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An update on the future of Jewels from the Crown

Hello friends!

First off, I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for all of your support as we re-launch Jewels from the Crown. Whether that’s kind words on Twitter, sharing our update posts, or contributing financially to our move, I’ve been so thrilled to see that there are people who are excited to have this community back. You’re all due a few updates, so here they are.

money money money

Thanks to your contributions, we’ve been able to cover the first year of hosting on our new platform. It felt very good hitting that big green Pay Now button on the hosting site, knowing that a community came together to make this happen. Some remaining funds are earmarked for graphic design work, licensing some photos for use, and any other unexpected costs for the site transition, and the rest will help go to support the great crew of writers I’m assembling. The GoFundMe will be staying open to function as a tip jar, for you to show your appreciation for what we’re doing.

Where are you going?

In the long term, the answer is: nowhere! You’ll continue to access the site via jewelsfromthecrown.com

…that said. Transferring the domain name from Vox to me may take some time, and the address may not redirect right away to the new site until that is settled.

So. Most important part of this update: Make sure you bookmark the temporary site address: jewels-from-the-crown.ghost.io

Even more importantly than bookmarking the site, make sure you hit that big subscribe button to become a member of the site (more on that later).

The site is very bare bones right now — I tossed up a secret game preview the other day to see what it looks like — but as the archives from this version of the site get imported, that will fill out more.

I’m considering the rest of the regular season to be a bit of a soft launch — re-starting a website after several years away takes time for all of the pieces to come together — but we’ll be all settled in and ready to go for the playoffs, which should be, uh — fun? I’m told the playoffs are supposed to be fun? Interesting.

Tell me more about this new site!

The platform we’re moving to is called Ghost, and I’m excited about the new features it can offer us, in addition to some features that we thought were crucial for a successful transition. The team at Ghost is doing all the hard work of importing our archives, including building out some tools on their end to make the transition even more seamless.

There’s a small catch: much like you had to create an SBN account, you will have to subscribe and sign in to leave comments on the new site, as your current accounts will not be able to be transferred to this new platform. This will help us keep the comments free of trolls and spambots. There is no charge, and your user data will not be shared with a third party.

You will also notice that the site does not have any ads at the moment. Goodbye, weirdo “You’ll Never Believe How Terrible This Celebrity Looks!!!” ads. I’m not opposed to advertising on the site in the future, but my goal is to find sponsors who fit our community, with ads that are less intrusive. (If your business is interested, hit me up)

But running a site like this isn’t free. Independent operations have expenses, and the time we put into this has value as well. And in this business you have two choices: advertisements or subscriptions. We don’t want to rely on clickbait (“Five Players The Kings Could Pick Up On Waivers And One They Definitely Won’t!!!”) to drive traffic in order to inflate our ad revenue. We don’t want to clog up your experience on our site with a bunch of invasive ads and pop-ups. Essentially, we don’t want to sell YOU to make the money needed to run this site. As a wise man once said, “the ethical choice is always to get your money from your customers, not third parties.” If something you use is free, then you are the product being sold. We aren’t doing that here.

So, to that end, we will be introducing a couple of tiers of paid subscriptions, for those who have the means and desire to support the site financially. The vast majority, if not all, of our content will not be going behind a paywall at this time. Instead, I’m looking at more experience-based perks — subscriber-only livestreams, contributing your own article ideas or content, perhaps some meet-ups — and early access to some special content (guess who’s getting into prospect analysis? this person!) will be a better way to show our appreciation, but still keep the community open to as many Kings fans as possible, regardless of income level. Those perks are still being fleshed out, so more to come on that front.

I don’t intend to use the email newsletter feature of Ghost for every post — we all get way too many emails — but you may receive emails about breaking news, important Kings stories, or site updates. When you subscribe to the site, you’ll be able to turn off emails at any time, as well, while still maintaining your membership on the site.

What else do I need to know?

That you are awesome!

Okay, wait, there’s more.

No one reads a sports article for the photos, but one thing we are losing after going independent is access to the Getty and USA Today photo archives. In case you’ve never looked, the cost to license photos from there is, uhhhh, bananas, and that license doesn’t transfer with us when we move platforms. So our articles may look a little plain, or they may have, like, a picture of Anze Kopitar that I took six years ago when I was able to get my DSLR camera into games.

If you’re a photographer — amateur, semi-pro, whatever — and would be interested in doing business with us to license some of your work for use on the New Jewels, please contact me!

I am very excited for this next adventure, I’m excited to see what the Kings do in the playoffs, and I’m excited to get to talk about, I don’t now, Kevin Fiala’s mustache or something.

Thank you all for your support — we literally could not have done this without you.

If you’ve got questions, Twitter is the best place for them — @JFTC_Kings is back in my grubby little hands, so feel free to tweet at us or DM us. If social media isn’t your thing, you can also send me an email — sarah.jftc @ gmail — and I can try to answer whatever (reasonable) (non-gross) questions you’ve got.

(And don’t forget to go subscribe to the new site!)

Talking Points