Let's see, a stamp? Nope.
iTunes song? Guess again.
Pack of baseball cards?
Riiiiiiiight.
A newspaper? Not anymore.
Bottle of water? Surely you jest.
Gallon of gas? Not since 19 and 60.
A pack of gum?
Yeah, right.
A Coke from the machine? Maybe when I was in 7th grade.
I got it, a glue stick? Sr'nuff.
A single glue stick! That, my friends, is what 25 cents buys you these days.
Oh, that, and a daily subscription to
DFWSportatorium.
That's right, starting today, for the low low price of $4.95 per month - or 25 cents per weekday - you can become a member of the new-and-improved
DFWSportatorium.
I know what you're thinking, "F*ck You!" Fair enough. But after the initial knee-jerk brushback hopefully it'll dawn on you that you can get 20+ days a month of my offerings for less than you can see a movie. And I promise, no upcharge for butter on your popcorn.
Technically,
DFWSportatorium is now a freemium site. Meaning? Located at the same address and it's still free to walk in the front door, peruse the old archives, gawk at the photo library and whatnot. But for access to the fresh daily content you have to go through the premium door. And that price of admission is - altogether now - a quarter of a dollar per day.
Now that my pizza-'n-beer-delivery business Pizza Buzz is up and afloat, I've got more time on my hands to do what I truly love: Write. And goof-off. Not necessarily in that order. So why not, I surmised, take this blog to the next level. In quantity. In quality. And, yes, in monetization.
What'll your $4.95 get you? "Whitt's End" five days a week. In-depth stories. Thought-provoking columns. Even podcasts and webcasts featuring me and my-soon-to-be-bride, better known as
Sybil Summers.
Look, it's the natural maturation of
DFWSportatorium. At almost six months old we've surpassed 1 million pageviews. We've been fortunate enough to have some advertisers help us crawl. Now we seek an assist from some loyal readers in order to walk.
I'm not a'tall tech savvy and the last thing we need is another Obamacare-ish web (non)launch, so let's make this as simple as possible. You sign up to become a member using a Google Gmail account, you pay the $4.95 with a major credit card and I send you an email inviting you into the premium room of
DFWSportatorium. Voila. One-and-done.
Cowboys breaking news.
Concert reviews.
The latest in radio ratings and media gossip.
Hot chicks.
Long-form stories. And, of course, the backbone of our site - a daily "Whitt's End" guaranteed to make you think, make you react and, likely before we get too far down the road, make you mad. Or, hopefully, every now and then make you smile as well.
I'm proud of the little community we've nurtured since our June 17 lift-off.
Some of you knuckleheads have been with me since the original Sportatorium over at the Observer back in '08. Sometimes you nod your head in agreement. Most of the time you kick me in the nuts. Either way, allow me to both roll out the red carpet and pass around the offering plate for the upgraded
DFWSportatorium.
Here's hoping you adopt and embrace our new unofficial motto:
"
DFWSportatorium ... Better than a stick of glue."
