We are thrilled to announce the launch of Club AppleVis. Club AppleVis offers members and friends of our community a means of directly contributing towards the financial costs of operating AppleVis—thus ensuring that we can continue to deliver the information, help, and support that so many people have come to value and rely on over the past 8 years.
In part, the launch of Club AppleVis is a response to Apple's decision to remove apps from its affiliate program from October 1, 2018. For the unfamiliar, this affiliate program enabled online content publishers to use a referral link when linking to apps in the App Store. If people followed one of these links, a small percentage of any resulting sale was paid by Apple to the originating website as a commission.
We used referral links on AppleVis; not because we have wages to pay (all of those involved with running AppleVis do so on a voluntary basis and receive no financial recompense for their time), but because there are financial costs from maintaining and developing AppleVis for the community. The small amount of revenue generated by these links helped to cover those costs.
We want to stress that the changes to Apple's affiliate program should not bring into question the continued existence of AppleVis. However, as we receive no external funding or sponsorship, the reality is that these changes will make it harder to cover the operational costs. This is why we are asking the community to please consider helping by becoming a member of Club AppleVis.
The biggest reward from being a Club AppleVis member is that you will be directly helping to make AppleVis possible. However, as a “thank you”, we offer a number of perks to Club AppleVis members:
- Each year, we offer one Club AppleVis member the opportunity to take part in one of our roundtable podcasts. More details will be announced on how this will work further down the road.
- Club AppleVis members have access to an RSS feed containing all of the episodes in our podcast archive, enabling them to browse and play these in their podcatcher of choice. Note that our main podcast feed includes only the 100 most recent episodes, with the remainder accessible via the website.
- With the support of the developers and companies we have come to know through running AppleVis, we will occasionally offer discounts or giveaways to Club AppleVis members.
- Club AppleVis members also have a badge added to their AppleVis user account that recognizes their membership of Club AppleVis and links to the Club AppleVis page. If you do not want this badge added to your account, please just let us know.
It is possible that we may offer additional perks to Club AppleVis members as ideas and opportunities present themselves. However, what we will not be doing is making some content only available to Club AppleVis members, as we believe this would be against the spirit of AppleVis and everything our community strives to offer.
If you are an app developer or behind a product or service that would be of interest and value to Club AppleVis members, please consider partnering with us to offer a discount or giveaway. Use our contact form to reach out and let us know what you have in mind.
How to Join Club AppleVis
To qualify for Club AppleVis membership, you will need to have either:
- An active recurring donation towards AppleVis of at least US$1.99 per month; or
- Have made a single donation of at least US$25 in the past 12 months.
If you find value in the work that AppleVis does, and if you have the means, we would greatly appreciate it if you would please consider becoming a Club AppleVis member. To reiterate, any and all donations received go directly towards the various costs associated with operating the AppleVis website; our site editors receive no financial compensation for their work with AppleVis.
If you are ready to join Club AppleVis, you can use one of the forms on this page to set up either a recurring micro-donation or make a one-off donation. These donations are processed securely via PayPal.
You can also use these forms if you wish to make a donation that's smaller than is required for Club AppleVis membership. You will have our sincerest thanks, as all donations make a difference and are truly appreciated, irrespective of the amount.
If you already make a recurring micro-donation towards AppleVis or have made a one-off donation of $25 or more in the past year, you will automatically be made a Club AppleVis member. If you have any questions about this, please contact us.
Thank you for your interest in learning how you can help to cover the financial costs of maintaining and developing AppleVis for the community. It is only with your help that everything AppleVis strives to offer is possible.
Comments
Some considerations
Firs of all, excuse my english. What follows is only my opinion, and should not be considered offensive, but I understand sometimes it is hard to translate some ideas to another language without sounding really stupid.That said, applevis is a community. Its content has been submited by the community members primarily: reviews, app entries... The editorial team makes a great job, but, well, it is only a part of the website. In other words, without the community, applevis would be a totally different thinb (much less interesting, in my opinion). So, keeping that community spirit alive is perhaps the most important tool for all of us. The point is: anything is free, and obviously, maintaining a website like applevis has a price, and I am sure a lot of the community members would be happy contributing with some money, but I think a little bit more of transparency would be apreciated. How much it costs to mantain the site? What about a real time counter, like in any crowdfounding campain, showing a goal and how much money people has donated so far?? As an example, I would consider donating 100 euros if Applevis needs 100 euros for the 2018 goal, but if people has donated 3500 euros of a goal of 500, probably I would wait for the next year. In other words: all for the community, but only for the good of the community. It is not the case, but hope it makes sense: I would never support someone who decided he or she can setup a community based website in order to buy a new iphone each year (I better would buy one for myself hehe).Thanks for reading, and believe me, if it sounds rude is because my english is not good enought to express myself better!
In reply to Alan
Hi Alan,
Thank you for your interest in supporting AppleVis and your feedback.
Some of what you suggest is already available on the Club AppleVis page, where you will read that we currently have 29 regular monthly donors who have donated $135.76 in the past month. This data is generated and displayed dynamically, so it should always be accurate and up-to-date when viewing that page. There are one-off donations on top of this, but for now I have not been able to find a way to dynamically and reliably collect and display these in the way that I can with recurring donations.
I know that no offense was intended, but I can tell you categorically that nobody is involved with operating this site because they think that there's going to be a free iPhone to get out of it. In fact, the numbers quoted above include donations from members of both the site's Editorial and Blog teams.
Wonderful
Wonderful comment and reply. Keep ups the great work. I have found this site VERY helpful many times.
Joy!
Bruce
Very Well Said
I, too, have found this site very worthwhile and only wish that I could contribute financially. I don't use PayPal though, and I am currently on my parents' credit card. But that's likely to change very soon for a reason I shall not go into on here. I'll just say that my parents are still alive and doing very well. But thanks again to everybody who has put in their time and talent to bring us AppleVis. Your work is definitely paying off for me and for others too. So please keep it up.
Another idea to generate money
Have you thought about placing Amazon affiliate links on the website, I’m not sure how many people here shop on Amazon but if they want to support Apple vis, they could click on the link and a small commission would be paid to the site.
The rates aren’t what they used to be, but it might be a way of getting some extra money.