Originally published at: https://tidbits.com/2019/01/21/tidbits-membership-appeal-successful-thank-you-members/
In an attempt to recover from the loss of 500 members, we sent an email appeal last week that resulted in over 500 people signing up for the TidBITS membership program and putting us back on firm footing. Thank you!
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Well done Adam & Tonya. Good to hear!
Thanks, Tommy. This was a true lifesaver. Tonya ran the numbers from December, which is historically our largest month due to that being when we started the membership program back in 2011, and she realized that we were really low. I was going to put an article in TidBITS, but it felt like it would be saying the same thing as what I’d said in December so I decided to try the direct email approach. It’s not something we plan to do regularly, but it was a huge win this time.
Infrastructure transitions are hard! This one will probably take a full year to settle down.
I never liked eSellerate. They made it difficult to complete some of my early attempts to purchase software. I liked Kagi, with whom I had early success, but they, too, seem to have gone the way of the DoDo. Now, apparently, eSellerate has fallen to the competition. This may have meant headaches for TidBITS, but to my mind it’s no loss. I wish you well with your new provider. Though the switch was not without stumbles, as the Bard said, all’s well that ends well. 
eSellerate was purchased by Digital River many years ago, and has been running in maintenance mode for ages. We were actually surprised it lasted as long as it did.
Kagi fell prey to fraud and had to shut down a few years ago:
Our current system relies on the Paid Memberships Pro plugin for WordPress and the Stripe payment processing service, and we hope it lasts for a good long time!
Good luck. 
When even Sears is on the brink, who can hope to last a “good long time”?
I guess Sears did last, a century or more, but things move fast these days. Let’s hope Apple itself lasts as long as Sears did (not likely).