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The argument isn’t just about £20 per year
oh I think it is very much so with cdoc
given all that is going on right now in the world he seems to be having a go because he's bored/fed up
STW isn’t doing anything nefarious beyond the typical social media plugins that are in use by huge tracts of the web.
A thing I learned early in my life was that it's not necessarily right even if all the others are doing it. Even as a subscriber I'm using Brave here with associated privacy controls as I prefer my data to remain my data. What I do is my business only, what others do is theirs.
I’m happy for you that you’ve found somewhere better, go there then.
Which is all well and good but whether you like them or not, consumers of STW content pay the bills, so they should be occasionally cuddled a bit, rather than given the finger.
Because there really is nothing like being told to "cock off, because your opinion is worthless" to turn off current and potential customers.
Because we are all STW customers, and a business should always at least appear to value their customers.
Even if there is much eye-rolling behind the scenes
so they should be occasionally cuddled a bit,
They do value our privacy.
A thing I learned early in my life was that it’s not necessarily right even if all the others are doing it. Even as a subscriber I’m using Brave here with associated privacy controls as I prefer my data to remain my data. What I do is my business only, what others do is theirs.
There’s an option in account settings under privacy for members to opt out.
I think everyone seems to be missing the big thing.
There is no forum/website/magazine divide. It is all STW.
Take one of those items away an possible the whole milking stool could topple.
I'm new to MTB - I was given loan of a MK1 Stumpy when they came out, rode it for a summer, gave it back and didn't ride a bike again until 8 years ago. All the starting on a rigid and then a hardtail and then a full suss passed me by.
I have no history in the sport and have never ridden a bike in the Lakes/Peaks/Snowdonia/Tweed Valley. I hate hardtails and loathe skinwalls.
So I have to say the magazine often holds no interest for me. I don't like it really since the product reviews vanished, even if I totally understand the reason why.
I've just renewed my print subscription though.
Why? Because if we don't do things like that we won't have a forum or whatever part of Singletrack you do like.
I worked in specialist sports mags in the golden era of the 80s/90s pre-internet when it was almost a license to print money with pretty unlimited budgets on the industries.
Those days are gone and I'd really hate to be trying to juggle things like Mark is.
Tell you what, lets approach it from a different direction. You don't want to pay or choose where your payment goes, so you decide who Mark has to fire to get the costs down.
Off you go...
I know I'm dim but I'm not following this argument at all.
I've been using the forum for 15+ years. I'm pretty lax with my online security, but my bank accounts have not been hacked, my home address has not been burnt down, my kids have not been trafficked....
I'm not seeing any need for the levels of paranoia over ads or site security.
@Cougar I have just taken out a "Forum only Subscription" based on your comments. I am looking forward to seeing the free digital subscription that it is bundled with 🙂
PS - I read the thread started by Mark and have been meaning to do it for about a week anyway....
There’s an option in account settings under privacy for members to opt out.
Easier for me to cruise around shields up as that's just another way of stating everyone else does it plus there's no guarantee that no-track requests will be honoured by the third party ad system in use.
Nice Bent.
Ok is you say so Sandwich it was about providing information to others.
I think most associate the stw site with the forum and thats not a good thing. The main site is actually quite decent now ive looked, but pinkbike is still my goto for news. The forums is a bit of a joke. Isnt trump awful, arent tories scum, brexiteers are RACISTS, isnt jeremy corbin ace, road bikes are the greatest. Its pretty tedious for whats supposed to be a mtb forum, but if thats the (limited) market the owners want to pursue, then thats down to them.
isnt jeremy corbin ace
Dunno where you got that from... :-0
davey - if you read the forum information, you will see that the chat forum is intended for ....chat.
Who said it was supposed to be an MTB forum?
If you have anything worth saying, start a thread.
Suggest you look at the bike forum if your specific focus is bikes - MTB, road, brompton, gravel, e, unicycle, trike, recumbent.
Your post brings to mind the mantra an old boss of mine used regularly; the 4 Fs....First Find the ****ing Facts.
The forums is a bit of a joke. Isnt trump awful, arent tories scum, brexiteers are RACISTS, isnt jeremy corbin ace
Well apart the Corbyn part it’s pretty accurate. Try the MTB Forum for bike chat.
The argument isn’t just about £20 per year
oh I think it is very much so with cdoc
No, it really isn't.
I have already donated more than the cost of an annual subscription.
My issue (apart from being bored, as you said) is that is is impossible to support the site without being forced to support the magazine. People say they see them as one entity, but that is not really the case for me as the magazine is far more reliant on the forum than the forum is on the mag.
As said by Mark, STW is almost the biggest and best cycling website in the interwebs.
This is good.
.. but it runs like crap for many, has somewhat well documented ad serving issues, and is a bit of a bug fest with things appearing, disappearing, popping up, popping under and generally making everything run a bit slow. I simply cannot use this site on mobile.
This is bad for many.
Lets be honest, the future of publishing is online. Paper distribution is becoming a thing of the past.
In ten years there may not be a magazine at all, but there certainly could be an amazing website that blows the competition out of the water. But not of we keep throwing money at a magazine that many online are simply unaware of the existence of.
Ok, I get the argument that subs for a better forum would be bad for stw, as they would lose a number of digital mag subs to downgrades to forum only, but I'm not sure that people would do that unless they really had no interest in the magazine.
I also know that everyone says 'without the mag, there is no forum' I have no idea why this should be the case.
I really think it might be the other way around.
My issue (apart from being bored, as you said) is that is is impossible to support the site without being forced to support the magazine
Fancy some goodies
I also know that everyone says ‘without the mag, there is no forum’ I have no idea why this should be the case.
I really think it might be the other way around.
Its both ways round. Mark has made it clear he wants to run a digital publishing house. The forum supports this. No forum to attract advertisers equals STW goes bust. But if the magazine collapses then there is no need to run the forum
Personally I do not like the forum supporting the magazine because like many of us I have no interest in the magazine. But its not my choice or job. This is what you have to remember - STW is not a democracy or anything else other than a part of STWs publishing business.
I do think tho that there surely must be some way to monetise the forum better -there is a huge amount of knowledge on these pages and also stop the most intrusive ads that force people to use adblockers
cdoc, your argument appears to be that the subscription cost is actually on the cheap side, but you refuse to subscribe because you cannot guarantee that the revenue gained wouldn't be spent exclusively on the features of the site that you, personally, use. Is that right? If so I don't know what else I can add that I've already said.
Which is all well and good but whether you like them or not, consumers of STW content pay the bills, so they should be occasionally cuddled a bit, rather than given the finger.
Possibly. But it's just such a lazy argument, "[place] is soooooo much better" - so why are you here arguing on this allegedly inferior place then?
I think most associate the stw site with the forum and thats not a good thing.
Most regular forum contributors associate STW with the forum, that's simply self-fulfilling. You have no way of gauging what most site visitors think or whether the 'big hitters' are representative of the readership as a whole.
If the site attracts 1.5 million unique visitors per month and "most" associated the forum with the site, even if only 1% of those were regular contributors (a likely figure, google the 90-9-1 rule) then we'd see discussions taking place between ten thousand different usernames.
I also know that everyone says ‘without the mag, there is no forum’ I have no idea why this should be the case.
You could read back to the post where I explained this to you last time you asked, that might help with your understanding. You're going round in circles now.
I really think it might be the other way around.
The site owners have access to a full analytics suite which tells them exactly what is and isn't popular and / or lucrative, you do not. This helps drives business decisions. What you 'think' doesn't matter, if STW had followed the well-meaning but ultimately ignorant advice from every armchair expert that's drifted through over the years they'd have gone bust ages ago.
Feedback is always welcomed and we're acting on this feedback currently to report and swat bugs so it's a good time to be doing so. But you do not and cannot know more about what's best for the business / site than Mark and Chipps do.
Since I mentioned it earlier, further reading:
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/participation-inequality/
Thanks Drac, looks interesting!
Couger, That makes sense, re outside perspective of the entity that is STW vs forum use, article clicks and mag downloads.
However, You seem to be misreading me, but then, the nuance of conversation does not come across well over the internet!
I am not sure I said that place x was better, just that it did some things differently that make a better user experience.
In fact, overall, I think I was pretty clear that I prefer this place and want to support it's future.
Text communication can be difficult. I get that a lot.
An advert and script heavy version of it is free, but an actually usable version would certainly be worth paying for.
I’ve always found STW to be the most usable forum I’ve ever used, not that I’ve used that many, but all the others have been much more difficult to navigate, and so I’ve only ever used them for a specific reason, and not bothered otherwise.
It’s also much more of a community, or feels like one, and I like that very much.
As far as a sub is concerned, I’ve never bothered, because initially I bought the mag, and a bunch of others, which cost a fortune, so I had to cut down, but I stopped riding altogether some years ago through a knee injury, and subsequently had no further interest in bikes, or riding. I never bother with the cycling side of the forum, only the chat, but if it helps I’ll subscribe, and look at the pretty new bikes, even if I never ride.
FWIW, using Brave/DuckDuckGo/VPN I just don’t get the issues others have.
I have already donated more than the cost of an annual subscription.
Did you hypothecate this donation to the forum only? If you're genuinly trying to help then stump up for the digital only subscription: Subscribing is probably better than donating for many reasons but one would be that you'd get a 'P' by your name and readers of this thread would know that you are genuinely supportive. I'm sure there are many people like you and me who don't read the magazine and subscribe (or donate) solely to support the forum. Where you and I differ is that I'm happy for STW to spend the money on the mag since I've no idea what makes this forum work so well and it might well be the attached magazine.
Three pages! Just subscribe and lose the ads. I’m far from rolling in money yet genuinely don’t really notice £2(?) a month on a direct debit. If I was that skint my internet/data connection would be gone before I even remembered to cancel my STW membership. Means I get an ad free experience and contribute in some small way towards keeping the forum (and other bits) alive. What’s not to like?
Out of interest what percentage of site traffic is Forum specific? I’m guessing a large percentage isn’t and a lot of Forum regulars don’t grasp this.
Means I get an ad free experience and contribute in some small way towards keeping the forum (and other bits) alive. What’s not to like?
There's a 722 post thread above this one that might give you some clues.
Yeah, but the bugs are a part of the charm (like an Elder Scrolls game) and it’s never going to improve if there isn’t any spare cash to deal with the issues.
Did you hypothecate this donation to the forum only?
Not at all. I'm not paying for anything, just bunging a bit in the tips jar for general support. Tbh, I am happy just for it to cover a couple of coffees.
I suppose that I felt that there are two components to stw, but with ever decreasing demand for one, that looks like it is a finite thing.
The future is very uncertain and it seemed a bit silly to me to focus on one component of the system, when there is a strong possibility that it is the failing one. In whatever passes for early morning logic, I felt that a way for users to indicate their individual preference for components was by differentiating them at the point of sale.
If you want to shove it all in one pot after, then I suppose that is fine, but at least you would know what the customer base actually wants.
This was never me saying that this place is crap and x place is better. That did not happen, despite any insinuation that it had.
It was more about the forum seeming to be an afterthought for stw, rather than setting it's foundations properly in order to better realise its future potential.
However, I fully appreciate that presently both components re-enforce each other in ways that may not be so obvious to us users.
It’s £30, £2.50/month. I’m now a subscriber.
It's £20 annually if you pay for the year in one drop rather than monthly, I believe. And, thank you (and everyone else who's subbed).
I suppose that I felt that there are two components to stw, but with ever decreasing demand for one, that looks like it is a finite thing.
You're still labouring under the misapprehension that "the magazine" is solely the printed mag which I've told you at least twice now isn't the case. Why do you persist with this, are you genuinely just not reading replies?
You're quite right that print media is dying and has been so for years. Newspaper sales were plummeting before the virus hit, I'd be surprised if a few big names didn't go bang before it's all over. This is why STW is pushing more and more content digitally, "the magazine" is available as a .pdf as well as all the free articles, editorials and reviews elsewhere on the site.
It might seem "a bit silly" to you, but again I've already explained this and I'll take the opinion of someone who actually knows the answer over someone making spurious guesses on the Internet any day. The printed version of the magazine must be a viable source of revenue or it wouldn't exist; or if you like, the fact that it exists proves that it's viable. Today, anyway.
You have to understand - actually, you don't have to understand anything, you just need to accept it - that despite the STW website / forum looking simple, it's very complicated under the hood. It's like an iceberg, nine tenths of it is paddling furiously, or something.
The forum has the added baggage that the devs have been trying to rid themselves of years of legacy code. This has been one driving force behind the larger upgrades it's seen - the recent upgrade was to get rid of an unsupported off-the-peg theme and replace it with a home-grown one which is fit for purpose. People can make flippant comments about "five minute fixes" like our esteemed Mr Barnes did earlier, but five minute fixes is why it was such a shit-tip of crufty hacks and time-bomb code in the first place.
Let me give you an example. There was a reported bug where text wasn't being rendered correctly on the Donate page. Several people offered helpful suggestions about simple CSS changes, there may even have been some in a typical "how hard can it be?" stylee. The actual fix in the bug tracker is listed as thus: "There was a plugin conflict between [two plugins] that caused the form / editor to crash and disappear. As a result I have deactivated [one of them]." What appeared to be a simple CSS change from the outside looking in turned out to be something else entirely.
TL;DR - the answer to "why can't you just...?" is "it's almost certainly not as simple as you think," and the answer to "I don't understand..." is "correct."
How do I know all this? Because I too once thought the same things and sat here making what I thought were helpful suggestions; then I took up Mark on his invitation to visit them and see how it works, and I realised I had in fact just been self-important and ignorant.
Its pretty tedious for whats supposed to be a mtb forum, but if thats the (limited) market the owners want to pursue,
It isn't though, it's the direction the users have headed through a natural process of cussedness and contrariness
so why are you here arguing on this allegedly inferior place then?
Because sometimes you want a place to make you feel more welcome so you will spend more time there. Contructive feedback if you will.
If a customer says "I think you are no good" why would you not look at their view and see if it was valid and would be a positive direction of travel, rather than "sling yer hook, we don't want your kind here"?
it’s the direction the users have headed through a natural process of cussedness and contrariness
No it isn't.
(-:
Contructive feedback if you will.
Constructive criticism is great and always welcome. Going "it's all shit" is not constructive criticism and drawing comparisons with other sites is usually like comparing apples with walruses.
I didn't mean to imply that that's what cdoc was doing. For that, I sincerely apologise.
we will pass 1.8 million visitors/month
This is a nice number. The login system means it's probably wrong, but not enough to matter. If you're trying to build a subscription business it's just the top of the funnel. More useful is the number of people who are coming back again and again, the people who stumbled across STW because they Googled 12 speed Hope hub adapters aren't going to subscribe.
To encourage people to subscribe you need to give them pointers to content that they want, and that they can't get elsewhere (or at least not to the same quality elsewhere). Things like linking forum questions to answers in the magazine. For that you need a good index to the magazine. And a working search.
Print advertising is not the licence to print money that it used to be, but it should still be profitable (not at the moment though).
It looks highly likely that regulators across the world will gut RTB programmatic ads in their current form, and the personal data market that goes with it. Even the ICO has described it as clearly illegal. Eventually Facebook will run out of delaying tactics in the courts. Programmatic itself, with consent, looks to stay. Another reason to push for logged in users.
You can play with product mix and it will help a bit but compelling content is key to getting subscribers and reducing churn. Pricing, assuming you're not way out, is profit optimisation.
The printed version of the magazine must be a viable source of revenue or it wouldn’t exist; or if you like, the fact that it exists proves that it’s viable. Today, anyway.
Mark has certainly said in the past that the forum is the only profitable bit
If that is true, it's news to me.