It’s not easy being Singletrack. Please help.

^ that. at the risk of this coming across as a pile on the home page has at least three articles on it from 2021. added to which i take at most a passing interest in cx and snowsports. i come here for bikes and arguing. 🙂

if you hate the ads too how about trying the guardian model mentioned above for a month or two and see how that gets free members or visitors to convert to see if it pays off? if the ad revenue is falling off as you say it shouldn’t cost too much to run the test?

Video reviews and trail/ride vids is a good idea. Available to paying members on here first then released on you tube a month later or something. Just be more enthusiastic and informative than Yorkshire sarcasm, and have fun doing it.

Then up the prices and charge monthly:

£5 p/m paper, £60 annual. £3 p/m digital, £36 annual. £1.50/£2 forum only (no content) until it’s free on you tube a month later. #moremoniesbettercontent

Well those 3 pages were a difficult read, I came here for some light relief and now am wondering if it will still be here in 6 months.

The other thing that happened was I kept seeing bloody adverts all over my screen, turns out my membership didn’t auto renew due to the debit card being out of date. Fixed now, adverts are still here for a while until payment is cleared. How anyone uses the site with adverts I will never know.

@Solarider made a lot of interesting and informed points albeit quite hard to read when talking about something that has been part of my life for so long, must be quite hard to read as a parent of the baby. But something does have to change, even as an old skool print lover like me (I was actually a lithographic printer for 15yrs of my working life) I spend the majority of my time absorbing video content on Instagram or You Tube, and print is resigned to the bedroom. I hardly ever read the articles on here in digital form and vists to the site are either for the forum or for the classifieds. Something is not working on the digital content side to draw me in.

I wish you luck STW and hope like hell you are around for us in the years to come.

^ this, unfortunately

Hi @Mark. Quote from this morning’s email:

Well, to tell the truth the survey already existed – it was by chance the results also shed clear light on the number of our members who just visit for the forum and nothing else.

The results? It turns out that 4.3% of our members are not at all interested in the magazine content. So not such a demand after all. It’s not a surprising result to be honest.

Could you shed a bit of light on where the 4.3% number came from?
It sounded like you were going to do a survey but didn’t, as you think you had the data already. I’m intrigued, and a bit worried, what the data is that led you to this conclusion

Cheers

they obviously don’t care enough about the place to keep it going

Or ‘the place’ doesn’t provide them with sufficient value vs the alternatives? Don’t confuse not caring with choosing where to spend one’s money when money is tight and choice is wide.

I am not bashing STW before the subscribers get all offended. I am however questioning whether enough people think that the current paid content is worth paying for. That’s just a hard objective question, not a subjective view of the site content or a personal dig at the creators. The answer sadly would appear not.

Mark – your problem is not your loyal subscribers. They love what you do and some are even prepared to overpay for it. Your problem is your 130k non subscribers and how you convert them. Preaching to the converted, or the converted behaving like a lynchmob every time a mudblood (non subscriber) dares to point out what you might do to entice more subscribers won’t work. I am not sure if it amusing or sad, but it is certainly telling that the most likes in this whole thread are attached to Ped’s post questioning the validity of my comments and my desire for STW to thrive based purely on the basis of me being a mudblood.

If I didn’t care about this place I guess I wouldn’t have been so animated in the discussion.

I did think that, but Mark stated earlier:

A forum only membership is really not a solution.

Not sure if that is for technical or philosophical reasons.

I do get something from it and here is exactly point!

I (in common with many people it would appear) get a lot of enjoyment from the community and the forum. STW choose to offer that for free.

I do not find the magazine itself to be relevant and I have not felt suitably compelled by the paid content to warrant the subscription fee.

As I stated earlier, if you are good at something, don’t do it for free. STW have an upside down model. The bit that they are good at and attracts the most users, they offer for free. The niche bit that is at best only appealing to a minority of loyalists and costs a lot to produce they charge for.

Can the problem not be any clearer than that?

Take the classifieds as a prime example. I used to buy and sell regularly on the old classifieds. It was free and brilliant. That was partly why I subscribed. The new classifieds are clunky, poorly browsed and whilst you can sell for free, the traffic is now so low that it isn’t worth bothering. A decent classified section that was as well produced as the old one would be worth paying for. I would also be prepared to pay for the community and forums. But since nobody compels me to, I don’t.

Been sitting, watching and finally feel compelled to post.

A few things:

@solarider – completely agree with everything you’ve said. Especially regarding the member vs “freeloader” pile-on nonsense. It would do people well to remember us “freeloaders” were the ones helping fund the forum before the ad bubble burst.

@scotroutes – some forum content has made it to the front page but only usually when Hannah has someone to write a stern letter to. This isn’t a bad thing and I applaud her efforts – it’s certainly relevant and I’m sure those who have been involved are massively grateful. But as you say some other stuff is ripe for a long article, if the OP isn’t a writer then why not an interview?

That brings me to my next point, the forum is probably your biggest asset so stop treating it like a liability. Put it this way, if it fell on it’s arse tomorrow where would you be? [someone above] is right, you’ve been flinging sticking plasters over it for years just trying to make it “integrate” with the site. It doesn’t and never has and you know what? It doesn’t matter. At all. How much would an off the shelf Xenforo licence cost? I really don’t know why you (Mark) are so attached to it considering how often you tell us you would walk away from it tomorrow if it was a choice between it and the mag. Look how defensive/snarky you got with Cougar the other day just for pointing out that whatever you were trying has never worked before and never will. Is that amount of stress and belligerence really worth it? Because from where I’m sitting it isn’t, especially if it’s impacting your health. Stop digging your heels in, wipe the slate and get working software in that you don’t have to constantly tinker with, that’s why you pay licences to devs. A forum only membership was proposed, how many folk do you think would pay £2 a year to get rid of ads and have a smooth experience? Now how much profit is that to fling into everything else?

Finally, and I will pre-warn that this may sound like I’m sticking the boot in but hear me out:

The magazine is nothing but a vanity project at this stage.

The magazine comes before everything else.

130k users, a fair proportion of which will be active and likely more than the number of “actual” (as in, interested in the content and not just paying for upkeep) subscribers.

The magazine comes before everything else.

Print costs are going up, people need paid, you need subscribers/clicks/whatever this year.

The magazine comes before everything else.

The trouble is, everything else is supporting the magazine or could be if you let it.

It’s a vanity project, so what?

Celebrate it.

Cranked manages it but only publishes once a quarter.

DIG completely shut down print after 4130 fell apart but still publishes an annual yearbook.

You have a community and a dedicated following that neither of them do but people won’t pay for a product they’re not interested in, certainly not in the numbers you need. Now, if a sub let you upload pictures and perhaps gave you a limited number of premium ads per year that would be worth having. But with a front page of either recycled advertorials or frankly dubious (as in, I have no idea what the rest of the article is actually like but I’m not interested enough to progress beyond the free blurb) member only content I’m not convinced. So convince me.

You can make this work but carrying on the way you have certainly isn’t the way to do it.

And, again, that wasn’t supposed to feel like me putting the boot in. I’m genuinely trying to offer constructive criticism here.

Was that the recent one asking “how do you prefer to read the magazine”? I didn’t even see an option for “I don’t”.

I thought that. Hey if you already like and pay for the magazine what else would you like? Surely it would be much better to ask the 130k people who don’t pay and don’t read it what would make them do it.

My final post on this tonight is a Thankyou to all of you who have joined us or topped up your membership in the last 24 hours. There’s an overwhelming number of you and we really appreciate it.

For anyone looking on here the promise of

“the site’s a bit crap because you’re not a member but it’ll be better when you pay a subscription”

doesn’t really strike me as a business model that’ll attract new members.
……

Yeah. We hate the ads too.

How about turning the adds off every Friday afternoon for everyone. Then more people could see it working without and might be tempted to upgrade to membership.*

As whatsit above says ” having a shitty experience but promising users it’s better if they pay, may not be enticing”

* leaving aside that you’ve already d8scounted the option of having a ” pay 2 argue” membership level….🤔

first of all. The forum isn’t propping up the mag. The mag directly generates 65% of all or revenue and that’s been a steady part of the business for a long time. Also the magazine is not just print. The magazine is the entire content output. The forum generates a lot but it’s declining. Not traffic or how it is used but simply the ads pay less per impression and that trend will continue. It’s not us. It’s the web ad industry.

So ditch the ads and give the forum a selling point. As I said before, people would pay for premium features (I would) and it gives you another, more reliable and bigger income stream than ads.

Secondly I appreciate everyone chipping in but I’ll say this again although I’m aware I’m repeating myself but Singletrack never was, is or will be just a forum.

Nobody is proposing otherwise. But you have a huge asset that if you actually worked it could generate more revenue than your current model.

I’ve been subscribing for a long time, lapsed on the odd occasion but always came back. Met mates and my wife through here so it’s pretty dear to
me. Haven’t read the mag for a bit but holiday coming up so have downloaded a few issues.

The community is well worth supporting – just confirmed my subs renewal and added a bit on.

Thanks for keeping it going all these years and here’s to many more.

TS

I’m not a daily user or particular fan of Facebook Instagram or Twitter but is there a way of integrating/linking them into the website and forum?

Would maybe help capture more users and revenue?

I’ve been a full member/subscriber for years and would help for Singletrack to disappear but it does seem that most folk on here are around my age (45) or older. Maybe Singletrack needs to get in some young blood.

This all seems to be fairly consistent and actually fundamentally positive and supportive. There’s a lot of love for STW out there, even if some of it sounds like tough love. To summarise:

1) Go easy on the ‘life’s hard’ messaging. It’s not what people want or need to hear and whilst the disaster aid response might fix one hole in your leaking dam, it won’t fix the dam and it can be off putting to exactly the people that you are trying to convert to subscribe.

2) The magazine is key to the STW brand, so keep doing it but don’t expect a massive increase in subscribers. You have probably peaked in terms of the number of people who are interested in the current content and format. The key is to manage its production costs so that the revenue it generates is profitable. All you can really do is fine tune the costs through format and frequency and perhaps increase the cost of a subscription. Nobody is suggesting ditching the mag, and even if they were you are philosophically wedded to it being the essence of STW. Some would strongly disagree but it’s your business so you decide.

3) The forum is an untapped asset. It has a much bigger viewership and appeals to a broader range of casual users as well as card carrying loyalists. Whilst you might not like to admit it, and whilst it was never the intention, the forum is the community that you so strongly wish to build. It is your brand to most people and is a strong point of difference. Your mag cannot compete with other mags for circulation. Your website cannot compete with others for content. Your forum is unique and is the ultimate expression of UGC. Whilst ad revenue is falling, there is still a significant opportunity to leverage the forum through a low cost/high volume pay-to-use model. Sort out the functionality, fix the classifieds (which was traditionally a real point of difference but is now a huge source of frustration) and charge a small fee to a large pool of users.

4) Since you can no longer rely on advertising either online or thorough the magazine, subscriber numbers are absolutely key to your success. Balance your recruitment strategy with your retention strategy. Your recruitment strategy feels too rich, and your retention strategy feels non existent.

5) Don’t hide your chargeable content behind a hard paywall. Potential subscribers don’t actually know what they might be missing and you have an all or nothing approach to chargeable content which acts as a barrier to trial. Perhaps a 5 day free trial might be enough as a recruitment tactic and then convert them to a full price subscription after that.

A brief summary, but whether you agree with all of the content of this thread, and whether you feel bruised by some of it, there is plenty to reflect on. The free-form feedback and passion expressed are worth far more than any channelled survey that you might conduct and to most businesses this would be solid gold. Don’t be offended, don’t take it personally. Use it.

You have a business model where your loyalists are willing to pay more for the product, and even the occasional users whose conversion to paying customers is so fundamental to your success are telling you that they wouldn’t mind paying a small amount to use the online content and forum. That’s not a bad starting point!

Haven’t read the Mag in years but haven’t read any mag in years so can’t really comment on that.

To convert me into a paying member the content of the website needs an entire overhaul, as does the user experience of the website & forum.

No idea what happened to Will but the closest I’ve been to resubscribing is when he was there, seemed like he brought not necessarily fresh ideas but a fresh way of doing things.

FIX THE BLOODY EDITOR!!!

Please please contribute for more shit experience isn’t a winning formula.

Not sure if you mean the edit function or the actual editor themselves?!

I suspect that the number of folk who are going to install and use another browser just to access the STW forum is also vanishingly small