It’s not easy being Singletrack. Please help.

If I need a genuine user review I just go to the forum and ask for people who own and use it.

Who do you think should pay for hosting/managing that forum?

Who do you think should pay for hosting/managing that forum?

We all should. I do. Although Mark doesn’t describe it as such, but I pay £0 for a digital magazine and £25 a year for the forum.

I love this place and what it stands for.

I’ve just renewed my subscription but only because it happened automatically and apathy meant I didn’t stop it.

I think the mag and website need to work out what they’re about. There is no point in coming here for news or new products as PB and others do it much better and quicker. The same is true for product tests and reviews unless I want some of niche bike. The current issue of the mag has very little in it off interest to me. The fork review was fine. I enjoyed the article on riding in Aberdeen and that was about it. I’m not interested in the views on various subjects of the staff nor gravel bikes in anyway. That didn’t leave much left.

As for the shop the stuff your selling even with members discount is expensive. I wanted an Areopress but others are seeing it for 20% less than the members price and you get a bag of coffee. I would happily have bought it from you if your price was competitive.

@BruceWee as a sample of one I would if I thought it would help. Actually, I like the whole lack of tracking thing so I wouldn’t need much convincing.

Something like £12 a year to use forum inc. classifieds (old style classifieds)

How do you hope to attract new members?

I think any forum has to be free to read (and ideally post) if it is to grow, but other aspects could be used as incentives for people to pay, for example:

IF the forum offered image hosting, I might be prepared to pay to be able to see full sized images in posts, rather than thumbnails (I’m aware of a few forums that work like this).

The ability to post clasified ads

Access to advanced search features

Absence of ads

Avatars!

Resources such as review archives

The forum remembering where you had read to in a thread and taking you straight back there when you open it again

Just a general ‘good will’ payment from those that appreciate it (I’m aware of several forums that operate in this manner, and let’s be honest, it’s what’s already happening here with the addition of an unnecessary subscription to a mag they never read.)

I’ve been a member of quite a few forums, very few of which I thought were worth paying for, but it’s not unheard of.

The forum is now the only aspect of this enterprise that is of any relevance to me – I read the print mags for about 5 years from 2013, but in the manner of all ‘activity’ publications, the content becomes repetetive (beginners guide to… how to … carve gybe / waterstart jump / ride roots etc.). I don’t think I’ve ever visited the homepage!

Anyway, the sentiment seems clear…

Who do you think should pay for hosting/managing that forum?

Might as well paraphrase weeksy since he put it so well.

We all should. I do. Although Mark doesn’t describe it as such, but I pay £0 for a paper magazine and £40 a year for the forum.

( apologies if it’s not 40 quid. I don’t actually know)

I subscribed after one of the previous appeals but I really believe no more appeals just put the price up.

The only other forum I use regularly is retrobike. The forum is much easier to use. Editing, adding images, listing stuff for sale, private messages etc.

We all should. I do. Although Mark doesn’t describe it as such, but I pay £0 for a digital magazine and £25 a year for the forum.

I love this place and what it stands for.

+1 pretty much same for me.

I think I’ll start donating my STW magazines to whichever bike cafe/charity etc i can. Once they’re read Ive little use for them and they’re too stiff to use as wiping material.

That way they’ll at least be read and seen over a wider group. Someone might read, like the content and look to join. Maybe,maybe not but I don’t think theres any harm in it. And its more clutter out of my house.

the content becomes repetetive (beginners guide to… how to …

carve gybe / waterstart

jump / ride roots etc.).

Been there… 😀

I go to PinkBike for news/ current stuff and Wideopen/ NSMB/ EnduroMTB for other articles/ reviews etc.

Pinkbike/Outside is am absolute hot mess of a website away from the front page. I think either Google or Outside themselves have had to warn me twice in the last couple of years that my user/password has been compromised. The forum is full of (not to put too fine a point on it) ****. The only thing that’s worth the time are Levy, Quinn and Kasimir, the rest is for children. Oh, and it’s an order of magnitude larger operation that STW is.  NSMB is hyper-local to the sea to shore, and is literally just reviews (dull shit that is really the lowest form of “journalism” Hell, if I can do, it’s got to be),  and has the same “buy us a coffee” ask that STW has and EnduroMTB have also recently got out the begging bowl in the same way that STW is doing now.

I doubt there’s any part of the bike industry (including the written parts of it) has a magic wand to resolve the fact that the arse has fallen out of it recently

When it comes to bike magazines in general, are they all dying a death?

It would be interesting to see what the circulation figures are for some of the magazines, especially things like Singletrack where they aren’t, I don’t think, even available in normal newsagents etc.

I’d hazard a guess that the magazine industry as a whole is circling the drain and won’t be around in it’s current form for a great deal longer.

The forum is full of

This in itself shows why Forums like STW (And my own of course) need to remain and exist. Pinkbike forum should be EPIC… lots of knowledge, lots of content, people… but it’s dire… Partly because of the teenage angst, but also the layout, formatting, process, uploading of pics and structure.
MTBR.com forum is sometimes a confusing place, but is a superb forum. The content is really informative, but i’d argue, this place here has greater depth of knowledge of many things.
mtbr.com is free though, with some sidebar adverts of course, which if i could turn off with a small cost, i probably would 🙂

I am a recent convert from free member to paying subscriber- I stopped reading the magazine years ago as I’ve never really found the writing style to my liking. I never look at the main site and now pay for the forum purely because it is a great resource for advice on bike maintenance, training and races/events. I also find the chat about pro cycling entertaining too and usually there are some long/involved threads about the big grand tours when they are on.

In many ways I’m not the target market as I gave up mountain biking years ago and only road ride and trail run now and I wouldn’t say I’m particularly interested in gravel riding or bike packing.

But, as much as I love cycling I sometimes wonder how much can really be said about it as an activity outside of the competitive part of it. I buy a bike on average about once every 8 years so bike reviews are meaningless to me for 7.9 years out of every 8. Routes in the UK are well established- especially mountain bike routes that can legally be published…even I could advise someone on a classic peak district route and I’ve not ridden a bridleway since 2009. Like most people I know who are into cycling I don’t go on multiple cycling holidays a year to far flung sunny countries following a local guide around, so articles about riding in Andorra or Croatia or something are of limited value really.

I still buy the paper copy of Cycling Weekly as I can catch up on some pro cycling news and also I find the domestic competitive news interesting- the focus in general seems to be on things that are more local and relatable to me, local TTs, Hill Climbs and CX racing, club runs, events that I might actually enter, rides I might actually do.

I might be totally wrong here but is it fair to say most people own one bike (maybe 2) and rarely exchange it, ride local to them and perhaps go abroad on a cycling specific holiday maybe occasionally but probably rarely? The sportives or events the enter most likely will be within a 3 hour drive of where they live?

I’m not sure if STW is guilty of any of the above as I haven’t read it in years but most cycling media seems to be like that to me and it is fairly predictable/tired after a while. I always thought Cyclist magazine offered some different/insightful articles compared to the rest but there’s still only so many “Big Ride in Sunny and Faraway Country [x]” that can hold my interest and it is inevitably really expensive now.

I might be totally wrong here but is it fair to say most people own one bike (maybe 2) and rarely exchange it, ride local to them and perhaps go abroad on a cycling specific holiday maybe occasionally but probably rarely? The sportives or events the enter most likely will be within a 3 hour drive of where they live?

Ummmmm 😀

Yeah I know, wrong place to pose that question probably 😂

Ummmmm 😀

Especially on the number of bikes bit, but the rest is partly true.  I do find some of the route articles interesting but it does depend on the writer.  I rarely find bike reviews interesting in any mag but there is lots of other stuff going around.

Yeah I know, wrong place to pose that question probably

I do get your point though. A lot of riding of ‘us’ is not in far flung places.. but then again, magazines are a bit of ‘social dreaming’ aren’t they ? The trip to Peru you’ll never do, the bikepacking in the Andes that are beyond our reach..

Rather than, a trip round Ladybower reservoir on a gravel bike… which lets face it, won’t be that exciting to read.

we’re all different though of course, i’d love to read about (if i read magazines) how Charlie went to BPW and nailed a red, ate a burger and experienced Merthyr on a Friday night… but i doubt many others would. In the same way, an article about someone roughing it in the Cairngorns, well, it doesn’t do a lot for me.

From an exceptionally biased perspective, a racing series with a youngster racing Fort William, now that i’d read 😉 😉

I subscribed to the paper magazine because I saw there was an article about Nesbyen, a place I’d spent a couple of weeks in a year ago.

Honestly, I was underwhelmed. I’m not sure what I was looking for, but it wasn’t what I read in the article. I saw what it was trying to do, I think. It was trying to avoid being a dry ‘review’ of another riding destination by running a thread through it about ‘hidden folk’ and Norse mythology.

imo, it completely missed the mark. It was a bit about the riding (honestly, how many ways are there to write about riding over rocks and dirt) and the rest seemed to be jarring talk about trolls and fairies.

Contrast that with Hannah’s visit to Repack. We get to meet the characters and get an idea of the local scene. Admittedly, we’re talking about well known names from the history of mountain biking but when I read about trips to other countries, that’s what I want to read about. I want to know what the local riding culture is like, who the notable characters are and why they’re notable, and just get a feel for the general vibe of the place.

I think the Nesbyen story was a missed opportunity to talk to locals and find out more about the place. Instead it ended up feeleing like a Lonely Planet writer trying to flex his creative muscles and put some colour into the local history section.

Anyway, part of the reason I like to read about far flung places is not some much to find out what the riding is like but what the local scene is like.

Is it possible that the audience for the mag and the audience for the forum are actually pretty different?

At the risk of rambling and not adding anything: I very rarely buy bikes (never new ones) and have no interest in racing etc. I think I might have subscribed to the mag one year ages ago but let it drop. I would probably pay for forum membership now that I know it’s useful…but I tend to drift in and out to avoid getting bogged down in forum politics

so articles about riding in Andorra or Croatia or something are of limited value really

Tbf travel writing (like food reviewing, mayne even top end gear reviewing) isn’t solely to be “practical”. Sometimes it is escapism. There are plenty of people that read supercar mags but will never buy a new car, who read Jay Rayner but don’t go to 5* restaurants etc.

Haven’t read the entire thread and although Ive had a monthly sub for quite a few years, I’m currently a freeloading free member, but I think you really need to sort the stability of this forum. It’s a good forum one the whole, and searching for random non bike related stuff on google, posts quite often come up from here and other large sites like pistonheads and mumsnet.

The difference is those sites don’t repeatedly crash. This one has for years now. The way I personally use it is: first crash, ok let it reload and carry on. Second crash, fark this I’m off, and I’ll go and look at something else. That point is often reached after one or two minutes. I’m on an up to date iPhone.

I think if you sorted that out, you’d find yourself with a lot more traffic which in turn has to only be good for ad revenue. Just my freeloading 2p.

YouTube is much harder to make money from than people think. The subscriber numbers being talked about here wouldn’t solve the problem

https://influencermarketinghub.com/youtube-money-calculator/

YouTube is much harder to make money from than people think. The subscriber numbers being talked about here wouldn’t solve the problem

Well that depends if you focus on YT articles and subscribers instead of other content like magazine articles. I’m sure there’s a way to get the required numbers but i don’t understand people who sit and watch TouTube stuff myself. I occasionally watch a tech article, like last week was a Hope Tech3 bleed technique… but i rarely watch ‘articles’ in most other contexts.

They are of course missing an open goal on the marketing front…

…they need to do a Happy Valley Special! Get Sarah Lancashire owt in them there hills and spam social media with it! Do a cycle route of popular murder spots. Boom – millions of hits! They’ve probably even filmed in Tod! 🤣

but i don’t understand people who sit and watch TouTube stuff myself. I occasionally watch a tech article, like last week was a Hope Tech3 bleed technique… but i rarely watch ‘articles’ in most other contexts.

But I suspect, looking at the numbers, you are in the minority. Lots of channels out there getting millions of views, even mediocre ones getting tens of thousands. I personally much prefer it to reading an article. On the travel stuff mentioned above, I’d much rather watch someone riding at a destination than read about it, but I’m sure there is a place for both. There is already a lot of great content on youTube but I can see STW shaped hole for their kind of journalism.

we’re all different though of course, i’d love to read about (if i read magazines) how Charlie went to BPW and nailed a red, ate a burger and experienced Merthyr on a Friday night… but i doubt many others would. In the same way, an article about someone roughing it in the Cairngorns, well, it doesn’t do a lot for me.

I won’t bother cut n paste reversing the two examples in the text above, but basically this. We all have slightly ( very?) different MTB interests and its physically impossible for a finite set of writers to appeal to all of them all of the time. Loads of the STW articles are good, but the reality is that they’re only of interest to a subset of the pop.
Hannah ( or someone) keeps asking what we DO want to hear about. This is a commendable approach but unfortunately doomed to failure because there is no ” collective we” when it comes to the STW readership.
Some people, quite rightly, want to read about amazing adventures in the Cairngorms.
Some people, again quite rightly, want to read about amazing techie gnarr in the lake district*
Some people, believe it or not, want to read about which riders are riding for which teams and who is winning what races. **
Some people apparently want to read about ebikes costing over a month’s salary.
Some complete weirdos even want to read general articles about bike maintenance which isn’t directly related to the exact job they’re doing at that point in time ( no I don’t believe it either 🙂 )
Some people even want to hear about gravel routes in the south of England ( shudders)

The point is that STW can no more fill the magazine with what interests everyone than they could roll a pair of dice and get a double six and a double five and a double…. every single throw.
But the forum contains all that info, and with the power of Google we can find the bit we’re interested in.

* and of course the other issue is that you’re not allowed to write articles about FBWs 😉
** W08 excepted of course. Even I want to hear those results.

Thinking a bit further, IF the magazine had an amazing search facility, where I could find the article in issues 35 about slogging around Glen Tilt in a blizzard, and Weeksy could find the review in issue78 of the ginormous Park Tools tool chest, THAT would be something. There must be shitloads of stuff in the back catalog that would interest people if they can find it.

Print on general is dying off but there is still a market for the high quality specialist stuff that doesn’t go down the route of reviews, race results etc. Basically if what you print goes out of date quickly then you’re unlikely to win against online. The obvious comparison for here is Cranked, lovely mag with no online stuff at all and is doing well. Doubt there’s room for two mags like that though but it may be something to look in to.

Although Mark doesn’t describe it as such, but I pay £0 for a paper magazine and £40 a year for the forum.

Sums up why I pay too, just the digital version though as I don’t want to have them print a mag that’s just going to be left on a shelf or binned. Just from recommendations on stuff by other members I have saved the cost of membership every year, especially when it’s put me off buying something that isn’t up to the job. Although the Tamiya thread has cost me well over £1k over the last year or so, plus the Lego one.

Some YouTube info for you.

This

1.2 million views. Listed on IMDB and gets a massive review score. It’s taken a few years to get to that number of course. But total earned revenue from Youtube = £3585.25

So about the equivalent of 100 full members over the same time period. So considering that documentary was made in 2016 a rate of 16 new members a year. That doc had a budget of £30k IIRC which we covered via sponsors. That revenue above is our profit.

For the record the calculated CPM rate of £2.92 (1000 viewers = £2.92 in revenue) is pretty typical for a sports niche. The highest paying niche on YT is finance with a typical CPM in excess of £25.

The obvious comparison for here is Cranked, lovely mag with no online stuff at all and is doing well.

Is it? Bet they are struggling too.

do a Happy Valley Special! Get Sarah Lancashire owt in them there hills and spam social media with it! Do a cycle route of popular murder spots. Boom – millions of hits! They’ve probably even filmed in Tod!

Haha, you sir have the instinct of a journalist. Bet you could sell a feature on that to the Guardian or similar. If they’ve not done it already.

Of course, the problem then is what do you do the next month?

1.2m views is a tiny number. For comparison BCPOV which I see mentioned here as one people enjoy had 835,000 in the last 30 days. https://socialblade.com/youtube/c/bcpov

Compared to 30,000 for this mag’s channel https://socialblade.com/youtube/c/singletrack

YouTube is all about frequency and building a subscriber base rather than 1 off films

Exactly right.

I posted that to offer up an example of the scale required to earn money on the biggest video platform on the planet.

Cranked has 1 employee

YouTube may have potential but have a listen to the latest Pinkbike podcast for an insight into how tricky it is. They are talking to Paul the Punter who built up a pretty good channel then jacked it in to play golf!

Cranked has 1 employee

and he does a damn good job. But you don’t just produce a paper mag, you have much more than that

Cranked is indeed excellent

Me (back from the dead)!

Mark – I really think you are missing the point, and if I might be so bold you are over estimating the quality and appeal of your content. As a bike geek, I loved this film (but only once – it’s not on my repeat play list). Long, high production value (and expensive) pieces like this one which are published rarely and only really marketed to the STW loyalists (there’s a preaching to the converted theme here!) are very different to the short, topical, bite-sized YT articles published on a daily basis that drive traffic, interest and just the sense of community that you are trying to nurture. Just look at the average viewer numbers for the 10 minute max popcorn content from other YT producers. Far higher than your masterpiece.

So you published a film lasting almost 70 minutes (which in modern terms is a fair commitment of time given that Tik Tok have established that the average millennial’s attention span is 3.8 seconds) 7 years ago and on that basis you have ruled out YT (a channel which your competitors use on a daily basis to drive content, traffic and revenue)? That’s like saying I tried piano once and I couldn’t play Mozart’s piano concerto within the hour so clearly piano is a rubbish instrument.

At the risk of looking like I have swallowed a management consultancy thesaurus, you need to build a multi-channel ecosystem. Not purely for the revenue (something I thought you were trying to free yourself from anyway), but because you need more people to be interested in what you do. You need to create a virtuous circle of multi-channel content where you maximise your audience reach. Daily, short burst relevant content mixed with longer editorial style published across VOD, print, social and web. YT might not be a revenue generator, but it’s a great platform to get the message out there as a means of driving awareness and traffic to STW. You are honestly deluded if you think it will drive more magazine subscriptions though. How many people need to tell you the same thing?!

I fear that there is a consensus of feedback from just the people that you are trying to target and a consensus of defensiveness from your team. If your model is working so well, why have you extended the begging bowl for the second time?

Keep doing the same thing in the same way and see how that works for you. Me personally, I would chose to take onboard the feedback, evolve and thrive. Whether you have the team, the content or the attitude to do that is the big question.

There has been quite a bit of chat about whether your content is broad enough to reach anything more than 6k people, many of which it appears only subscribe out of kindness to pay for the forum and wouldn’t really miss the mag if it wasn’t here tomorrow.

I appreciate a lot of this thread has burst your bubble with regards to what you think your baby is all about, but burst it you must. Listen to what people are taking the time to tell you about their usage and needs and get yourself off the 20th century coolaid. You can argue all day that they are all wrong, but your competitors clearly don’t think so, and the readers that you are trying to attract don’t either based on this thread.

Being analogue in a digital world hasn’t worked for too many of your peer group, but maybe you know something that nobody else does…….the general consensus of posts in this thread tell me you might be a little out of touch with your audience.

I’m keeping away generally from this thread but obviously keeping a bit of an eye on it. But I think it’s worth a little clarification that the existence of Singletrack is not under threat. Singletrack will certainly be here in 12 months and beyond. That’s pretty much a given. I have a view on where it will be and what it will look like a year from now and the direction of travel. But we aren’t going bust. I guess the ‘struggle’ right now is to evolve and sustain or retreat and run a much smaller operation. Either way, Singletrack has a future.

Solarider isn’t in any danger of being banned. We don’t censor our critics (rules abided, of course). His views certainly look well considered and I have no doubts whatsoever that they are. Clearly they come from a genuine place of concern and a desire to help. My view from here is unfortunately a lot clearer on the realities of day to day operations and what works, what can work and what is realistic with the resources we have. Unfortunately as much as I can nod in agreement with the desires and aspirations that many have for Singletrack the actual reality of what can be done is often very different. That said, we have a plan which we hope will work – it requires your help – which is why we asked.

p.s the old classifieds is never coming back. The new one is busier than the old and generates actual revenue (Not a lot, yet) but several orders of magnitude more than the old. I get that you miss the old one, but it didn’t work for Singletrack and had to change. What you have now is not the best, but then that’s in the plan too. Unfortunately with such limited resources we can’t make the instant fixes that you all clearly wish we could – and many of you wonder why the F… we don’t. It takes time and money to run Singletrack and well, we’ll either succeed or we’ll run out of one, the other or both.

I guess I should also clarify that magazine no longer equals paper. A magazine is the entire content output of the editorial and marketing team. Some of it is published on paper, which still appears to be quite popular. But if we decided to stop printing on dead trees there would still be a magazine. It’s a case of definitions I guess. Singletrack magazine has a solid looking future whether or not we publish any of it on paper.

[ classifieds, forum]…
What you have now is not the best, but then that’s in the plan too. Unfortunately with such limited resources we can’t make the instant fixes that you all clearly wish we could – and many of you wonder why the F… we don’t. It takes time and money to run

I think this is the point that I’m trying to make, and I think one or two others as well.

Stop wasting the money I give you for the forum on writing articles that I have no interest in. Spend it on fixing the forum.

the existence of Singletrack is not under threat

So stop giving that impression! It might not be your intent, but it sure is the end result. Give the impression that what you are doing is working, life is good and this is a great place to be (because it is, and thanks for not banning me!!!!)

the general consensus of posts in this thread tell me you might be a little out of touch with your audience.

My inbox says otherwise I’m afraid. There is certainly strong feeling here and yours is one of the strongest. But I still do not agree with your view. I realise i’m in a privileged position of being able to see the full picture and I have a lot of empathy for your opinions – but it’s not the reality of the modern publishing sphere. I’m not a dinosaur hanging on to the past by any stretch of the imagination – I’d never generally put this here as it makes me sound completely lost up my own arse but I am booked to speak at 2 national publishing conferences on a number of the topics mentioned in this thread. I’ve spoken at quite a few others in the past too. I have form in this field and 22 years of experience (Nope, that does make me sound like a stuck up arse). In that time many of our competitors have fallen away, but we remain and as I just said above, Singletrack has a pretty safe future. The question is what shape that will take – My one singular goal is that future contains all the staff we currently have – that’s it!

Maybe you and others are right. Maybe I should just downsize and make some staff cuts (I’m buggered as to where I’d make those cuts mind without making things a lot worse) – but well. I’m just not going to do that. That could bring things crashing down. That’s a risk. But I’m taking that risk. I’m happy with the risk I’m taking and yes, it’s a hill I’m prepared to die on.

You may well get a lot of what you have said we should do in the future – like I said a lot of what you have said appears on the surface to be obvious and easily done. I know what is actually easy to do and is possible. I know what is a sound revenue stream to expend the limited resources we have on chasing. I guess we are going to have to see what happens over the coming months and years. I’m pretty sure if I screw this plan up there will be plenty of people lining up to tell me I was wrong and they were right all along. If we are still here in a year and the changes we want to happen happen, I don’t suppose we’ll hear much though.