Introducing Premium Goats

We're going to be serving up Super-Sized Sunday Strips every month. We're going to be hitting you with Ask The Animals, our lovingly warped daily advice column by the three individuals least qualified to write one. We're going to give you a members-only forum. Ad-free Goats surfing. Special discount merchandise. Tons more features to be introduced in the upcoming months. And for those of you who sign up for our Super-Premium membership, we have a year-end care package you're not going to believe. Read on for more details, or just go sign up now.

Many of you will remember how we would ask for donations in past months, whoring ourselves shamelessly for your nickels and dimes, all in an effort to keep the site alive. You were overly generous, and we were able to make do for longer than I could have ever imagined. But in the end, it was only a few hundred people who were paying for the privilege of extra content each month; the other 50,000 readers were reaping the benefits without having to spend a dime, and it wasn't surprising that after a while, the people carrying the weight of those thousands of freeloaders would tire after a while.

Once the donations stopped coming in, we were left with a conundrum: how could we support the site, and, at the same time, keep from alienating the thousands of penniless, faithful readers who come here looking for their only joy in life? The answer came to us in a flash of blinding light: Premium Goats.

By offering extra content and features to those of you who generously support the site, we can pay our bandwidth bills and also guarantee you that you're not going to get stiffed if other folks don't help out to make nebulous donations goals in a given month. You'll get your bonus strips and more, every month. And we're not going to stop there.

I have a long list of features that we want to add to the premium section. We needed to draw the line at some point and launch this puppy, so for now, this is what you get. But as time goes forward, we're going to continue to add more content and special features and benefits to the premium package. I can't tell you what they are right now, but I'm hoping to roll out a new surprise for you every month or so for the next few months as we build them. You can be assured that the majority of our efforts on the site are going to be put into making the Premium membership worth every penny you give us.

And if you want even more Goats goodness, we're offering the Super-Premium membership, which has all the benefits of the Premium membership, but comes with the Super-Premium End-of-Year Goats Package (S.P.E.Y.-GOATS Package). This year's package includes your choice of paperback book, a Mystery Limited Edition T-shirt (color shirt, silk-screened, high-quality stuff), Goats buttons, stickers, and tattoos, and a Character Sketch lovingly hand-crafted by Yours Truly. Future packages will include similarly amazing and dazzling goodies. S.P.E.Y. packages will be mailed out in December, so be sure to sign up for yours before then (we'll let you know later when we know when the cutoff date for this year's package is).

How much can you expect to pay for all this wonderful stuff? The basic Premium membership is $20 per year. That's less $1.67 per month. Or 5.5 cents per day. Or .0000063 cents per second. You're not going to be able to get quality entertainment like this anywhere for less than .0000063 cents per second, I guarantee you. Super-Premium is $60 per year ($65 for international folks, since shipping costs are a bit higher).

How will this affect those of you who are too poor or greedy to help us out with less than two dollars per month? It won't. You're still going to have access to all of the sections of the site you've had access to in the past (although the Beer and Readme sections have been moved into our News section for consolidation purposes, all the old columns are still there for your enjoyment). You'll still get three strips a week. On the downside, you'll have the itchy, uncomfortable knowledge that you're missing out on all the best stuff.

If you want to help Goats -- if you enjoy coming to the site and reading our strip -- this is the best way to help us keep bringing you the fun stuff you know and love. And as more of you sign up, we'll be able to do even more for you. Please subscribe today. And don't hesitate to ask me any questions you may have in the forums.