to give you a sense of how often you’ll run into this paywall.  If you’re a logged-in subscriber, you will not see the paywall.  Everyone else will see just a snippet of the article before running into it.

Trade Rumors Front Office subscribers will continue to receive these articles via email as well.  If you’re a subscriber and you decide you no longer need the emails because the articles are on the website, you can go here and unsubscribe from emails as needed.  We have not yet built the paywall technology in our iOS and Android apps, so the exclusive articles will not appear there.  If you’re an app user and paid subscriber you’ll want to continue receiving the emails.

Putting these Front Office articles on MLBTR is not just about creating an archive.  It will also serve as marketing for the subscription service.  A portion of MLBTR readers are interested in paying to read these articles, and I don’t think it makes sense to hide them.  Some people will see the topics and read an excerpt and be convinced to subscribe.  If that may apply to you, I should point out that it’s risk-free, in that we offer a 100% money-back guarantee if you’re unsatisfied for any reason.

Others will choose not to subscribe, whether due to lack of interest or their financial situation.  Our ad-supported readers remain appreciated and vital to this website.  It’s worth pointing out that the core function of MLBTR is not changing. We’re still going to curate, contextualize, and analyze news from the around the game in real-time and provide up-to-the-minute transaction breakdowns as we have since 2005.  That remains free and ad-supported.  The Trade Rumors Front Office articles that will appear on this site are opinion and analysis-based, as you’ll see.  We have no intention of paywalling news posts, which would not make sense.

We’re producing six Trade Rumors Front Office MLB articles/chats per week at present, two of which are fantasy baseball-centric.  Could the number increase from six?  It’s possible we’ll paywall additional opinion and analysis posts, particularly time-intensive ones such as our Offseason in Review and Offseason Outlook  series.

Whether you’re a Trade Rumors Front Office subscriber or someone who enjoys the free ad-supported MLB Trade Rumors, you’re welcome here.  After 18+ years we’re still going strong, and it’s a privilege to be able to do this for a living.  Thanks for reading, and feel free to ask questions in the comment section.