Subscribe to CONTACT

The CONTACT web site and its associated Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, X and Youtube accounts are all free to view and explore – and our new subscription list* is another way to discover highlighted and important posts on the CONTACT platforms.

Subscribing is free – though we now also offer voluntary opportunities to help us pay the bills – via Patreon. If you do want to support CONTACT via a small monthly contribution, I will be very grateful – and you may from time to time get access to content that other subscribers will not see, or see much later.

But, you do not have to pay to subscribe to CONTACT – click the “Join for free” button when you get to the landing page via this link…

SUBSCRIBE HERE

 

*Our old subscription was shut down on 31 December 2023. This was made necessary by an increase in the cost of our email-sending service – from $890 a year to $2530 a year!!! – which, of course, we didn’t pay.
Your completely voluntary Patreon contributions will go towards CONTACT‘s many other operating costs.

Your questions answered:

Q: Have you been hijacked??? Got strange msge to rejoin with payment $2!!! The word used was you must “resubscribed”

A: So sorry mate, No, I was not hijacked – but I did make a late-night cut-and-paste error. You don’t have to pay – click the “Join for free” button at the top of the Patreon page. But you do have to resubscribe, I’m afraid – if you want to continue receiving CONTACT newsletters.

 

Q: I downloaded the App as suggested in the first email. Do I still need to respond to this second email??

A: The app is for Patreon. You haven’t actually subscribed to CONTACT on Patreon yet. Follow the links in today’s email and click the “Join for free” button when you get to the ‘money page’. Subscribing is free (unless you want to contribute – but you do not have to).

 

Q: Unfortunately, my (State-government) system is not letting me use the link to re-subscribe. I would like to continue my subscription to the page. If I could possibly ask for you to keep my email active on this email address.

A: That’s a bugger – and you won’t be alone with that problem. Defence will be the same – which is a big problem for a military magazine! But, there’s really nothing I can do on this end. Except to suggest you use a personal email address. Sorry mate.

 

Q: NOT everyone wants to join Patreon to be able to read the Contact newsletter. There is an old Army saying…. “Don’t try to fix something that is not broken”. You’re losing a LOT of readers. I personally don’t think you should be going down this route. But, Hey! Not my Call.  P.S. Thank you for the Newsletter – Please keep up the GREAT Work.

A: I do appreciate that people don’t like change. Neither do I. But, when my email-sending platform raised my email-sending bill from $890 a year to $2530 a year, my only choice was to change platform – or shut down. As a DVA pensioner doing CONTACT as a hobby, I say the above price rise makes it broken. So, I chose to fix it with Patreon (which charges $0 for sending emails). And, it’s still free for you on Patreon – just click the ”Join for free” button. Thank you for your enthusiasm for CONTACT – and thank you for your obviously heart-felt feedback.
P.S. You were right about losing readers. I lost about 12,000 out of the 14,000 subscribers that were on the old system.

 

Q: You’re going to get a lot less email subscribers by moving to that heap of crap Patreon. You really should just stick to the existing system instead of making everything complicated. After all, if it’s not broken, don’t try to fix it.

A: Who said it isn’t broken? The cost of sending the newsletter on the old platform was set to rise from $890/yr to $2530/yr!!!  And, since CONTACT is produced as a hobby by little old me (ex-Army, now DVA pensioner), I said “bugged that” (or something similar but possibly more profane) – and decided to shut CONTACT down completely. A few days later, after I calmed down, I went in search of alternative solutions to this serious problem. Patreon was the obvious and logical solution – still free for you to subscribe (unless you want to voluntarily help with the many other bills) and sending out the newsletters is also free for me. So, yes, it was badly broken – but now it’s fixed.

 

Q: I haven’t yet been able to find the Subscribe for Free Button. I wish to remain on your email list and have made a small donation, but it appears to me that it is necessary to subscribe to both lists; the email list and the Patreon list, and as I said I can’t find the Subscribe for Free list.

A: The right button you need is marked “Join for free”, at the top of the Patreon subscription page. While I thank you very much for your donation, it really isn’t required, so feel free to discontinue it any time.
However, now that you are a paying member, you probably won’t be able to see the “Join for free” button now, so you will first have to unsubscribe as a paying member, then try again to find and click the “Join for free” (it will be at the top of the page, just under the “CONTACT Subscribers” headline).
BTW – there is only one list. The “email list” that you were on was deleted on 31 December 2023. There’ll be no more comms from that.

 

Q: Just wanted to let you know that I received the attached email that seems as dodgy as #@ck, spelling incorrect and some random link displays when hovering over the resubscribe – not only that this was the first time I’ve heard that this was under consideration. If it’s actually true then I think you might need to do a little bit more work in this space or your mailing list is about to shrink like my willy would in Alaska on a freezing cold winters night.

A: In the interests of keeping your willy as proud and strong as if it were at a Saigon ping-pong-ball show, I will explain that my email is as true as I’m sitting here responding to your individual concern, to assure you that it is not spam. Yep, I acknowledge that there were spelling mistakes – a result of writing and rewriting that email several times over the course of two days, in an effort to get the message right – and obviously failing. But, judging by the fact you say it’s the first you’ve herd of it, it seems I was right to deliver this news (for the third time) via a stand-alone ’Newsflash’.  Yes indeed, this news was delivered in the previous two regular newsletters, as the second story in both, under bold red headlines. And the reason why (as stated in the first story in newsletter 207) – because I was told the cost of sending this newsletter in current format will rise from $890/yr to $2530/yr!!!  And, since CONTACT is produced as a hobby by little old me (ex-Army, now DVA TPI pensioner), I said “bugged that” (or something similar but more profane) – and decided to shut CONTACT down completely. A few days later, after I calmed down, I went in search of alternative solutions to this serious problem.
Patreon was the obvious and logical solution – still free for you to subscribe (unless you want to voluntarily help with the many other bills) and sending out the newsletters is also free for me. BTW – the dodgy-looking link when you hover is a redirection link from the email sendeerouterer to the true source. That’s how those emails have always worked – every single link to every single story in every single newsletter is like that. But then I keep forgetting that you don’t read past the first story in my newsletters – or at the very least, haven’t read down to the second story in newsletter number 207 or 208 (which, by the way, as fortnightly newsletters, 208 would make it 8 years I’ve been sending out ‘free’ newsletters that were costing me nearly $1000 a year to mail, not counting the many many other bills associated with running an on-line news empire – as a loss-making hobby. Not bad for a TPI pensioner). And I will keep doing it – via Patreon from now on. Anyway, all that to say, I really do hope you come across to the new platform, where as of right now, 1464 people out of 14,000 have re-subscriptionied 😉 and will receive CONTACT newsletter number 209 later today (I’m still working on it and still triple checking for willy-shrinking spelling errors).