FS Needs Your Support – Keep the Servers Running & Updates Flowing

FS Needs Your Support – Keep the Servers Running & Updates Flowing

by Alex Billington
August 28, 2023

“We lived on farms, then we lived in cities, and now we’re going to live on the internet!” As 2023 rolls on, we’re asking for your help in supporting FirstShowing.net. This is our 17th year in operation, and times are tougher than ever. Every single day we post trailers and updates about upcoming films and new releases. But the internet has fallen apart, many websites have shut down, and the lil’ guys are being pushed out. FS remains independently owned & operated – without a clickbait corporate company controlling us. However, ad rates have dropped, SEO has become unsustainable to keep up with, Twitter/X has been dismantled. And to top it off, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in Hollywood have frozen the entire entertainment industry. We fully support and stand with the writers and actors striking! Pay them fair wages! Stop corporate greed! Stop A.I.! However, it’s hard to keep this site going when the film industry is in so much turmoil. We know this is a tough ask, as it seems everyone is just trying to get by right now. But if you love this site, if you love movies as much as we do, please lend a bit of your support to help us cover the cost of servers and updates.

We offer a membership subscription with Steady – click the image below to visit our page to sign-up. To be honest and open right up front – there’s nothing we can give back to members. It’s not about giving anything “more” – all of our effort and work goes into managing and running this site, and everything is available for free, for everyone, whoever wants to visit. It always will be. That’s what we believe in – we don’t want to hide anything behind paywalls or give special gifts to members only. We just need your support. If membership isn’t for you, consider a one-time donation via PayPal or Ko-fi or contact Alex for other ways to support FS.

FirstShowing is an independently owned and operated professional movie blog with its roots in Colorado. It is run by movie lovers just like you who work their butt off every single day to make sure it is updated and running smoothly. Our focus is on providing accurate information and the latest updates on movie releases without annoying ads or popups or distractions. Our mantra is to offer this for free to everyone, without any limitations – that is what the internet is all about (hack the planet!). But we need you to keep us going: “Without you, there is no us.” We want to keep the site running and need your support. We don’t want to fill up the site with confusing content marketing articles or ugly ads that take away from your experience here. This has been our philosophy since the early days of FirstShowing, and will continue to be our focus…

It’s never fun to have to write a post like this and ask for any donations or support. But it’s also important to be transparent and to acknowledge that the internet has become a tough place to run a website in a clean and useful way. After the COVID-19 pandemic, when movie theaters shut down for years, we did our best to hold on and make it through. Things were looking good, it was getting better. Throughout 2023 it has all been getting worse again – we’re barely make enough money to get by. The hope is always to make sure the quality of the site remains intact, and anything we publish is available to anyone who’s interested, no matter what, without any limitations. We’re constantly making updates to the server and to the code that makes the site work, but this involves hiring professionals to help modernize and make it run faster. Server costs have gone up while ad rates are going down. Everything is getting harder to manage – even though we try our best every day to make sure FirstShowing is an informative, engaging place to learn about movies (of all sizes).

Our focus is on championing cinema and embracing positivity. A nourishing community run by passionate movie lovers. Thank you for visiting FS, thank you for being a reader, and thank you for all of your support.

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