We have some new competition in the battle for your valuable, hard-earned subscription dollar!
Earlier this week, hunky Facebook weatherbeast Aaron Tuttle announced he is launching a new subscription service on his weather website!
For just $2.49 a month, Aaron will provide his patented “life-saving” weather forecasts, exclusively packaged in his trademarked bet-hedging, no-BS, “tell it like it is” style, complete with a lot of fancy-looking maps and stuff.
You know, the muscly forecasts that resonate so well with Mustang Moms, Yukon Dads, and all their anti-establishment, conservative, truck-driving friends—the ones who think weather forecasting is more dark art than science, and somehow haven’t realized that all meteorologists—whether they work for the government, TV stations, or Facebook—use the same data and models.
Not surprisingly, Aaron has been aggressively promoting the new service.
Instead of taking a traditional marketing approach—like a heartfelt plea about supporting independent weather forecasting, or a polite reminder that running a site takes time and resources—he has opted for something a little more… stormy.
You know, cutting-edge fear-marketing stuff where he guilt-trips, shames, and straight-up scares his followers into submission. Err, I mean… subscription.
Check out these recent Facebook posts:
Yep, nothing helps you maintain mental health during “high-impact stressful weather events” like a man telling you that if you don’t skip a meal and give him money, well… you might die.
I mean, I guess that approach works in churches, hospitals, and Jenny Craig, but it’s a little weird to see it used to pitch a weather service.
Here’s one where he went with an urgent, “You better subscribe now, because I may be too busy to save you later” call-to-action approach:
LOL. Yeah, that’s it. He’s going to be so flooded with subscription requests that come March, he may not have time to approve yours in time to save your life.
In other news, I heard a little old lady is coming by later to inspect our various subscription offerings, so you better act now and get yours before they're gone!
Here’s another:
Listen. I want to clarify that I empathize with Aaron here.
Just like him, I know first-hand that running a small independent media brand can feel like a selfless grind. It takes a lot of time, effort, and hard work to keep people active and engaged in today’s bottomless pit of distraction, and even more time, effort, and hard work to make money while doing it.
Seriously, I just don’t think people truly understand how hard it is to get humans (and businesses) to open up their pocketbooks and pay you for words or weather forecasts. They've also never experienced the frustration of spending five hours writing an article, only for the first Facebook comment to be some old guy complaining about a paywall. It sucks!
I guess the difference between Aaron and me is that I don’t take it personally.
I know that most people out there are like me – cheap, lazy, and hate paywalls – and that even if they like what you do, it’s very, very difficult to get someone to stop what they’re doing, grab a credit card, type in numbers, and hand over a Braum’s combo meal worth of money each month.
Now, is shaming and scaring those people a good way to convert them into paying subscribers?
I don’t know.
But it did make me wonder… maybe Aaron is on to something?
Inspired by his creativity, I created some new ads I'm going to start running on the site immediately:
Okay, those might be a bit too extreme.
We should probably stick with the gentler, more positive ads we’ve been running on this site. You know, ones like this…
Or this…
Or this…
Okay, to avoid any future lawsuits, I should probably clarify that the final ad is a parody. Aaron isn’t a TLO subscriber… yet. I imagine that will happen the day one of his forecasts calls for hell to freeze over.
Anyway, we’d like to officially welcome Aaron to the subscription hustle and wish him the best of luck intimidating people into forking over money. If you're a fan of his, you can subscribe to his website there, or – better yet – subscribe to ours here.
In the meantime, stay with The Lost Ogle. We’ll keep you advised.
