Context. If you’re curious how Baeldung works
The TLDR is that the solution to the Too Many Ads problem is live.
Baeldung Pro is the membership that solves that, along with the other super-requested features, such as a dark theme 🙂
And, as always, because it’s early, I’m launching it with early-access pricing. More on pricing later.
Why Ads?
I used to write everything on Baeldung myself. Those were the days 🙂
Now, we have a pretty large editorial team. Maybe not as large as other publications, but we do work with hundreds of developers as authors, editors, and senior editors, all helping make Baeldung what it is today.
Ads are basically how we’re able to do that.
Paying the developers on the editorial team, and everyone else on the internal team – that’s mostly ads. Ads, plus the revenue from my courses and working with a handful of hand-picked partners.
Simply put, without ads, Baeldung wouldn’t be able to work, and we certainly wouldn’t be able to write at the level of quality I’d be happy with.
But, why not Ads?
That all being said, ads are, to put it mildly, not ideal.
Sometimes, ads are downright annoying. They slow the site down, clutter the reading experience (sometimes very much so), and create a number of internal issues overall.
And oh-so-many readers reach out asking for a better solution.
When I had to literally create a quick script for myself, to answer these emails from readers and apologize, saying We don’t really have a solution right now – I opened two UX roles internally to start working on something better 🙂
That was mid-2023.
Membership?
The solution was clear – build membership. Easier said than done 🙂
We changed our stack twice and lost quite a bit of time going in the wrong direction until we finally settled on a clean, well-architected implementation.
Let’s say we’ve learned a lot getting to this 1.0.0 version.
But, now, finally, I can write this sentence.
We are live with a clean, absolutely no-ads experience of Baeldung!
If you’re a regular reader, making good use of the site, I hope that will really help.
“Early Adopter” Pricing and Baeldung Pro
I’ve been giving this a lot of thought — how should the pricing work on Baeldung Pro?
The goal is, of course, to make it easily make sense for everyone and be super-affordable, and it’s also able to help us grow.
I settled on $27 / year.
Since we’re now in the “early adopter” phase, where some features are still on the roadmap — the first 3000 members will be able to join at $27 / year.
After we get to 3000, the price will be $34 / year for the next 3000 members.
At that point, we’ll naturally also have the other core features released, which will definitely help.
Of course, PPP is available to help, just like on my courses.
Dark Mode
Dark mode, or a dark theme, has also been requested for exactly “I lost count” times.
Simply put, that’s out as well – part of Baeldung Pro:
The Roadmap
Yes, the upcoming list of features is a mile-long:
- a dedicated member codebase
- eBook management
- article saving
- the ability to follow the categories/tags you care about
- Learning paths
- more specialized eBooks
- and a lot of other cool things down the line
If you’re curious, here’s a quick snapshot of our Jiras (as much as I can fit on the screen):
I’m super excited about getting all of this functionality into your hands and helping members have a really solid learning experience.
Not only without ads but also focused on learning and practical experimentation.
As always, do ping me here via chat, or here with questions 🙂
Cheers,
Eugen.