Cost of living crisis and Singletrack - An appeal

Brave post. This is a great place and I want it to continue, it is far greater than the sum of its parts. A rich vein of knowledge, compassion, argument and irritation in equal parts! After a few years of free membership I coughed up for a print and digital membership last year. Although I have had to scrutinize, justify and bin a few other subscriptions recently, I get too much from STW to get rid any time soon.

I hope you manage to convince a few others. They would miss it if it were gone. Good luck!

As above - very brave post, would hate to see STW go.
I've already cancelled a couple of subscriptions I have but have kept STW as it seems to offer the most.
Good luck in attracting new members, and looking forward to the site updates.

Great post - crazy times all round. Got continue to subscribe too and will be browsing the merch. If there’s nothing I fancy I’ll pop a donation in.

Good luck.

I 💕 Singletrackworld.

Thank you for being honest - and all the new plans sound amazing.

I love it too, and spend way too much time on here! Thanks for the openness and honesty and here's to some new members to keep us going!

Don't be afraid to up your prices! Those who subscribe for a printed physical magazine like STW won't really notice an extra fiver or so a year.

I'm in the print-trade and there's only one way paper prices are going at the minute and if past experience of paper merchants is anything to go by prices will never come down again so don't try and ride it out just to please a few whingers.

The only other magazine I subscribe to is Motorsport Magazine and they've just upped their price by 50p / month.

Anyone know if the full print membership includes shipping the magazines to Canada?!

Canada is on the list. There's an extra £10 on the standard annual price to cover the extra postage.

If you haven't already got one, treat yourself to a timber bell from the merch pages. The best way of defusing cyclist vs horse rider conflict on bridleways!

I keep trying not to look on here but keep failing.
Really like the feel of the magazine, love the photography and am more than happy to support it in the little way I can.

Besides, you can't go now I've had the leg tattoo.

Have to admit I've 'downgraded' from a print to digital subscription this year - thanks for the prompt to get the signed back up.

Can only echo the posts above. Currently don't envy the stress of running a publication especially in this Current climate!

You could easily double the monthly cost of digital subs I reckon. Can you add a 'pay what you feel you want to' option? Or some other kind of optional sub?

EDIT just seen there is one on the donation page.

The 'pay what you feel' idea has been discussed here. The theory is great but putting it into practice is harder as it's a regular payment and it's not always easy to create a regular payment subscription with a variable amount. Not impossible but it's a bit tricky.

I've set up an option to create a monthly donation over on the donate page. And that can be set up to any amount you like in £5 increments.

Happy to pay an increase in the subscription, and I'd buy more clothing but it's all made for wee people. Well, people significantly wee-er than me!

On the side, a small rant.

I know those without a subscription/full-membership are unlikely to read it, but I was always mystified by very active and seemingly positive posters who had the attitude of "it's my contributions to the forums that drive benefit for the owners, so I why would I pay to subsidies it?". Some of whom have since left.

OK, as is often the case, that point of view is not incorrect. But folks, lets not chop off noses to spite faces. Is this a site a great resource? Absolutely. Is it a vibrant and active community of likeminded people with opinions on a huge array of topics biking and non? Definitely. Are there things that happen on here that go way beyond what would be expected (even I have been positively impacted by this recently)... incredibly so.

Why on earth would you not want to support that? Do it.

Cheeky edit: "... There's a magazine?!?" 😆

This seems the best place for what may be a daft merch question... Does the drinks flask fit in a bike bottle cage? It looks like it should, but I'd expect it to list that as a feature if it was sized to carry on the bike.

Thanks for keeping us informed Mark. I upgraded a while back to a print and digital sub. Nice to have a paper copy and disconnect from the world with a coffee/beer now and again.

Changes to the website sound positive. I find the reviews really useful but a nightmare to navigate/find the review I'm interested in.

As others say I'd imagine a lot of us middle class, middle management, IT working, Audi driving stereotypes can afford a couple of extra quid a month for STW. But on the flip side it's great that it welcomes all and doesn't have a paywall.

What gives you the best financial advantage, if you don't mind me asking? Digital or digital and print? I'm happy to drop the paper mag if the physical production costs are adding to the burden. Or yeah, as others say, put the price up a bit. I don't recall a rise in the past few years even though there's been a normal level of inflation.

The publishing industry is an utterly shitty place to try and earn a living. My missus is/was a journalist - she’s mainly writing novels these days - but the money she gets offered, despite decades of experience, is terrible. Some of here friends who still rely on journalism for a living are properly struggling. Even the big, well know publications are offering day rates that haven’t increased in almost 20 years. It’s depressing.

@tthew It's a rather complicated equation to be honest. Although the margins in print are getting hammered the thing with print is that it very much works on an economy of scale. To illustrate what I mean I'll make a crazy extreme example.

With a big single print run like a magazine there's a huge portion of the final bill that is essentially setup costs. What this means is that if we wanted to print a single magazine on a huge press it would cost £5k (Hypothetical example of course because you'd never do this). To print 6000 copies costs a total of, say £8k. Because of that initial setup cost it means that each extra copy we print costs proportionately less and less.

So, what I'm saying here is that if half of our current print members downgrade to digital only that would actually push up the costs of the printed copies and increase the pressure on our print membership product pricing.

But print isn't the right option for everyone and so I'm really not keen to say one is better than the other. Pick the one that's right for you. I'd rather you paid £20/year for something you find useful than £39 for something that includes a printed mag you aren't interested in. As far as margins go, there's currently roughly about the same margin in both options for us so by picking one or the other we benefit the same. That's as it stands. Like I said though, if I said digital is best and that results in a rush on downgrades then that would potentially be worse for us.

Does that make sense?

Just paid. I've been here for years without putting my hand in my pocket, time to change that.

Digital only, a choice made (should Mark or anyone care) on how I wish to consume my media, rather than financial.

I’m speaking up now, while it’s not too late to do anything about the tough times ahead.

Thanks for the honest and open post, I'd much rather know where things are with STW now before anything becomes an issue. Thinking about it all reminds me how much I value STW and how much I'd miss it if it disappeared. I mean, I might have to actually ride my bikes if the forum and mag disappeared...

Edit - interesting info re costs and digital-only vs digital and print. Still can't beat paper format for reading articles IMO. I spend most of my day using a screen and don't want to read my mag digitally. Maybe more folk need to give that a(nother) try, if they can afford it, in light of that info re costs?

I'll take this opportunity to highlight another unexpected way that many of you have helped us financially without even knowing it.

This thread from a few weeks ago for example earned us about £180.

https://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/psa-very-cheap-fox-38-performance-elite-and-factory-forks/

Because it contained a direct link to the product on offer and we have a system on the forum called Skimlinks that affiliates all outgoing links to a very large number of retailers. That £180 was our commission on the forks that you guys bought.

Telling the rest of the community when you spot a total bargain by starting your post with PSA, is a great way that we all win.

Just make sure you include a link.

@toby.
Yes the drinks flask sort of fits in a cage.
it doesn't have the narrower bit where some cage snug over the bottle... you know what I mean.
I have used it in both titanium and nylon cages and it works on the cages I have used. It's not a perfect fit, but has worked for me.

The flasks are out of stock right now, but not for long. Klean Kanteen are lazer'ing up more for us any moment now. There is a "Wait list" box on the product page... pop your email in there.

flask product page

Great! Thanks, @charliedontsurf. I'll get one ordered when they're back in stock 🙂

bit crass - which subscription is most profitable for Singletrack - digital or print?
Will "re-become" a full member.

EDIT - read the comment noob!

I’d rather you paid £20/year for something you find useful than £39 for something that includes a printed mag you aren’t interested in.

i pay the £39 as i feel its worth it just for the forum. i dont read the mag that comes with it so i take it to work for others to read, but they dont either.

is there an option to not send me the mag and save that cost, even tho its minimal? send it to someone else instead?

Been posting here since it was all fields, was a mag subscriber right from the off, then I lapsed, then I subscribed during COVID but honestly never read the mag so it lapsed again...gone digital now, its the future or something. Good luck at keeping it all together...many people, not just you, are going to be roundly screwed this winter whilst the zombie government holiday.

Great post.

Weirdly this is why I never bought a lifetime subscription - I’d rather keep paying annually and keep the cash flowing into Singletrack Towers.

forty quid for six issues of a great print mag is an amazing price, I'm sure I pay over ten quid for Cranked at four issues a year so some scope for Singletrack to up the annual subs for print I reckon!

cheers,

Keith

Because it contained a direct link to the product on offer and we have a system on the forum called Skimlinks that affiliates all outgoing links to a very large number of retailers. That £180 was our commission on the forks that you guys bought.

Cool, glad to have helped....

Postage costs and print and paper costs have risen

Stop sending me the paper mag. As a lifetime subscriber I’m making no ongoing contribution and I’m perfectly happy downloading the .pdf of the mag. In fact the download is all I ever look at.

Stick the price up if you need to, everyone else has!

That was a tough read, but I'm glad and grateful you've given us the chance to help out, even if just a little. Everything I would like to say has already been said, far more eloquently, too (I think I do my best stuff after several beers), so I can only echo those posts, adding that I would like the magazine to continue: I may take a while to get round to reading them, but they're always a treat when I do.

I would head to the shop, but if I get any more t-shirts, I'm going to need a sponsorship deal, so I'll donate instead.

Like many others, I hope you keep the ship sailing merrily. The place just wouldn't be the same without you.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, perfect. I'll stick with the print subs in that case so I don't dilute my bit of the fixed cost then. 👍

New paper,new smell.....

Price up seems inevitable and sensible, but not sure how I feel about the ‘donate’ aspect of this story.

If this was mountain rescue, air ambulance etc, donate request is for me perfectly acceptable but for a private business mountain bike magazine?

The subs for what you get are still very reasonable. I like many others probably skip/not interested in half the mag, thought recently the recipes bit of a waste of pages and the amount of pages given over to Guy Kesteven bit much!

But as an example Claudio Caluori article was well worth the time to read.

Does feel at the moment as if STW mag is slightly trying to redefine what it is.

Price up seems inevitable and sensible, but not sure how I feel about the ‘donate’ aspect of this story.

I know what you mean, but it's a small business being honest with it's customers. It's the honesty bit which is the unusual part. Businesses don't normally talk about how they're doing and you just assume they must be fine, until one day you notice they've gone..

I had this walking through town and noticed our local independent outdoor shop had closed after 20+ years in the city center.

I would really miss STW if it went.

ok, so I signed up to print and digital when it was on offer... does that mean you are losing money on the deal? if so I would be happy to not actually receive the paper copy but stay on the P&D subscription so it renews at full price?

Interesting..  I just went into the STW "Shop" and page response times are horrendous. I can only hope it's because everyone else is snapping up stuff.

Does the drinks flask fit in a bike bottle cage?

The Kleen Kanteen flask/cups fit a bottle cage perfectly.

Am I the only one who still has every issue all 144 of the buggers !

Happy to pay a tad more even it means getting down to the last Turnip from the field next door in exchange. Have been absorbing mtb mags in one form or another since the birth of the sport but funnily enough I could live without a magazine if it meant you could survive as a website. Maybe adapting to a quality online photo story style would be a more affordable format.

As it happens, I'm looking to ditch a magazine subscription. The one I'm thinking of has changed out of all recognition over the last few years and what used to be compulsory reading now appears to be an exercise in self-congratulatory navel-gazing and NFTs.

Thankfully, Singletrack has remained relevant, useful, informative and at the heart of a welcoming and supportive community.

Now, which mag do I cancel? Singletrack, or British Journal of Photography. Crikey, that's a tough choice, isn't it?

Is there a PayPal donate option.

Like the forum. If was more like emtbforum etc. or just better. I'd cough up for that.
Like the news etc on the front page.

Got a PayPal donate ?

Not fussed about the mag. Physical or Digital.

Haven't been round his neck of the woods in a while, but Singletrack has given me a lot over the years, a love for riding bikes to say the least - had a sub as a early teens and adored the magazine which I would read cover to cover. In addition the magazine certainly informed a love of printed media which certainly contributed to getting into running and editing a magazine at university (we never made a profit, running a magazine is hard!) This then let to other thing, a first 'proper' job amongst these. So from my first pay check I will be buying a sub. Thanks Singletrack, you've given me a lot, I hope my small contribution can help keep things going...

Sorry STW Towers - have to wait until i am back in work.

I bought a bell, go me!

The cost of everything has gone mad, I had some steel L brackets made recently, 9 bits of steel, 6mm thick, 200x75x70 - anticipated £40-50 based on previous use of this supplier/fabricator, £150! F@ck me backwards, I thought timber and sheet material prices were bad enough.

So, all told, my digital sub to support my equal favourite forum is a snip. Good luck keeping the good ship STW afloat, I would miss it if it sank (I still miss the good bits of BikeMagic, bloody nostalgia freak).

Signing back up to the digital.
I let the print lapse as I never got a chance to read it before the boys discoverd and coloured it in.

I'm always slightly worried that as a "life" member it's really not enough & in reality is probably only 5 or 6 years. I get the printed copy as part of the deal but really don't often get to read it so would be fine with digital only.
As someone said can we have a PayPal donate thing like Patron, hell we could even get our names on a scrolling bit along with the ads that I don't see.

Sign of the times we live in unfortunately, and personally I think it will get worse during 2023 before we come out of the other side.

I believe I've asked this before and I'm sad to say I have forgotten the answer if I did but, just how much do the subs contribute to the profitability of STW towers? For the measly amount they cost, I'd imagine the subscribers would have to be in the 10s if not 100's of thousands to make sense commercially.

Clearly ad revenue contributes as does savvy google fu type activity and on the above I'd like to offer the following.

1. Everything in the world has risen in cost. In industry most prices are up 20% at least in the last 2 years alone. Fuel food and freight has gone up even more. To the powers that be at STW towers, please do not feel guilty putting prices up. If they do indeed make a greater contribution than I imagine, then they need to rise to save the company!

2. The £180 earned by members clicking through on a PSA was interesting and shows the power of good and correct interweb activity, tracking etc. Question is, can you let us in on anything else than perhaps members could do to generate STW funds in this way? Not sure if you are allowed to say or advise such things on an open forum but, it's an interesting topic and if we can help etc.

Just updated to paper/digital.......waits for new magazine paper smell. Don't really know why I went digital in the first place as my heart lies with simplicity, **** I still ride a fully rigid steel MTB with 2015 geometry, although there is a Murmur in the offing.
I will wait with some trepidation though to the updates to the site, be they good or gooder??

I subscribe digitally as I'm in the US but would be more thank happy to pay the paper price and just get digital copies. After all, I buy a digital album/movie/game and they are all the same price as the physical copy so why should a magazine be any different.

As sad as this is to read I suspect nearly every small independent concern is having the same thoughts.

There's no room in my budget for anything approaching discretionary spending, let alone retailer choice.

Energy and interest has taken all our 'discretionary' cash. All of it. The cost increases have removed shopping choice now.

Delving deeper, that means all our money goes to multinationals. Food is whoever is cheapest out of the big ones, energy to Octopus, interest to HSBC etc.

Pretty sure we're not alone, so how will all the Singletracks of the world survive?

All our cash is going up the chain and it's clear this is what the current Government are happy with.

Next few years are going to be weird.

Just a thought...For those who receive the mag but don't want it as part of membership, why don't you donate it to your local library?

As sad as this is to read I suspect nearly every small independent concern is having the same thoughts.

Of course, and not just the small independents. Walk down your high street, the silence from those who aren't there is deafening. Who'd have ever thought, say, Debenhams would go bang?

Energy and interest has taken all our ‘discretionary’ cash. All of it. The cost increases have removed shopping choice now.

We are, for now, OK. And by "OK" I mean, I'm into my overdraft by about the 12th of the month and YAY ME because it's not getting worse month on month. We can still afford the occasional escape room and we're going on an 'extravagant' family holiday to the Peak District shortly, so by any sensible measure it could be a lot worse. We're going down to one car soon which will save a wedge, but sending mine back is probably going to cost me approaching four figures because some country & western dragged their car down the side of it in a car park. Not quite sure yet where that's coming from, credit card probably.

But... we're OK compared to many. I have a friend who has to choose between food and being late on his rent payment at month end. I don't doubt that there's plenty more who are way worse off than that.

We're OK. It pisses me off that at the age of 50 we're merely "OK" rather than coining it in and if I survive to retirement age we're donald ducked, but the point of this ramble is that it's hard for everyone right now and only going to get worse. I genuinely feel for folk.

Still, blue passports.

Just a thought…For those who receive the mag but don’t want it as part of membership, why don’t you donate it to your local library?

On the rare occasions I visit an office, I stealthily stick my read ones on the coffee table.

Interesting post and some really relatable responses. From my POV, for years i rarely looked at the mag like a lot of people it seems. But then during lockdown I started spending a few hours the week the mag arrived sitting reading through the articles with a beer/tea (!) and thoroughly enjoy it. I don't know what prompted the chance (maybe the growing pile of untouched magazines in the TV room) but I'm a convert to old-skool physical magazone reading like I would have decades ago. I'm not Brit-based so most of the cycling route articles aren't necessarily relevant but I've found a renewed joy getting through the mag every time it drops.

Thank you all for your support. I can't say that enough really.

...and your thoughts on the problems we all face along with some great ideas.

There's enough ideas for me to start a 'how to support Singletrack' FAQ and I'll definitely have a go at that. But in quick answer to a few questions..

- The best way to support us is by becoming a full member. Digital or Print - At the moment it makes little difference which you opt for.

- If you are a full member then stay with us as long as you can. Retention is as important as Acquisition, if not more so.

- The ratio of reader revenue (membership, merch sales etc) to Ad revenue is about 40:60. Ad revenue is still really important to us but it is extremely volatile which makes it very hard to forecast and plan ahead. Membership revenue I can forecast a year ahead - That's what makes it really valuable to us from a business POV.

- It's ad clicks that drive the ad revenue. Very little of the revenue from ads is derived from an ad simply being displayed. It's mostly programmatic which means the system learns (not our system) and if an ad doesn't perform well the system will divert impressions to sites where it does better.

- I could say 'click the ads', but ultimately that doesn't work if there's no actual 'conversion' at the end of the road for that ad. So what I will say is click an ad if it's of interest or relevant to you. Don't click an ad for the sake of getting us a click - the system is too clever for that to be a long term solution. Not a great deal to takeaway practically from that other than an understanding of how it works. The point is you can't game the system when it comes to ads. They work when they, well.. work.

- The ones that are super mountain bike related are mostly likely put there directly by us. These ads are more important to us in terms of revenue because our relationship with the advertiser is direct. These are prioritised above the ads that are pumped in by 'the system'.

- Third party cookies are going to come to an end at some point (ETA 2024) and that will radically change the way advertising works. Instead of targeting you directly (Those ads that follow you around the web after you have been browsing air fryers on John Lewis) advertisers will only be able to target websites. This should be great for us and you as we are a mountain bike website so the ads will be relevant to that cohort. However, any system that targets websites rather than individuals will need to know as much info as possible about the users on that site. ie. Their interests, age range, income.. what subjects they are interested in within the site. etc. 'The system' can't get that information directly from you - that's a third party cookie thing - so we have to gather that info as the publisher and present it as a 'profile' that 'the system' cam then use to direct the right kind of ads to our site.

What this means is that we need to know a lot more about you so we can build a highly accurate user profile picture to present to 'the system'. Our plan is to start asking you lots of questions through surveys and to track what sort of content you like on the site - this will help us work out what content and features are actually popular as well as build a comprehensive picture of the user demographics. It's all first party data and can't be shared with anyone external to Singletrack at the individual level. It will be a massive step up in terms of personal privacy when it happens. So TLDR: If you see one of our surveys then filling it in will help prepare us for the changes ahead.

- Create PSA posts to bargains in the forum and INCLUDE A LINK. That is a direct help financially.

- Also check out the price comparison widgets we are adding to product stories. We get a commission on those too.

And finally.. We aren't asking for your help in order to just stay in business. We need your help so we can do that but also adapt and make things better for everyone. It's just hard to do the things that need to be done when tight finances keep getting tighter. Hence the appeal now while we have time to make changes and be able to ride out any storms heading our way.

If you have any questions on any of this then ask away. I'll try to keep up on this thread between todays jobs of video editing and taxonomy cleaning 🙂

Ah shit! I forgot one really useful way of supporting us. Share stuff. Retweet our posts, 'Like' things on our socials. Post comments and stuff. ie. Spread the word 🙂

Interesting to hear about the changes to cookies - didn't know that.

And glad the search facilities might be on the way to being improved. A lot of very valuable user provided information/entertainment is so hard to find currently.

Another thing that would help user engagement (and therefore exposure to ads they might click on) would be a better system to find the threads you have previously contributed to that have dropped off the front page. It used to be so easy before the changes made 3 or 4 years ago, then it wasn't. You can now do it again (click on user name drop down, profile, forum, replies created... and then as it adds a line for every post you have made you'll probably have to press load more replies a few times too) but it's too many clicks, too hidden away and still not as good as it used to be. Threads die now more easily if they are not getting frequent contribution; and dead threads are not getting people coming back to have a look. What remains at the top are the frequently contributed to threads which are heavily dominated by the bickering type. And I bet their general feel puts a lot of people off from coming back. You could almost have a subforum for those threads - ones that have legs and won't die that a certain sort of user will always come back to anyway. Once they have grown into monsters, put them somewhere obvious that people can still access and leave the rest of the forum more friendly.

Finally - it would be interesting to know how much control website owners have over the 'surface area' of ads you have on a webpage that 'the system' populates for you. STW is not too bad not logged in to my premium account (who am I kidding - it's bad!) but nothing like as bad as your average local newspaper website which is quite frankly unusable. Then people resort to naughty 'workarounds' that we are not allowed to mention. I can understand why you hate that, but I am sure as a user of the internet too you can appreciate why people do. There is a finite volume of adverts people and their devices can tolerate and I think a lot of sites don't get this right, overdo it and drive away business.

I like your podcasts too BTW - could more be made of that?

Oh. Please restore the "Favourites" function too. That makes finding some threads so much easier. Little (unplanned/untested) changes like that make the site much harder to use for no obvious benefit.

Am I the only one who still has every issue all 144 of the buggers !

Gross!

I see what you did there.

Incidentally,

The artwork / photography in the mag is rarely less than top notch, but I love this month's cover. I genuinely had a little bit of a gasp when I saw it. Kudos.

It’s ad clicks that drive the ad revenue.

Create PSA posts to bargains in the forum and INCLUDE A LINK. That is a direct help financially.

merch sales etc

You can't have multiple affiliate schemes on a single link. Our system will over-ride any affiliate links that you add so you wouldn't get the cashback yourself I'm afraid.

You can’t have multiple affiliate schemes on a single link. Our system will over-ride any affiliate links that you add so you wouldn’t get the cashback yourself I’m afraid.

I'd like to echo Mark's thanks as well. We're only a small team, and the magazine (and especially the forum) is as much yours as it is ours. We only steer its direction, in the way you end up steering that drunk mate home from the pub. We like to think we're pretty approachable - and I reckon it's rare to have a publisher and editor of a magazine on the end of a forum thread for all to comment on. It's always been that way, though, and we rely on our readers to tell us where we're going right and where we could improve.

With that in mind, please get in touch (either through the forum, email or the surveys we send out occasionally) to tell us what you like and don't like. While it seems that 80% of readers are seemingly always happy with the direction of the mag and website, there are always ones who would like to see some change. Confusingly, for everyone who wants more foreign trips there'll be the same numbers who want fewer. For every reader who wants more enduro, there'll be one who wants less enduro. More reviews/fewer reviews and so on. We appreciate that we can never keep everyone happy, but as long as the spread of content keeps you reading and entertained, we're doing our job.

While everyone seems to have less discretionary cash available, there are still a few places where it can make more of a difference (to you and to those you give it to). For example, rather than buying a new handlebar recently (as mine is 20mm too uncool) I bought some wider grips instead (Santa Cruz Palmdale - they're worth 8mm a side) and spent the rest on a 'Find your flow' skills day at Glentress. Something I probably use on every ride.

Thanks again for your support. We're here for you and we appreciate you all being there for us too.

I'd love a singletrackworld.com Xmas or some other do.... not that we need a particular thing...

Imagine a room full of awkward argumentative pissed up blokes.

Should sell tickets.

Get @binners to select the grub and @dazh the drinks menu....

One thing you might want to consider, and as a print / digital subscriber slightly irritates, is that within hours of getting my magazine you start to publish the same articles on the home page that can then be read for free. IMHO it kind of negates the point of paying for the subscription.

I think the mag is in a difficult place because the website isn’t updated fast enough to be a go to place for news as the competition is much quicker and carries more of those stories, probably because they dont produce a magazine, so less click advertising revenue. Equally if the articles in the magazine can be read for free on line then why subscribe?

TBH I'm on digital only and would probably be fine with a price increase, does print make ST more more money Vs printing costs?

I might buy myself some merch at some point too, I'm keen for more independent sources of cycling media to survive.

"One thing you might want to consider, and as a print / digital subscriber slightly irritates, is that within hours of getting my magazine you start to publish the same articles on the home page that can then be read for free. IMHO it kind of negates the point of paying for the subscription."

They are not free. They are paywalled. Only you full members can read them. Try logging out of your account and reading one.

@Mark

– Create PSA posts to bargains in the forum and INCLUDE A LINK. That is a direct help financially.

Is it worth you listing affiliates so we can PSA the deals that make you commission or is the affiliate list really too long?

The list is very long. Thousands of retailers. It’s a good bet the majority of outgoing links will work.

Thanks for the detailed info on what works and why you do stuff. It's this sort of interaction that makes this place special and it's appreciated. Hoping that stock in the shop improves soon so I can catch up on stuff I need

The artwork / photography in the mag is rarely less than top notch,

That's probably the biggest thing that's put me off making a submission to the magazine. I was a freelance feature writer years ago, but i'm not convinced my photos would be up to scratch!

Can't you just **** the reviews off, keep it to stuff that people use and ride. Double the magazine subscription, and keep it funny and entertaining ie 2 years ago and backwards. To be fair the last magazine was the first one i read cover to cover for a long while. They just seem to have become really boring of late, full of moaning and politics.

Last issue is great.

Small order placed and will gift a subscription to a family member.