Fun fact: Tuesday is the most productive day of the week, and today is no exception. We’ve rolled out the latest round of enhancements to the OMAAT community.
Here’s what changed today:
In this post:
Paid subscriptions
Let’s rip this band-aid off, shall we? After reviewing feedback from y’all, we’ve launched a paid membership model. Both Ben and I thought it was important to design a program that allowed readers to unlock loyalty benefits without paying a membership fee. Now that the community-based membership is in full swing, we’re adding a layer for those who want a more streamlined site experience (and for some yet-to-be-named mystery perks), but don’t necessarily want to engage with the comments section.
As of today, you can buy membership points in blocks to top up your community points. We’ve designed the subscription model so you can choose a plan that best fits how you use OMAAT. There are no recurring charges or monthly fees. You can simply top up your account at any time during the year to enjoy benefits for the remaining months at your current status. Prices are prorated in quarterly chunks to reflect that this is not an annual membership. If you’ve already hit Diamond status, we left the option in to contribute to the blog in the profile settings. If you’re channeling Smaug, you will be granted more OMAAT points for each contribution, but we did intentionally deprioritize the button placement in the experience.
For example, if you’re currently a Gold member with 3,000 points, you can buy a Gold package of 2,500 points in September for $50, which will promote you to Platinum status through February 2027. For readers who are self-described lurkers and not posters, you can purchase directly into the Diamond tier.
For those really looking to optimize, you can join the daily newsletter list and add OMAAT as a preferred source in Google for a combined 2,500 points, unlocking Gold status before opting to top off your account.
Updated member profiles
New membership page
- An activity log highlights the points you’ve earned this year
- Your most liked comment of the year will show up on the left pane.
- Ability to buy OMAAT Membership points
Updated notification settings
- Track posts you follow and unsubscribe from email alerts
- Earn 1,000 OMAAT Membership Points – Make OMAAT a preferred source in Google
- Earn 1,500 OMAAT Membership Points – Stay subscribed to the OMAAT mailing list
- Change your email preferences
Improved Community Features
Follow comments from the blog
Interested in a comment thread? You can opt in to get email alerts as new comments come in. Just a note, if you follow comments on a post, email alerts will drop you into the corresponding community page, not back onto the blog.
Search results
Search has been a pain point for some of you, and we’ve made some updates to our search functionality to make results more relevant.
What’s next?
The next set of updates is going to be behind the scenes. Hopefully, you continue to notice improved site speed as we work through some tech debt and let the community features mature.
That doesn’t mean we can’t pivot when we hear a good idea. I did want to quickly shout out reader Samar, who requested a forum to document his 2-week trip through Asia. Ben and I both loved the idea and set up a section in the forum where Platinum and Diamond members can share their trips. In addition to all of the cool things we’re working on, we still have time to try new things. Keep those community recommendations coming.
If you have any new bugs to report or improvements you’d like to recommend, get those in here. I’ll be wandering through Germany for the last couple of weeks in September, so the sooner, the better.
Q: Will the weekly / monthly / yearly stats page include points purchases?
Great question - no. You cannot buy your way onto the leaderboard.
Gotcha - so basically community points are organically earned (and what the leaderboard is reflective of) and membership points are purchased? Makes sense... I'll just view through an AA base / bonus lens.
Looks like the newsletter is 1,500 points, not 1,000 points as noted in this article? May want to fix.
Also been enjoying @Samar's trip report!
Thanks, @Peter_. Got that updated.
The 'new membership page' is quite nice. (And, kudos to Samar on his trip reports!)
it is not completely the quantity of ads (sure, we all want less, but understand the bills need to be paid for) but rather the types of ads - the pop-ups, the ones that mess up reading continuity, hard to close, basically the crap that gets in the way of the experience in a manner that, by definition, you go out of your way to avoiding buying anything from the company advertising because their ads...
it is not completely the quantity of ads (sure, we all want less, but understand the bills need to be paid for) but rather the types of ads - the pop-ups, the ones that mess up reading continuity, hard to close, basically the crap that gets in the way of the experience in a manner that, by definition, you go out of your way to avoiding buying anything from the company advertising because their ads are so horrible.
Basically, more and more the ads are getting so invasive (especially on my iPhone) that I am just asking myself how badly do I want to read the article and since this is a hobby, not that badly.
sounds like we are on the path to "enshitification" .... can't wait
Hey Michael,
This is constructive feedback. The number of ads we display on a page is well within the industry standard (under, actually), but let me see what I can do about the ad types showing up at any one time. That should be solvable.
The site’s ad load has made it increasingly unreadable. Not sure why I’d start paying to deshittify it rather than visit less.
No need to pay, good adblocks do a great job of keeping this site ad free.