Managed to get some numbers to add to those age brackets. Still represents a sample size of about a third of all traffic.
So only 33% are below 35. It would also be interesting to see how many sub 35 year olds regularly comment on the forum? I'd guess its proportionally a lot less.
I also think its important to not view the mag/website in the same way as the forum. I think there is a bit of a divergence between the two. The stuff covered by the mag and the news articles seems to remain current - latest kit, actual riding etc vs the general "i dont ride bikes anymore / im on my old hardtail and its suitable for the bimbling i call mtb" attitude of the forum*
*huge broad brushstrokes applied to make a point x
Hope you're not seeing a slowdown in revenue that reflects the quieter feel we are talking about Mark.
I would have guessed 55-64 to be the 1st or 2nd biggest segment there, otherwise it's sort of as expected.
There's lots of ways of making pull quotes from that simple set of numbers. For example 56% of us are under the age of 45.
9.5% in the 18-24 bracket is good too. I mean, that's around 45k monthly visitors to the site. And @blackflag makes a salient point. Let's not conflate the sorts of people who post on forums with the sorts of people who regularly visit a mountain bike website. They are are not the same thing. Cougar raised the 90:9:1 rule earlier which is still very much a thing. 1% of visitors is all you can generally predict will START a conversation (post). only 9% of visitors will generally then reply to a post and 90% of visitors will generally never do either and just watch. Check the views vs posts numbers on the forum index pages as an example.
I think when I last looked into it a few years ago I came up with the stat of 4% representing the proprtion of our actual site visitors who have ever posted anything on the forum.
The internet continues to develop and change driven by our own needs and the pace of new tech. We don;t have th etraffic numbers we had say 2 years ago but the drop in traffic has come from the types of people who bounce in and out. So what we have seen is our engagement metrics (how long people hang around/visit. How many pages they look at each visit etc.) has gone up quite a lot. The interpretation that best fits that and all the other data I have is that the casual visitor who doesn't engage and bounces is coming by a lot less often. The people who engage and are contributing and signing up for things like our newsletter are either staying the same or growing. The source of our revenues is from the latter group. in short the high traffic numbers we had a few years ago was mostly due to casual visitors who weren't really interested in what we do. The bulk of that traffic was coming in and hitting th ebig threads on the chat forum for stuff that had nothing to do with our site subject matter. That kind of visitor doesn't click on ads as they are not interested in ads for bikes (I know there are other ads but the bike stuff hits them forst and since many never made it to page 2 that's all they ever saw). So that traffic as a revenue source was lousy. The loss of those big traffic numbers has not really had a financial impact in short.
The state of the bike industry and the economy in general causing so many of us to have to tighten belts is the major cause of financial stress. The number one reason (we do solicit reasons) for subs cancellations is cutting back on the outgoings to save money. A subscriptiuon to a bike mag is a sensible choice to cut if you need to save money. Streaming services have suffered the same way as have the majority of other magazines in other industries. The current tongue in cheek catchphrase among media publishers of all types right now is 'Flatlining is the new growth' - dark humour.
Anyway, back to Singletrack. The quietness in the forum of late hasn't surprised me as the weather has been bloody amazing. Our busiest time of year is always January when it's shite outside and there's no distractions like Christmas in the way. Weather does show itself in the stats. A rainy monday is the best conditions for our traffic 🙂 Conversely, traffic to editorial pages has seen a large spike in the last month, so as forum traffic may have calmed our overall site traffic has increased around 20% in the space of a month. Google has made some changes that brings what it considers higher quality editorial content from established medai to the fore in more google searches - especially in Google chrome.
My goal for the year is to grow our newsletter subscriptions and finish the year with trhe same or slightly more paying subscribers that we started with. With the bike industry starting to show signs of recovery in the latter part of the year that means we should be in a good position going into 2026 to grow and be financially more sustainable - even profitable. There is a plan to get there and a very big part of that will be revealed very soon.
I went on a bit there. Sorry 🙂
The forum is dying because it's a bike forum where people talk about expensive new bikes or tech rather than interesting stuff like actually riding bikes
FTFY]
They aren't mutually exclusive.
It bugs me slightly that the quote above makes it look like I said that bollocks when I absolutely didn't! The quote was Jamz and was then "wittily" 🙄 edited by as a "FTFY" by thegeneralist. Nowt to do with me!
Just spotted that... Soz. I used the quote function and thought I'd quote the whole thing but I guess it's yet another forum quirk.
I should've waited 45 seconds to see if it worked
No worries, not your fault 🙂 👍
I'm now in my 50s and it feels like UK MTB and the STW demographic are now in quite different places.
Next time you pass through some woods and see some young guns building jumps and berms on the steepest part of the hill, then sessioning them on a nukeproof ebike (without some boring old man calling them a cheat), ask them why they are not on here. Bet they've never heard of it.
Whereas I'd argue that the jumpy folk have been over represented in the UK MTB media for decades. From my own experience of riding, riding with others, seeing folk riding and selling bikes, that's a tiny fraction of the MTB activity going on and I don't think that's ever been the majority of folk on STW.
I would agree with Scotroutes on that - may be partly a regional thing?
Back on topic, been here a while, mostly as a lurker but occasionally post up. Think the forum is definitely quieter than years ago, although I think this thread proves there's still plenty of people here (even if you take out the few pages of grumbling about each other). I have seen this forum going above and beyond for other forum users, laughed along with various threads and would hate to lose this place. On the other side I avoid certain topics because I know it'll just be like watching monkeys throwing poo at each other at the zoo
I think Mark and the Mods are doing the best they can and fair play - I wouldn't like to do it.
If you get too worked up about this place - go out and ride your bike, its nice out there
So maybe you'd like to see more of this type of riding?
Try to forgive him for saying "air down" when he means "let some air out", the latter phrase does get used eventually 😀
Whereas I'd argue that the jumpy folk have been over represented in the UK MTB media for decades. From my own experience of riding, riding with others, seeing folk riding and selling bikes, that's a tiny fraction of the MTB activity going on and I don't think that's ever been the majority of folk on STW.
I'd say a good 50% or more of the riders I know are jumpers or looking for the steepest gnarliest tech they know - but there is a good mix of ages from 20's to 60's - some of the 50 plus age group make up the hardcore ones though. Personally at 53, I'm a) - not into breaking myself and b) - dont mind some steep tech, but prefer it as part of a ride. If I hear they are going sessioning, I'll go and ride somewhere else
Just a thought - maybe we all need to remember this a bit more. We do seem to have a lot of arguements coming from misunderstandings. I certainly shall
Hanlons razor "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"
Age demographic for the last month in ranking order.
So basically it's an inverse curve to likelihood of having a car accident.
Hey @mark - where's the under 18s bracket, do you have to be 18+ to create an account? Aside from maintaining a degree of decorum I thought that was one of the reasons for the swear filter.
Google doesn’t collect data from under 18s.
so they say.
Ahh, a good point well presented.
Google doesn’t collect data from under 18s
I read that and my immediate thought was...
so they say
🤣
Hanlons razor "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"
👍 Very true, should you ever fail to share my view on something I will remember that you are most likely not being malicious 😀
Ohhhhhh - saucer of cream for the buccaneer 🙂
Thought you were being a touch cheeky.....deliberately so you little stirrer 😀
It's a lot more toxic and less humourous than it used to be.
this basically.
Used to be here most days. Commented a bit. Then people started with the minutiae of their pet peeve, and if you disagreed, there'd be a pile on.
Can't be dealing with it. I was here to relax and enjoy. Not be lectured about the fact anything to right of Che Guevara is Trump incarnate.
So - off to reddit. Find a sub or two i enjoy. So now, when I want to find out about something, STW is not the first place i think of.
And, you know, life. Sun's out, less time on a PC. More work, less time doom scrolling a forum.
Not new news but a forum is like a pub.
Initially you pop in and like the feel of it. After a few quiet drinks on your own you get to recognise faces. You join in the conversations as you’re like minded people and it’s a good laugh. You enjoy being there.
Then it gets busier, more people come in. You no longer recognise all the faces, there’s less common interest. Too many people talking too loudly to properly follow the conversations. Far too many shouty people who like to use their pub persona to be a big character … often too aggressively. You find yourself no longer enjoying the experience.
It’s no longer the kind of pub you first came into and you notice many of the like minded people are no longer around.
Then you realise that the landlord is working so hard to keep the doors open that the pub has just become a mechanism to earn money to keep the lights on at the expense of the atmosphere that the pub had originally. The landlord steps away from conversations on the customer side, none of their business. After all, the more people who come for the shouting, the more pints and peanuts get bought … with advertising everywhere to earn more money.
You tolerate it until you set foot in another pub that more suits your style and leave the shouty people to it, maybe popping in occasionally for old times sake but it certainly isn’t your regular anymore.
It’d be interesting to know what the foot fall is on the chat forum compared to the bike forum. Is it STW really a place for ‘Singletrack’ riders any more or just a place for people who have or have had in the past some level of interest in biking?
I count six new bike forum threads in the last day but 10 new chat threads. Is the forum here to be its own standalone business stream or to support the magazine. Can a more general customer base achieve that?
Ah ****, we're the old bastards in the snug aren't we? Moaning about the people enjoying themselves too loudly in the main bar.
It’d be interesting to know what the foot fall is on the chat forum compared to the bike forum. Is it STW really a place for ‘Singletrack’ riders any more or just a place for people who have or have had in the past some level of interest in biking?
Back when I had visibility of such things, posts in the two forums was as close to 50:50 as made no odds. Chat tended to have fewer but longer threads than Bike. A quick eyeball scan of the first page of both just now shows that in Chat there are many threads into the thousands and some in the tens of thousands (the Ukraine thread is over 100k posts!); meanwhile over in Bike (aside from the stickies) few come close to that, most are in the hundreds.
As for viewing figures, I have no clue. That's a question for Mark.
(the Ukraine thread is over 100k posts!);
Whoops, mia culpa, that's Views. It's still a lot of posts though, 21k
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"
who you calling stupid?! 😡
It's a lot more toxic and less humourous than it used to be
Nothing is ever as good as 'it used to be', file also under 'modern life is rubbish'. I think some of this is people simply pining for their own lost youth / middle age / good times on a bike and projecting it onto the forum. I bet there were similar threads back in the 'golden age' of the forum too.
Remember when people were so disenchanted that they splintered off and formed their own alt forum, mostly so they could swear more freely I think. Wasn't that right in the heart of the forum's supposed prime time, if this thread is to be believed, of being amazing, non-toxic, darkly funny etc.
Memory is notoriously unreliable and the past is often rose tinted by default.
If the forum is 'dying', I suspect it has more to do with the bigger picture of forums competing with the massive reach of social media. In a way it's amazing that 'legacy forums' like this, mumsnet, pistonheasds, ukc, etc are still even there.
I'm not surprised, it's incredibly slow to login, to post, to view. I load up 5-8 interesting post at a time because I'd be dead loading up one by one.
It logs you out on the regular, it's clunky to use and so half the time I just give up.
I'm on a forum that's paid for by it's 30k users and it's so much better, just can't embed bsky posts yet.
I used to spend almost all day every day browsing the forum but since Christmas it's become pretty much unusable for me. Painfully slow to load pages so by the time a topic actually opens I've wondered off to do something else. As a result I haven't bothered renewing my sub as I've unfortunately finally got to the point where I think it's a complete waste of money.
I can’t help thinking that the people who are having problems have problems caused by whatever machine or operating system that they’re using. I’m not at all technically proficient and it’s been a seamless experience for quite a while now, I’m using iPad and iPhone with the latest IOS..
I'm on a forum that's paid for by it's 30k users and it's so much better, just can't embed bsky posts yet.
Posted by a free member.....
I can’t help thinking that the people who are having problems have problems caused by whatever machine or operating system that they’re using.
There has to be an element of that. It's not as snappy as it could be and the guys are working on it, but for me a page load is 2 seconds which I'd hardly describe as "painfully slow." I can't remember the last time I was logged out other than by choice, let alone "on the regular." My phone gets logged out sometimes but that's because I only use it for web browsing if I have to.
I've no idea what people's loadout looks like, but if you're running ad blockers or script killers or cookie cutters or whatever, things might break. That said, my primary browser is likely locked down tighter than most folks' and I have network level security in place, and everything still works.
What does it look like in Incognito mode? What does it look like when you're logged out?
I can’t help thinking that the people who are having problems have problems caused by whatever machine or operating system that they’re using. I’m not at all technically proficient and it’s been a seamless experience for quite a while now, I’m using iPad and iPhone with the latest IOS..
same here, plus a MacBook and I refer the honourable person to my first post on this thread.
Counted 10 seconds watching the wheel turn to post that ^
I can’t help thinking that the people who are having problems have problems caused by whatever machine or operating system that they’re using. I’m not at all technically proficient and it’s been a seamless experience for quite a while now, I’m using iPad and iPhone with the latest IOS..
2020 iMac 27"
Processor Name: 6-Core Intel Core i5
Processor Speed: 3.3 GHz
64gb ram
iPad Pro or iPhone XS with latest iOS software
this is the only forum I have an issue with
edit - 16 seconds to post above
Am old enough to remember when this place used to be primarily about an interest in bicycles. Then at some point it became an extension of all the other same nonsense on social media in general... and for some of us that means it not only becomes incredibly boring, but more recently grouped with things to make a conscious effort to avoid.
The updated website isn’t as good as the previous one in my opinion. And people seem to be getting ruder and you get trolled by know-alls regularly so you can’t be bothered posting so much.
thus has made a tipping point methinks.
The updated website isn’t as good as the previous one in my opinion.
Elaborating on why you think that beyond "isn't as good" might be helpful to the developers. Gods know there were plenty of complaints going back years with the previous incarnation.
I could list plenty of things wrong with the current implementation but I'm struggling to think of much which is worse than before. The 'like' button is a retrograde step perhaps, and the indices need work. Start / last read / end should be intuitive and I miss the page count. White-on-white text is irritating but that issue predates the migration. The post rate limit needs bringing back to prevent duplicate posts.
Meanwhile, being able to C&P photos directly into the editor is a killer feature, and the editor not shitting itself if you pasted text without laundering it through Notepad first was long overdue. The Search whilst not perfect is considerably better than it was. I haven't seen nginx 502 post-upgrade (though seemingly someone else has).
We're getting there I think. Given the choice, I wouldn't want to roll back.
For example it doesn’t seem easy to go straight to the last post of a thread. Eg the PSA thread.
I did try duckduckgo as a browser after being told so so many times that issues were due to me using chrome.
Mrs 100th deals with some pretty unsavoury scum and guess what duckduckgo is the browser of choice for almost every registered sex offender she has the misfortune to deal with.
So I'll be sticking with chrome, just visiting here less.
For example it doesn’t seem easy to go straight to the last post of a thread. Eg the PSA thread.
Click the >> after the thread title.
