Adverts on this site?

Cancel one of the other ones, subscribe here and you’re sorted. Really, do you need hand-holding on this?

Oh – I never read the mag either. There might be the very occasional feature but other than that it passes me by. Can’t fault vfm for the £9.99 though. Where else do you find this level of entertainment for so little money?

All our issues are in kindle format and available to download from the Mag archive. Have been for many years now.

All our issues are in kindle format and available to download from the Mag archive. Have been for many years now.

Yes but back issues just display as pages like they were in the magazine which made them unreadable on the small screen.

New issues were fine as they were in a text format (.mobi) so the kindle displayed them like any other e-book, it was back issues which didn’t work so well.

No, they are in kindle ebook format. Both for kindle and any other device that can deal with ePub files. The button in the Magarchive is the one marked, ‘Kindle’. Click on that and it will download a .mobi file, which is the Kindle ebook reader format. Better still, navigate to that button on your Kindle device and it will automatically open and save itself to your device and be listed along with all your other ebooks.

EDIT:
Ah.. Just re-read what you actually said.
We are working backwards through the archive to convert all issues to ebook format. Currently it’s only the last few years that are true ebook formats.

Blimey that big ad slap bang in the middle of the page! (robdob’s post).
I’m switching ads back on just to see how annoying they are…

WOAH! It’s like a completely different site 😆

I would definitely subscribe to get rid of that lot!

If you don’t have a subscription it has started to look a bit like the Lings Car[/url] website now.

Although ling’s is actually a brilliant site for doing what she wants it to which is sell cars.

Mark might also argue that the stw site is great at doing what he wants based on revenue and visitor numbers?

I don’t mind ’em tbh

If you don’t have a subscription it has started to look a bit like the Lings Car website now

Wow, not seen that one before. Yeah, very similar!

I don’t have a problems with ads per se, but that big ad at the bottom and the awful mobile experience, is making me think I’d be better off going elsewhere.

With a bit of vision I’m sure the Singletrack website could be a great money spinner, but increasing the ads more and more, and making it less usable on mobile devices really isn’t going to help draw in new people IMO.

P.S. There are so many ads I hadn’t even noticed Singletracks own one, until today.

I understand that STW have to make money.

What I dont understand is how STW managed to do it back in the good old days before the forum became one big add, they must have got their revenue else where… or they are all millionaires now, none of which is our business as forum users 😆

I think a very valid point was made before though, that this forum now looks cheap, and dodgy due to the sheer number of adds all over the place.

If I were a newbie I certainly wouldnt stay.

I also now use the site less because it is awful on mobile. 🙁

Sorry to keep banging on but the fact is if we made it super mobile friendly ‘RIGHT NOW’ it would be a financial disaster, because mobile ads are worth a lot less. Plus, the site has increased traffic by 23% year on year. Why would I want to encourage you to switch to viewing the site on mobile when doing that will cost us a lot of money?
The problem is that everyone wants to access everything on mobile but the commercial world isn’t yet ready for that. It may be a great thing for the consumer but for the publisher it’s a bad thing… at the moment…. It’s changing… In the right direction…. But right now is not the time for us to do what we have done with grit.cx and make this site device dynamic. Christmas is on the way and I’d rather like to be able to buy my kids something nice. If we do what you ask that won’t happen. So I’m not doing it yet.

In 6 months? The way the lines are converging on this graph, that could very well be the right time. That’s looking like when mobile revenues ‘may’ be at a level to make that a sustainable option.

We want it too.

I lost my P a month ago, the ads however are ridiculous without it. The current offer of £9.99 is a bargain so I can’t wait to get my P back when my dd has been processed.
The amount of money people were spunking on things they didn’t need in the black Friday thread was crazy, a tenner (or actually less than) for no ads, all the back issues and to support the site has to be worth it no?

I don’t mind ’em tbh

at the moment no- I click through on CRC etc when I want to buy something which I know helps with future re-buy of advertising/spend.

If it got like bikeradar though- where theres a huge ad that scrowls down the whole screen infront of you- I’d go elsewhere. The BR one put me right off their site (well that and their bizarre product review opinions).

What I dont understand is how STW managed to do it back in the good old days

I’m speculating, but I expect that a quieter forum would have considerably lower bandwidth costs for a start.

Sorry to keep banging on but the fact is if we made it super mobile friendly ‘RIGHT NOW’ it would be a financial disaster, because mobile ads are worth a lot less.

Just a thought Mark but how about a mobile-friendly version for members only, since they don’t see the ads anyway?

That’d be another good incentive for folk to get a sub.

Grit.cx looks nearly as bad as this one, albeit harder to read with adverts in the middle of the forum.

GrahamS’ idea is probably a good one for the mobile site.

I have a sub so tried logging out to see what the site is like with adverts. It’s actually not as bad as I remember it, but I suspect that since the adverts are targeted my experience will be very different from someone else’s. It’d be interesting to see what sites you need to visit and what search terms you need to use on Google to trigger the more irritating adverts

It’s based on your posting history, so presumably if you spend a lot of time talking about annoying adverts then that’s what the search algorithm thinks you’re interested in.

(-:

<is tempted to write a reply containing lots of “interesting” words then thinks better of it>

😆

STW need to make money – tick
I click on the adds on the side every now and again – tick

I would just prefer the adds to be mtb based instead of some vitamins and other stuff stuff I’ve just bought

Not sure about you guys but I actually quite like the ads in magazines. I wish the mags were thicker with more!

I wish the mags were thicker with more!

Based on my experience in the trade, so do the magazines.

Daft question but why not switch off ads for mobile browsers if they make no money? Then you’d have a lot more happy punters who may come to the desktop version and .. kerching.

I’m speculating, but I expect that a quieter forum would have considerably lower bandwidth costs for a start.

That and they 3 staff working for virtually nothing, paper was king and I believe the mag had more ads.

Daft question but why not switch off ads for mobile browsers if they make no money? Then you’d have a lot more happy punters who may come to the desktop version and .. kerching.

Or they’d have more people use the mobile service and then they would be skint.

Sorry to keep banging on but the fact is if we made it super mobile friendly ‘RIGHT NOW’ it would be a financial disaster, because mobile ads are worth a lot less. Plus, the site has increased traffic by 23% year on year. Why would I want to encourage you to switch to viewing the site on mobile when doing that will cost us a lot of money?
The problem is that everyone wants to access everything on mobile but the commercial world isn’t yet ready for that. It may be a great thing for the consumer but for the publisher it’s a bad thing… at the moment…. It’s changing… In the right direction…. But right now is not the time for us to do what we have done with grit.cx and make this site device dynamic. Christmas is on the way and I’d rather like to be able to buy my kids something nice. If we do what you ask that won’t happen. So I’m not doing it yet.

In 6 months? The way the lines are converging on this graph, that could very well be the right time. That’s looking like when mobile revenues ‘may’ be at a level to make that a sustainable option.
The Grit.cx experience is much nicer, I’d never used it before. Fair point on not wanting to push the balance towards mobile by improving the experience too much, sucks from a user experience but logical from publisher and advertiser perspective, I’ve enough experience of all 3 sides to see it as a pragmatic solution….for now.
The industry (digital advertising in general, not bike publishing) will need to get their act together on mobile advertising sooner rather than later as it’s a pain from an advertiser side too, if it isn’t in the next 12 months we see that then I’ll be very surprised.

Daft question but why not switch off ads for mobile browsers if they make no money? Then you’d have a lot more happy punters who may come to the desktop version and .. kerching.

The better the mobile experience, the more people that use it, the less people that use the desktop. Not kerching.

Not convinced. Are you telling me you will be sat at your PCs and pick up the phone to avoid the ads?

It’s probably a greater comment on society really. Content is free, once it’s out there it’s out there etc. Piracy is easy. Most people probably don’t remember the days when you paid for x hrs of internet a month or when there was no internet and if you were cheeky you tried to read as much of a magazine in WH Smiths before they kicked you out.

In life I have choices about stuff, I use STW a lot and still enjoy reading the mag, I was on a transfer where somebody asked what that strange new bike mag was (in Oz) and I had to explain that it was better to import y biking mags these days. Because of that I am happy to fund the site, the costs stack up. I was looking at setting up some Amazon Web boxes for a work project and you know you actually have to pay for the resources it’s not free.
I spend a lot of time travelling and I pay for lounge access – it’s like an ad free internet. For me it’s worth the cost to retain the benefits.

Huge amounts of the internet is covered by pop up ads, in your face adverts, find a popular you tube – 15s advert in front of it, some bike sites even have the 15s overlay ads that you can’t click round so I imagine STW has a long way to before it’s truly that annoying.

Not convinced. Are you telling me you will be sat at your PCs and pick up the phone to avoid the ads?

Tablets use a similar setup to mobiles so my guess is they’re taking them into account when talking about mobile usage.

But tablets don’t need a mobile-specific site because they work just fine with the desktop site in my experience.

(Apart from the GIFs thread obviously – which makes tablets cry. But that’s not the fault of STW Towers)

Besides,

As a user (and I’m one too) it’s easy to be blasé in a “wah wah adverts” kind of way. But if getting this issue right or wrong makes the difference between a small band of froody people keeping their jobs (and, y’know, this site continuing), or them just pulling the plug on the entire bloody lot, it’s perhaps understandable when changes involve a degree of inertia.

Whilst, with respect, Mark’s bedside manner will never win awards, ultimately he knows better than anyone whether a decision is shit or bust for the site. So this month he addresses the complaints by shutting down all the ads, three months later there’s no cash left to pay for hosting, then what? Some cleverbollocks volunteers to host it on their home ADSL?

Some cleverbollocks volunteers to host it on their home ADSL?

What again?

(But that’s not the fault of STW Towers)

Weeeeeell, if they allowed gfycat, then that would help.

http://gfycat.com/about

Plus, y’know, for all it’s “just” a forum, we have a unique community here (mono aside). I can’t think of anything similar. It’s a third of the price of Xbox Gold, another service where the alternative is free but crap.

Not convinced. Are you telling me you will be sat at your PCs and pick up the phone to avoid the ads?

No, it’s not that the two are necessarily directly competing for use at the same time, more that increasing usability on a mobile device means people might check it when they only have the mobile to hand, so have no need to check it again when they get in front of a proper computer. For example you might check the forum more on the phone/tablet on the morning commute, rather than wait to get into the office to use the laptop.
Or you might be more likely to use the phone on the sofa at home during the ad breaks in X Factor, rather than waiting till it finishes to turn on the laptop.

So this month he addresses the complaints by shutting down all the ads

Said no one. Typical STW Towers response that, shout back at everyone about something that was never said 🙄

I like most of the ads- I preferred the ones with birds in tshirts on but they’ve now gone 🙁

girls naked girls nerdy girls products (never know google might insert something into my STW/ ad browser) 8)

girls naked girls nerdy girls products (never know google might insert something into my STW/ ad browser)

Scarlett Johansson
Kate Upton
Scarlett Johansson
Kate Upton
Scarlett Johansson
Kate Upton
Scarlett Johansson
Kate Upton
Scarlett Johansson
Kate Upton

That’s my afternoon sorted!

Typical STW Towers response that, shout back at everyone about something that was never said

Who at STW Towers said that?