It’s not easy being Singletrack. Please help.

Tough Times. These are not easy times for almost everyone right now, and we know this at Singletrack as individuals and as a business. Let me exp …

By charliedontsurf

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It’s not easy being Singletrack. Please help.

A bit added to me yearly digital sub as I spend most of my working day on here and I’ve been with STW from issue 1!

Is the business model working though? These requests seem to be more frequent and there is a lack of the normal response to this particular request.

Is it time to shed a couple of staff to get through? I know there was a comment a week or two ago about having great staff but it’s got to be better to have a less staff in a job than all staff be out of work for the sake of being nice. Nice is great, but sometimes not affordable.

Done. When do I get my blue tick?

I sympathise.
I closed three free newspapers over the last few weeks due to a lack of advertising revenue.
Now I realise I should have just asked the readers to give us money.

Now we know how many paying subscribers.
How many free members are there?

Done

Now I realise I should have just asked the readers to give us money.

It’s worked very well for The Guardian, they raised £76.1m from donations last year..

https://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-office/2022/jul/20/guardian-media-group-plc-gmg-publishes-202122-statutory-financial-results

It’s not easy being anything these days! The only way to survive is to adapt, not just charge more for the same thing.

Apologies if any of the following sounds harsh, but if anybody external and independent with commercial acumen looked at this, they would probably say the same thing.

We all love this site and the support that it provides through good times and bad times, but these requests are becoming more frequent and the place has more of a whiff of a charity than a business.

There are loads of good web only bike sites that don’t have the added burden or producing a mag. As emotional as it is, surely the time has come to review the business model and whether it can actually support as many employees as it does? Let’s exclude the emotion and focus on STW as a business as well as a bike hub. The writing is on the wall for printed media guys – evolve or die.

Saddens me, but that’s the harsh reality of running a business. I have worked in a number of business facing a similar existential challenge and the questions is ultimately ‘would enough people to keep you running miss you if you weren’t there tomorrow to keep you alive’? If not, change the model so that enough people do care to keep you running. The web is full of the same stories – declining sales in the bikes industry, cost of living, death of printed media. You can only swim against the tide for so long.

IMO this sort of transparency is useful. We’ve seen enough LBSs and other shops just disappear with no warning – had you known they were struggling could you/would you have gone there to buy your gloves/socks/shiny thing rather than getting it online?

I’ve just tried to up mine but it looks like in addition to the increase it want to charge me a sign up fee. is that correct

It would be good to know the percentage of Full/Digital/free members

A lot of people think that print is our problem. It really isn’t. Advertising is the problem. Programmatic in particular, which has no connection with print at all. We’ve seen a 65% drop in programatic revenue in the last 12 months. This is not an issue restricted to just us. It’s much wider than that. The solution is as Charlie stated above – to shift from chasing the big traffic numbers and ad revenues and focus on the members. Many of these issues have resulted from large tech platforms changing their policies and strategies that have radically changed the media landscape and the ability of any media to generate revenue from traditional sources of digital advertising. The part print plays in all of that is minor and in fact our print revenues are pretty stable (That’s revenues from traditional print advertising and print memberships).

To be fair none of this is a surprise. It’s been coming for several years and we’ve been working towards adapting to the new media landscape without reliance on the big tech platforms (Facebook pulled all its publisher specific tools and revenue streams with a few weeks notice late last year). The thing that’s brought on a greater sense of urgency about our path is all of that coupled with the cost of living crisis and how that is affecting not just us joe public and how much we have to spend but also the bike industry itself, on which we also rely for revenue and material.

Call it a perfect storm of cost of living and large digital media shifts perhaps, but it’s unfair to blame it all on print.

@tracey The so called ‘sign up fee’ (Built in – horrible term) IS the reconciliation for the rest of your membership.

There are roughly twice as many print members as digital only – although everyone gets digital.

Thanks Mark

This is what I’m getting. I don’t want to upgrade just pay more

£35.00 / year and a £12.08 sign-up fee (Upgrade)

Are you allowed to say how many free as a % of the above

Evolve or die – whatever the cause, the same thing applies (but surely print can’t be helping – the mag and content doesn’t come for free and print media circulation isn’t exactly on the up). The mag might be a revenue generator and arguably fundamental to the STW brand, but if it didn’t exist you could reduce your overall overheads? Plus, look at BearGrease’s comment below. Your mag is only as good as the last edition and keeping it relevant in a world where news is here one second and gone the next is increasingly difficult.

A community of 6,000 paying subscribers + non-paying traffic that generates ad revenue generates income X. Costs = Y (where Y must be < X). If that isn’t true, something has to change. Getting more from the paying community of 6,000 feels like a sticking plaster cure when the real issue is an over reliance on a dwindling and increasingly regulated pot of ad revenue. You have to fight harder for the big pot of money (advertising), not rely on a small group of dedicated loyalists (or if you do, reduce your costs accordingly). You can’t afford to run a multi-channel business on niche, specialist revenues.

Increasing X is an increasingly difficult task for any industry right now as the tide is falling. Making money when the tide is rising is relatively easy. Unfortunately the cost base has to be reviewed if there isn’t a sustainable way to increase the top line. That’s the long and short of it. No emotion, whatever is unaffordable will drag you under. No pet projects, no emotional decisions. The world is littered with failed passion projects that we really loved by their creators but didn’t work commercially.

Sounds doom and gloom, but it isn’t. The future may not look like the past, but there is a strong future for STW given the demand for its product, albeit that demand might not be quite as healthy as it once was. However doing the same things and charging more for them when there is decreasing demand is a fool’s paradise.

Take a look at the Pinkbike model. Their traffic generator is YouTube. Their content generates revenue via YouTube as well as directing traffic towards their site. YouTube generates more impressions than the printed media ever will, thus providing a more attractive place for advertisers. You need to get more eyes on the site to be more competitive as a place to advertise. To use an old-school example here’s no point doing this through a sandwich board when you competition are on TV!

Sorted Mark

Worth every penny

I think there’s still a market for specialist print publications*.

The only printed magazine I subscribe to is Motorsport Magazine (£5.50/month) as it adds so much more than the web motorsport media.

The only reason I don’t have print STW is because I don’t ride anymore.

I have seen some local free advertising mags go to the wall recently though. The advertisers are still there but print costs have rocketed so they’re no longer viable.

*no – not that sort, that really has been killed off by the web! 🙂

So I resubscribed. I’d let my previous subscription lapse in a huff about being bitterly disappointed with the pre-Christmas issue. I’ve got over it.

Take a look at the Pinkbike model.

Singletrack has managed to stay independent and focused on original content, where as Pinkbike has been consumed by Outside and relies on recycling old content from their other “channels” and publishing outside PR pieces. Now, who should be looking at whose model…?

My point was not to sell to Outside and adopt the whole Pinkbike model. I would never hold Pinkbike up as a model of quality, but when it comes to quantity (which is what drives traffic and therefore advertsing $), they are more competitive. My point was that in order to drive more traffic to the site in order to generate a bigger share of the available ad revenue, a media channel such as YouTube is more effective and scaled than a printed magazine.

Having said that, not all of Pinkbike’s material is recycled or low quality. Ben Cathro’s series, their behind the scenes and technical stuff and their reviews are all good, and not something that STW can match.

I whole heartedly agree with your comments about Pinkbike’s content. I am not advocating that at all. As I mentioned above, the STW ‘product’ is outstanding. But that doesn’t matter if more people flock to Pinibike when it comes to where brands target their media. Quality, philosophy and altruism won’t beat sheer numbers in a race to attract advertisers in the kind of numbers that are required to sustain the STW model.

I really want to see STW thrive, not just survive or disappear, and to do that there might be some commercial vs philosophical trade offs.

Oof, some tough love responses on here.

The old cozzy livs is hitting us all and I can’t put my hand in my pocket, sorry 🙁

Take a look at the Pinkbike model. Their traffic generator is YouTube.

It’s easy to guess the problems with someone else’s business and say to fix them by “pivoting to video” (cheeky quote from Succession there), but PB has BY FAR the biggest audience in MTB media (and arguably the most-coherent editorial offering). Thus they’ll have advertisers beating down their door. YT will be one of their revenue streams but it’ll be a piece of the puzzle, not the magic formula for their success.

I dunno if you work in media Solarider but I did many years in print & digital, and I got out of editorial because it was so insecure. FB and Google were hoovering up all the advertising money and it always ended up with employers cutting costs (aka jobs).

If there was a simple answer that didn’t involve cutting staff then I’m sure Mark & co would be doing it already. Telling him to make people redundant is a bit distaseful IMO.

Telling him to make people redundant is a bit distaseful IMO.

Not sure I have said that? There are many ways to reduce costs before you get to that stage, but if any business ring fences their biggest single cost (people) and treats any attempt to raise the subject as ‘distasteful’, they have a real problem.

I would never hold Pinkbike up as a model of quality

You should.

They are pretty much the best in the biz, unless you favour print-style long-form features or the embittered ramblings of NSMB.

Not sure I have said that?

Sorry that was another poster above.

Yeah cutting headcount is a glaringly obvious solution and I’m sure Mark has to face that prospect, it’s just me saying I don’t think it’s cool for forum users to tell him to.

Posted without comment.

I’ve no idea why Pinkbike is so popular – it’s always looked a bloody mess to me.

That’s right Ped.

After years of being a subscriber, I had to make some tough decisions about renewing this year. STW wasn’t the only mag that I dropped. I kept Cyclist but that’s it because it was ultimately more relevant to me than Singletrack, but STW is far better than Cyclist as a website (surely that is quite telling?).

Does me not being a subscriber somehow diminish the validity of my responses or make me somehow less entitled to post? Do you also subscribe to the argument that because cyclists don’t pay road tax they shouldn’t use it? It’s a remarkably similar reasoning. Does my decision not to subscribe for financial reasons somehow exclude me from still wanting to see STW thrive?

Making judgements about the validity of an opinion when you have no insight into the financial reason for not subscribing is unfortunately neither big nor clever and certainly won’t help the very real challenge that clearly faces STW. Am I somehow meant to put the financial needs of my family bhind the future of STW, or otherwise retreat from the site and never post again? Apologies if I missed something in the small print about the benefits of being a subscriber and the indirect cost of ending a subscription. If you want the site to be some sort of exclusive club for subscribers only, then the 6,000 users will not be enough to keep it afloat for sure.

I would argue that the contribution that I make to the traffic to this site through my regular visits and consumption of the advertising is of equal value to my subscription since it generates advertising value. Simply being here, being active and consuming media helps the business to generate revenue. If you aren’t familiar with that model, hopefully it gives you some insight into how the business works. Do you think that the advert that you are probably looking at right now doesn’t help to fund the site, or that the value that it generates is directly proportionate to the number of times it is seen? The world of advertising is a cynical cruel world, but make no mistake, you are part of it and your very presence here is valuable to somebody whether you subscribe or not.

I consider my membership fee (print) as paying for a service.
I’m happy to and fortunate to be able to do that.
As with most services no matter what it is there is likely a fee for that service even if small.
Of course I understand that some people can’t pay for every service but I also think that some people don’t when they perhaps should.
Really difficult situation for so many people right now.
To the STW team – Keep up the very good work. Take care.

Similar to bearGrease my sub lapsed. I thought I’d miss the mag and be back onboard pretty quick but I don’t really. I read it for almost as long as it’s been going. I’ve just subscribed to a music mag – I do like a print magazine so I’m not staring at screens all **** day – so can’t afford to rejoin at the mo. I might do next month.

How does website advertising work now? Is it still the old way of you only get money if someone clicks on the advert? Or are sites paid just for displaying them?

And I really don’t understand the ‘local newspaper’ approach to web-pages – so much advertising you can barely see the article.

How does website advertising work now? Is it still the old way of you only get money if someone clicks on the advert? Or are sites paid just for displaying them?

It’s a really complicated balance of algorithms, but what matters is firstly how many visitors there are to the site who have the opportunity to see (OTS) the ad (which is itself valuable) and the number of those visitors that actually click on the ad (the click thru rate or CTR).

Sites that can deliver a high OTS of the right demographic (and unfortunately middle aged dentists are more valuable than younger students in this respect because of their disposable income) have a head start. They can further enhance their value by their CTR.

Therefore what matters to STW is generating enough traffic to the site in order to generate OTS revenue, and hopefully generating a high CTR both in % and absolute numbers, which is where a high volume of visitors (whether they are subscribers or not Ped) is valuable as a starting point and where the printed mag is not as effective at driving traffic as some of the other options out there (YouTube for example, hence the Pinkbike reference).

I know STW is relevant to our hobbies, but it aint a charity, it is a business, and whilst we might not like to see it that way, it has to survive in a harsh and competitive world.

There are many other ways of generating advertising revenue, but these are the biggest and simplest to explain.

It is clear from the article linked by Charlie that the team at STW are throwing everything at this problem, and chapeau to that. I just hope it is enough, but if not there are still things that can be done.

Done. Looking forward to enjoying my shiny bell 😮

Every full member should have a bell.

Once upon a time simply viewing ads was enough to generate revenue. Now the pendulum has swung away from Pay Per View to Pay Per Click. The programmatic system pays us a eCPM rate. Ie effective rate per 1000 views but this is misleading. It appears that we get paid for the views but in reality the eCPM would be zero if no ads were clicked. Typical eCPM rates in this sector are around $0.7 CPM for programmatic ads. Much higher for direct sold ads from the bike industry and not through an ad network. so it takes 1000 impressions of an ad to generate us $0.7. That’s why you see more than one ad on a page. A year ago that rate was much higher.

We currently deliver around 3 million page impressions/month. For some scale.

despite what Solar keeps saying the return per reader is way way higher for print. It’s just that print comes with bigger overheads.

The problem isn’t print. It’s actually much more effective than digital advertising/user.

My point is that as a method of generating traffic to the site through advertising STW as a ‘thing’ the mag is less effective in terms of readership numbers (what is circulation these days – 10k?) than a YouTube post that can easily generate 6 figure viewership. The mag has a UK bias whereas the world wide web would bring you traffic from a much broader church.

Ultimately revenue is for vanity and profit is for sanity. If the mag generates revenue and traffic but at an unaffordable cost, is it really as valuable?

Serious suggestion BTW – would it help if we all just clicked thru 10 ads a day each? I have no need for a Bentley, some new shoes or a new internet provider but happy to look like I do if it helps!

I just subbed as a full Print member, one thing that isn’t clear is do I get the current Printed issue or do I have to wait until April for that to start?

Media is increasingly tied to events and event ownership. Redbull pioneered this, as it gives them exclusive content which they sell to advertisers and consumers (some of those event tics aren’t cheap). Other media companies, Lifetime, Outside Interactive, H5 and X-games/ESPN are engaging in similar event/media strategies. Pinkbike doesn’t own events (well the “Academy” is a kind of event), but they do a LOT of event sponsorship and have a WC DH team so they can be inside events without owning them. Singletrack has a community that loves events and pays for them (Ard Rock tickets, anyone?) and would enjoy (exclusive is best) post-event coverage. Advertisers LOVE that type of engagement and it seems as though events still have plenty of sponsor dollars. Print is fading, my kids (one age 33) don’t know what to do with print mags. The TIME and RESOURCE used for print and its longer term viability are the issues, not whether the ads pay for printing and mailing costs. Who here would like to go to a Singletrack event? Would you trade your paper mag subscription for discounts/special treatment at 6 events per year? Maybe even just 4 good ones? We’re social animals, the STW Forum proves that. Give the people what they want: news and info on their device; ways to get together with other interested folks in the meat and virtual spaces.

And, fix the the hard paywall, so I can share a limited number of articles per month and grow your audience for you. (“It’s really great content, but you’ll have to trust me on that and pay first” isn’t a viable growth strategy)

So if we all logged out once in a while and madly clicked on the ads would that up the revenue?

A bit like this:

For STW to say yes to that question would be almost fraud as a beneficiary of those clicks, but I can say it – YES!

So if we all logged out once in a while and madly clicked on the ads would that up the revenue?

Good point, happy to click on a few ads if it’ll see a jump in revenue!

I don’t really want to give STW any more money as I don’t read the mag so my digital subscription fee is basically just an ad blocker service, but I have just logged out and clicked on five ads. If it’s gonna help, I’ll do it again every now and then.

I only renewed a couple of weeks ago as well. TBH I was struggling to justify it, but decided ad free is a better experience.

I just re-read the article. Final bit of tough love, then I will retreat. Please understand that this comes from a place of love and may not be universally well received, but it feels like you are seeing some writing on the wall and even if it just generates debate I am happy to challenge.

the costs of printing have jumped up almost 20% in 18 months

That is a simply unsustainable position if you chose not to pass at least some of it on. You can’t keep absorbing cost at that level or looking for ways of cost avoidance. No matter how much you want to avoid it, you have to increase prices. You have to believe that you are worth it (because you are).

Putting up the cost of a membership across the board will be hardest felt by those of you who can afford it the least

That may be true in relative terms and it would be a credible manifesto strategy for a left wing political party or a not-for-profit organisation, but not much good as a commercial model. Don’t be apologetic about the value of your product. Yes it might out-price some people (me included), but that’s life unfortunately. You already make a large part of the STW experience available for free, but those elements of your product that cost you something to produce should be sold, not given away.

we can afford a smaller margin on each thing we sell if we sell more of them

This is true in theory, but realistically just how many more subscribers would you need just to stand still in the face of a 20% increase in printing costs alone? You have to make more from diversification and other sources of revenue and pass on any COGs increases. Many business have failed by convincing themselves that they will sell more of something at a cheaper price. Maybe you are selling as many subscriptions as there is demand for and your product is price inelastic.

Singletrack is a community that has grown over 21 years to become more than just a business

Agreed, but you can’t have one without the other and you need to be selfish and realise your value. Even charities need income. If you are good at something, don’t do it for free, particularly if that something is your way of making a living.

profit is not the ultimate goal here

Have you seriously considered transforming into a registered charity with subscriptions that benefit from gift aid if break even is the only goal? And don’t make profit a dirty word or something to be afraid of. It’s the way that you will drive investment and stay afloat for years to come. Yes British Gas type profits are something to be ashamed of but making a modest profit that you are able to reinvest is the basic lifeblood of your business and will ensure that STW has a future.

My greatest wish right now is that we continue to be an employer

The only way to do that is to stay afloat and this might involve taking some difficult decisions. This isn’t a popularity contest – your employees won’t thank you if you did all the right things and they still lost their incomes. Some of the things that sound counter-intuitive will actually help you deliver precisely the altruistic and admirable goals that you hold dear.

First of all, there’s a new look to the website coming

Seriously?! How much have you spent over the years on this stuff? The site looked great and functioned better several iterations ago. Yes I appreciate some of the updates are necessary rather than nice to do in terms of security and regulatory adherence but make sure you are investing in things that add value. Do you really believe that another new look website will deliver more subscribers, more ad revenue or more visitors?

I know it all sounds harsh and critical, and to some extent it is, but you ain’t going to fix this through well meaning small donations from the STW loyalists. Ask Dan Stanton how the passion vs commercial equation works if you get it wrong. It isn’t enough to be morally upstanding if the numbers simply don’t work. And yes I can no longer justify the cost of a subscription, but that doesn’t meant that I haven’t enjoyed and don’t still enjoy ‘the bike site’ as it has come to be known over the last 2 decades in my household.