It’s not easy being Singletrack. Please help.

If I understand Mark’s most recent post correctly, the ad revenue generation of $0.7 per 1000 impressions multiplied by 3 million impressions per month converts to $2100/month which, using forex rate of 1.15 is c£1830/month.

This, I think, means that it takes 41,000 impressions to generate £25 – which is the cost of an annual digital only subscription; that’s 1367 impressions/day – each and every day.

I asked earlier how many free members there are; Tracey also asked the same.
Any answer?

This is now the third time that Mark and co have made a direct appeal.
That should send out a very clear message.

Frank has it.

we really appreciate the ad clicks but it’s not you… it’s them. Clicking the ads won’t shift the needle. There’s nothing you can do on that score and it’s just a waste of your energy. Ultimately the revenue that flows from advertising is the result of purchases made and we are never going to ask you to make unnecessary purchases. Forget about these meagre fractions of pennies. The elephant in the room is what Singletrack could become if we went from 6 to 10k members.

there’s currently 130k registered user accounts.

I’ve had beers now. I’m probably over sharing 🙂

Send them all a ‘We’ve been watching you for months’ email and extort them for Bitcoin!

and done by me.  This place, both the forum and the magazine, makes me very happy.  I particularly enjoyed ‘Reyt Good Time’ in the last issue, seemed to capture the feel of riding really well

what Singletrack could become if we went from 6 to 10k members.

Well, if that’s what you need (a mere 67% increase in subscribers!), then that’s got to be the aim. Everything else is just window dressing. You won’t get any near that revenue through ads given your stats, or through getting a few goodwill donations from your current subscribers.

Looking at it in a more attainable way, an extra 4k subscribers means converting just 3% of registered users. That sounds eminently achievable.

Or, if you increase the cost of subscription by 10% (only the current level of inflation afterall), you would only need an additional 3,400 subscribers. Less, obviously, if you go for a 15% increase.

You will only achieve that through a carrot (incentivising subscribers through enhanced content) and stick (disincentivising non-subscribers through diminished access). It’s a big goal for sure, but you won’t achieve it incrementally. Needs something radical, but if you are really sounding the early warning signal here, doing nothing isn’t an option.

A free bell is nice, but have you considered rewarding length of subscription? 1st year at full price, 2nd year gets you a small discount, 3 year more and so on. Filling a leaking bucket where you only gain subscribers at the same rate as you lose them is a soul destroying job. Retain the ones you have too.

Oh, and YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO PUT YOUR PRICES UP! Sorry, I know you don’t want to, but you really don’t have any choice. That might mean only increasing the price of the printed version if production costs are the single biggest component of your total outgoings, but something has to give. Everybody hates putting up prices, but you would be far from alone in the current climate.

130k registered user a/cs of whom 6k are paying subscribers; that’s 4.6%.
So 95.4% of the site users are free members.

If ‘only’ 5% of the free members took out an annual digital subscription that would be additional revenue of £155k at the full rate – don’t forget the special offer in Charlie’s post.

I’m not privy to the managenent accounts and companies house information is limited but that conversion rate would probably be transformative.

Full price annual digital sub is £25 so equivalent to £2.08/month – less than one coffee or a half pint of beer.

Yes, I know some people are cutting outgoings and, in some cases, going without so don’t need to be reminded of that.

Large part of why I renewed this year is because I want you to still be around, rather than the actual magazine. You’re a bit of an odd bunch, but I like you and what you do.

I don’t really understand (literally that; rather than being suspicious of) what you do with 12 people. I presume you aren’t all full time, given the amount of content produced and the amount of content from guest writers in the mag and site.

To get more ad or affiliate clicks that result in purchases, perhaps you could focus on quality content like buyer’s guides with links to buy. How often do we get threads in the form asking about what tyres, jackets, lights. It needs to be quality but also comprehensive, can’t just be the last 5 tyres you happen to have done a full review of while leaving out other popular choices. You could also do kit check guides for particular activities or adventures, for newcomers or experienced people trying new things. Or tag it onto classic rides and other features, what kit did you use etc. Just bought my first proper MTB, what do I need? Going to a bike park for the first time, doing that southern long distance ride in a day, going up a Munro with a bike, refreshing your oldish bike… there is tons of stuff people want to do on bikes for which they need stuff/services.

Many people posted ideas here https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/a-members-forum/ about ideas of things you could do, that might attract or retain subscribers, or could be additional services.

130k registered user a/cs of whom 6k are paying subscribers; that’s 4.6%.

That’s not 130k active users though.

I don’t really understand (literally that; rather than being suspicious of) what you do with 12 people

I run a business with a $30m turnover with 7 people. It’s hard not to sound a bit judgmental, but 12 people for your turnover does sound like a lot of squeeze for not much juice and given your turnover I am guessing none of you are doing this to fund your private Caribbean island or massive yacht?

Reading between the lines of your P&L, your revenue sources seem to be subscriptions and advertising. Your subscriptions are static at best (particularly if you don’t raise prices) and your ad revenue is declining. Your costs are mainly people and production. People costs must be increasing by a small amount and your production costs are seemingly increasing at 20% over the last 18 months. There’s no way to sugar coat it – that is not a viable business model so you need to make some tough choices. Increasing your revenue when the bike industry is in decline and there is a cost of living crisis will be doubly difficult.

You have to charge more for your product and cut costs or you won’t survive. I know that doesn’t sit well with you, but that’s the situation.

Think I need to ignore this thread for a while. I am beginning to sound critical rather than constructive and my intention couldn’t be further from that. But if you raise a flag that you are in trouble and ask for donations, I guess you need to be prepared for some well intentioned advice too. Hopefully at least some of it resonates and gets you asking the right questions. I love your passion and I admire your principles but you might have to test your commitment to all of them if you are to achieve your goals. The question is which are fundamental to you, and which you might compromise in order to achieve your long term ambition to build a great community, keep people employed and enjoy the cycling lifestyle.

Can you poach Jo Burt from MBUK?* I’ve always thought his style would suit STW better.

And then you can give away a free key ring! 😀

(* I don’t even know if Mint Sauce is still in MBUK!)

I run a business with a $30m turnover with 7 people

The basic rule of thumb always used to be £100k turnover for every employee – think it’s more like £120k per employee now. For an average salary.

scotroutes – fair comnent so how many active free members are there?

sola – you say you’ve cancelled your subscription for financial reasons and/but are running a $30 million annual t/o company?

My digital subs price is £20, last renewed in December. If the current price is £25, I’m happy to match that. STW need to make sure paying customers pay the current rate – I exchanged a few emails with subs a while back, there was a policy of keeping subscribers on their sign-up rate, but this may have been changed since.

I think more on-line only content could increase traffic and sign-ups, maybe simpler articles (tyre group tests…? ☺️) that don’t sit well in the print mag. Maybe a really cheap sub for this stuff, without magazine article access. Just a few thoughts.

I value the site, but it needs to be commercially viable without donations. I signed up for issue 1 via the Gofar forum before the magazine existed to help get it off the ground – I’m glad I did. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

sola – you say you’ve cancelled your subscription for financial reasons and/but are running a $30 million annual t/o company?

1) Running it for somebody else and owning it are 2 very different things! We invest a lot in the brand, we pay a large corporate overhead and make a decent profit for somebody else!

2) Cancelling something for financial reasons and not being able to afford it are also 2 very different things. 3 magazine subscriptions (Rouleur, STW and Cranked) used to cost over £200 a year and I didn’t feel like I was getting £200 a year of enjoyment vs what I could do with that money for my son. It’s the cost of his swimming club for a year as an example. He gets more out of that than he would out of my magazine subscription, and I get more enjoyment from seeing him progress than reading about somebody else’s ride or a product review that I can get free anywhere on the web. I also felt that it was wrong to subscribe when most of the mag was subsequently made available online within days of the publication date anyway.

Your comment raises a whole different philosophical debate about value for money and affordability. Let’s not go there right now! Since you don’t know my financial position, don’t be too quick to judge!

Sorry for the random ask without having a rummage, but is there still the ‘donate to STW’ thing from covid times? If so, is there an option for a monthly chuck in?
RM.

I’ve been buying Singletrack from the beginning and later as a member I carried on buying even after having to cut other magazines. The quality of the magazine is superb, the website is fun and informative, with the occasional glitch! I think the forum is different from others in that the chat forum is so informative in so many ways – legal advice, building advice, political views, appeals for help with health (mental and physical), wildlife and gardening, travel advice and just a wonderful community of people who mostly rub along and try and help people.
I don’t know how the number of staff could be cut as the amount of content produced, magazine, podcasts, articles and product tests etc would appear to be disproportionate!
I shall increase my subscription and buy some stuff from the shop. I’ll not be buying one of the recycled belts however, as the one I have is the only belt I have that isn’t too tight. It stretches throughout the day and I run out of holes whilst my trousers fall down! All my other belts run out of holes in the other direction…
Good luck you all and if it helps clicking on ads just let us know, I’ll have a couple of days of not logging in.

Thinking of paying moore, Roger?

: )

Don’t bother clicking the ads unless you really want to visit the advertiser. Clicking our affiliate links in articles and even posting links to deals you spot for the benefit of others is by far the best thing you can do. The ad supported model (programmatic at least) is what we are trying to pivot away from.

@mark what are you doing at work at this time on a Friday? I used to have to do it, switch off and relax! Have a good weekend.

I’m thinking aloud

Is there a “click through to buy” area. If you got a % of all my wiggle purchases that would increase the revenue

Could there be a temporary subscriber button?

You click it and then click a button to pay say a pound via PayPal. That converts your membership to subscriber for 3 days. But you can only do that 3 times per year. Or each time you click it the cost doubles or the time halves.

Maybe only full subscribers can use the word “tyres” in the title of a thread?

Could there be a subscriber tyre review area?

There is a limit to how often you can post a question or reply per month, if you’re not a paid member?

You can’t ask Scotroutes a question if you’re not a subscriber?

I may have been drinking

I’m not going to go over the grounds that others have about cutting costs or increasing prices because there isn’t much to say but in that article it’s quite noticeable that existing subscribers are being asked to donate more (not unreasonable) but at the same time new subscribers are getting a 50% discount. At that rate you have to be making a loss on paper subscription sign ups. I get the point made about ongoing benefit but if things are so tight you’re asking for donations to support then it doesn’t seem like you are in a position to support a loss making offer, take your profit off it so you break even, fair enough but you’re making a real term loss. You don’t want to win bad business and that looks like it is, how many years at full price do you need to make up the loss you will have incurred?

I don’t know whether you break down STW into cost centres but given you’re referring to turnover generated by print and digital rather than profit I assume you don’t. If you don’t then it sounds like you’re in a position where you need to. The print side may well generate more turnover but the associated costs will be way higher than the online. Only once you’ve got a handle on that and the fixed/variable opex splits for print and digital respectively you can make a decent assessment of where to go with aiming to increase membership.

The suggestion of a forum only membership seems sensible, you’d have very minimal increase in associated overheads so any income is nearly all margin and you might pick up existing users asking for the service. Assuming there is no uplift on the costs as the production staff are fixed then digital subscribers is good but you need to generate new subscribers that already have access to that option. Increasing print sign ups seem like the least effective position as any income comes with an associated overheads.

A forum only membership is really not a solution.

Forum only membership?
I posted about this on the other thread – or think I did!
Full price digital only is £25pa; I cannot see anything less than that making commercial sense – and even that is predicated on there being minimal/no set up and maintenance costs for a forum only option.
To be blunt, the issue is converting free members into paying subscribers.
Mark & co have an established membership/renewal structure; it’s all about pumping more volume through it.
I’m all in favour of SMEs, have a long standing affinity with print media and like/admire Singletrack so…when Mark made his first appeal, I donated; second appeal, same again and also set-up monthly standing order.
It might have been more cost effective to become a life member!
One thought – canvas the membership to understand what they would buy from the merch shop, if only Charlie stocked it!
Market research, supply chain, logistics, pricing: there you go, you said you wanted and we can deliver; please pay non-refundable deposit of £nnn before we order as no deposit means no order.
Putting one’s c**k on the block, so to speak.

Anyway, enough from me; others have said they’re on the beer so…it’s time I was!

The suggestion of a forum only membership seems sensible, you’d have very minimal increase in associated overheads so any income is nearly all margin and you might pick up existing users asking for the service. Assuming there is no uplift on the costs as the production staff are fixed then digital subscribers is good but you need to generate new subscribers that already have access to that option. Increasing print sign ups seem like the least effective position as any income comes with an associated overheads.

My hunch is that there are 2 mistakes here

Firstly, as I’ve said before, a forum only subscription isn’t cheaper. It cost nothing or next to nothing let some one down load the magazine and it generates ad revenue for the magazine.

I’m also fairly sure that the extra cost of a print subscription more than pays for the cost of printing and delivery

Why is there no option to pay monthly? If a digital sub is £2.08 per month, I’d happily pay £2.50 or £3 a month, but actually monthly rather than annually.

I know that £30 isn’t much to pay out but £2.50 a month is a lot less….

For a full paper sub a monthly fee is even nicer than £50 or £60 as it seems it needs to be.

£45 a year for the magazine

£25 a year for digital

£5 a month for digital

Is there a reason that the monthly option is so much more per year? Do people join for a month, when buying a bike, read all the reviews and leave?

Take a leaf out of New Scientist’s book when you offer subs. (Not saying cost, but their offerings – they don’t do their offerings like that for no reason – there’s science behind it 🙂 )

Anyway. It’s about time I subbed, especially given the amount of time I’m spending effing about on the forum. I can’t take the o/h out for a meal and a drink for 45 quid and that’s transient and lasts for an evening.

All the people on here buy new tyres regularly. Just sayin’.

ads – there is an option to pay monthly for digital only access at £4.99.
My post was clear that the annual digital sub of £25 equates to £2.08/month.
ampthill – I would suggest that annualising the monthly option is irrelevant; as with many/most subscription models, the pricing is always structured to encourage long(er) term commitment – it provides some financial certainty and facilitates medium term planning with some confidence.
Back to CNN, beer and wine.

You’re supposed to be running a business, but this is more like begging. (Hint – dogs, or pictures of dogs will increase your take.)

I subscribed for quite a few years previously on the basis that I found the content interesting and entertaining and thought that should support the site in the hope that it would grow and improve.

Nothing changed – the forum software continues to be a bizzare, home-brew affair, lacking in almost all of the features that pretty much every other, popular internet forum has.

As a result, I chose not to renew my subscription a couple of years ago.

Since then, the forum (& classifieds ) have become even clunkier and idiosyncratic (almost unusable in some browsers) and I’m convinced that the number of regular users and consequently the breadth and volume of postings has suffered because of this.

IMHO It’s time to ditch the home-brew approach and the overhead required just to keep it rolling, let alone modify or “improve” it, just to reach the standard functionality of every other mainstream forum out there (I have previously offered MIG welding, Motorhome Fun & The Fretboard as exemplars). Park the content of this forum as an accessible archive somewhere and move on (I can’t even underline the words ‘move on’ in this poxy editor!) – you can still integrate a 3rd party forum software into the rest of the site.

I would pay a ‘forum only’ membership (say £10/year) *if* the forum user experience was up to par.

I’ve subscribed again in response to the blatant begging, but won’t be renewing again unless things improve. If the business won’t support 12 people, you need to grow it until it will (hint – listen to the feedback!), or reduce the number of people – sorry, but that’s business.

Begging isn’t a long term model IMHO.

Motorhome Fun? In my experience it was anything but. Some Landrover sites when I owned one some years ago were also quite nasty places to be and full of wrong information. STW is clunky (I’m not sure what that means) but comfy.

Maybe against the general grain  of the comments on this thread (but I think in line with Mark’s points) I as a middle aged reader and many years subscriber to the mag (with very luckily some disposable income still despite the clusterfhuck management of the economy by this Gov) think the paper mag is the cornerstone of the business. Lose the paper mag and the whole foundations fall apart. Ditch the mag at your peril.

It REALLY doesn’t have to be the race to the bottom that some are prescribing.

Keep up the good work (maybe spend less time and money  on the moderating of moderate comments tho, some does definitely aliente… pick the right fights not each exceptionally trivial one)

ads – there is an option to pay monthly for digital only access at £4.99

Ah ok, I must have ignored that as it’s ridiculously expensive! I’d be happy to tie into 12 months of monthly payments if it was the same price as the annual fee.

If the mag is the thing that drives this place then surely its magazine subs that need to increase in price. The 12 employees are working to produce a magazine. Some of that content crosses over to here, but lots of people don’t read the mag, even though it’s available to download if you are a member. Also it seems that lots of people don’t read the front page articles either, whether or they are paying member though…..

Personally I don’t read the mag, and I know Hannah has asked a few times for people to say why they don’t read it or don’t like the content, but I don’t know why, well I do, I find it really boring, sorry. And I’m genuinely sorry about that as I’ve tried to read it and also tried to quantify why I find it boring but I can’t. I guess I’m not into the style of writing I suppose, maybe it’s that I’m not really into off road cycling (it’s not really an MTB mag anymore is it) in the same way. It all just seems a bit inner circle, cliquey. Maybe I’m wrong and it’s all on me, I’ll take that, I know I’m a middle aged grump who is struggling to identify with lots of things at the moment.

I understand that times are tough for everyone, personally and in business, but I see you doing your jobs and having a fun and then begging for more money and just think, if you can’t afford to do it either put the prices up or stop doing it. But maybe offer different payment options if the prices need to increase.

Begging is not a good business model though.

Don’t they make YouTube videos? I’m subscribed to dozens of channels plus get plenty more recommendations via my TV. All have ads in them.
It’s you only way I consume MTB content really, bar pinkbike and emtb forums.
I’ve never seen nor has YouTube recommended me a video by this place, so either they make weird niche content or they dont bother with YouTube.

One thought – canvas the membership to understand what they would buy from the merch shop, if only Charlie stocked it!
Market research, supply chain, logistics, pricing: there you go, you said you wanted and we can deliver;

+1. Ask people what they’d want to see in the shop. The shop needs a damn good clear out. Stick everything that’s been sat around for over 12 months and not sold into a clearance section to separate out the chaff and focus on some core elements. Every time there’s an appeal I have a browse, but come away uninspired. Currently (IMHO) there’s lots of overpriced mugs, some casual T shirts and random chains (what?). There’s also a good selection of relevant books, though. I’d be up for a technical clothing collaboration like CTC have with Stolen Goat, but I don’t know whether that would be a good seller? (The current ST / Hackney GT shirt looks like it’s identifying with a particular cause, which maybe putting some people off 🤔).

As for converting free membership into paid, the Guardian* basically guilt tripped me into paying for a sub with semi regular pop-ups asking to support their journalism. Don’t know whether that’s been considered/ tried?

* I also weave my own yoghurt 😉

There’s 10 of us by full time equivalent. Not 12 btw. Soon to be 9. We aren’t begging. It’s an appeal. It’s not donations we need it’s members. We aren’t asking or expecting something for nothing. The Guardian does a fine job of asking for donations to support its journalism. This job is often fun but it’s also stressful and not without its significant pressure (I’ve been treated for depression and anxiety for the last 5 years)  – just like lots of other jobs. As for the business model – we are in transition from the old to the new. The old was traditional ad funded model. The new is member funded. Well, at least in majority proportions. The old was chasing huge numbers of passive visitors and extracting fractions of pennies from each. The new is serve a smaller but highly engaged audience with a higher return per user. Prices are going up. We announced those in November.

I’m happy to answer questions here or where appropriate directly – mark@singletrackworld.com – in fact the business model here has always been an open and honest one with you all – that’s deliberate. I get that we are an unusual business with a non-typical approach to how we operate, but I guess that’s just a reflection of my own, perhaps naive, philosophy and I’m very much aware it can be a risky strategy.

I don’t want anyone to feel obligated to join as a full member. It needs to be a value exchange. If you like coming here and you like what we do then all we ask is that you consider full membership. If it’s too much to ask right now (we know how tough times are) then staying green is absolutely fine. But fundamentally it’s about openness with our members and making sure that any circumstances ahead are known by everyone who has a stake in Singletrack, members especially, so that we all get to influence what happens in our future before it’s too late. The best lesson I’ve learned over the last few years is to not let problems build up in isolation until it’s too late to do anything about them. Tell those around you when things get tough. We are telling you all now because you are an important part of Singletrack and you deserve to know.

My inbox is always open, as they say.

If you want members, don’t paint a picture of an organisation in existential difficulty.

People want to commit their hard earned cash to something they feel will be around long enough to fulfil its commitments rather than collapsing whilst holding their money.

Do what you need to do behind the scenes. Crack on with quietly and diligently delivering the new business model. But don’t ask for donations and sympathy (a sticking plaster over the wound) when what you actually need is in your own hands (a more fundamental root and branch business model change). There is such a thing as over sharing.

If you are committed to extracting the maximum value from a small base of members rather than building a broad base, go about that transformation deliberately, unapologetically and quietly. I think it is a high risk model as it assumes that there is a sufficient like-minded base of customers out there when in fact the 130k registered vs 6k subscriber statistic tells a different story – namely that there are more casual users than card carrying loyalists. Increasing your loyalist base by 67% is an audacious goal when you are preaching to the converted.

I appreciate that your current model puts you in competition for an ever decreasing pool of advertising revenue. You are seemingly admitting that the competition is too strong and you can’t compete on level terms in that space. It’s certainly a bold move.

Nevertheless, whatever model you choose, do it confidently, commit and communicate less to your customers about things that they really don’t need to know.

As one of the 130k majority rather than the 6k minority, I genuinely wish you well. The world would be slightly less entertaining without STW. The question is, what value will enough of the 130k people put on that? Based on your current output, the answer is not enough. Sounds like you have some plans to fix that and I am genuinely looking forward to seeing the output. In some respects you chaps are living the dream – doing something you feel genuinely passionate about. Not all of us can say that, but something has to pay the bills and to most of us cycling is something we do for fun, not for a living. There’s got to be a lesson there somewhere!

I guess where we disagree is the principal of doing it quietly. I see that (it’s obviously a personal view) as keeping things hidden from the Singletrack community. I suppose I’ve kind of done that for the first 20 years. I’ve decided not to do it that way anymore. That’s a choice but I do respect that it’s not how you would do it. That’s cool 🙂

You are seemingly admitting that the competition is too strong and you can’t compete on level terms in that space

That’s your interpretation but it’s certainly not mine. My view is that advertising as a principal model of media is not sustainable. A more balanced mix of revenues that focus on membership and user generated income is a far more solid foundation for any media brand right now. Certainly that’s how the media industry is refocusing, especially the independents.

Indeed. The beauty of this place is a coming together of very different people united by a common interest.

Things often get a bit heated but in the end it’s just about fannying about in the woods on bikes!

The difference with this particular topic is that some of us have genuine professional skills in just the area that you are struggling with and whether the advice is well received or not, hopefully a different perspective might prompt some consideration and provoke some thought.

In my experience diversity of thought creates a better outcome. Ultimately you make your choice and focus your team on delivering it. Sharing a carefully edited strategy with your customers always makes sense but telling them everything can be dangerous.

It’s not donations we need it’s members.

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)

These two things don’t really add up to me.

If you’re not a member then the site is terrible with the adverts, at least it was when I last used it when not logged in.

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.