It’s getting close to the time of year when I have to pay the subscription fees for this site. Due to the changes that WordPress have made in the last year this is now significantly more expensive than it was a year ago, and for me I’m not sure that this represents good value for money anymore. The cost would be well over £100, which is spare cash that I simply don’t have at the moment, so I have reluctantly decided to cancel my subscription.

Cancelling my current subscription is the only way that I can downgrade my plan, and because the domain fee is now paid separately (another WordPress change), it hopefully means that I can downgrade to something cheaper or take my stall someplace else.

It also gives me an opportunity to look at other things. As you probably know I normally post once a week, and there are other ways to do this e.g. a newsletter, which could be done more cost effectively. Ultimately I haven’t made a final decision yet, but I had to cancel my plan before it auto-renewed in order to avoid having the pay the excessive fee.

I’ve tried a number of different options to passively monetise content here (adverts, affiliate links and others) in order to offset the costs of subscription charges and to be honest none of them provide anywhere near the income that would be needed to cover the cost (or even payout as the threshold is so high). Add to this I hate the sight of the adverts, they’re ugly and I have no control over what is advertised, and I’ll be glad when they’re gone.

This is my problem to fix, but I need to cut my cloth according to my means and have the control over “my” site.