which are?

Link

which are?

Site Terms & Conditions

Jinx.

(-:

Great minds Cougar!

Premier users don’t have more rights than advertising-supported free members (and for what it’s worth, don’t get preferential treatment from a moderation standpoint either). But I can readily understand why someone who’s paid their way might get a bit snippy with those who are sat there boasting “what ads?”, I would be a bit miffed also.

I said that they think, not that I believe and thusly comment that freeloaders are somehow a class below.
Boasting “what ads?” constantly on this type of thread is a bit silly and possibly a dig back at the smugness of the “P” owners.

I do idly wonder how our most vocal advertising dodgers will feel when their “free” content goes pop due to lack of funding. Probably just shrug and move on to the next free content site, rinse and repeat.

Personally, not that I’m a vocal ad dodger, I’d log it in with the rest of the case studies and see if any students could improve on the business model, and then get on with the rest of my life. The void would more than likely be filled with something else.
Business is sometimes very cruel.

Business is sometimes very cruel.

Yup. Sometimes you have to fight and push back to stay in.

Yup. Sometimes you have to fight and push back to stay in.

Indeed, and there’d be another case study. 😀

I said that they think, not that I believe and thusly comment that freeloaders are somehow a class below.
Boasting “what ads?” constantly on this type of thread is a bit silly and possibly a dig back at the smugness of the “P” owners.

Pfft! You’ll be livid before long. Its a very exclusive club dontchaknow? Just wait until you see us out on the trails with our custom made tops, proudly displaying our big bold blue P insignia on the front. Its our admission to the trails that peasants or skinflints like you will no longer be allowed to ride.

Or you might be allowed to ride a small section of them. But only after you’ve read the back of some Sunday supplements advertising trousers with elasticated waistbands, and weekend cruise in the Fjords, watched a short video of the new Sofa range now available at DFS, browsed the Argos catalogue, and ordered a book or a DVD from Amazon 😛

+1 with Mark, it’s the whole freetard mentality.

Well that’s just rude.

and thusly comment that freeloaders are somehow a class below.

Not really I think we are paying for things they also use
They are not a lower class but they may have less class

The reality is if the site made no money it would not be here. It makes money from the mag and form the P, primarily, so without us there is no hive mind.
Itsa business not a charity
£15 for this place is a bargain IMHO

Boasting “what ads?” constantly on this type of thread is a bit silly and possibly a dig back at the smugness of the “P” owners.

Nah I have one of them anyway ad are annoying and I assume that is the motivation there rather than “depriving STW of even more money”

Nothing remotely personal, sweary or aggressive in my posts so far Junky. That’s because I’m not upset.

I replied to your comment none of that is evidence of “distress” any more than you replying is

I expected better than passive aggressive twaddle, from you

Nothing passive agressive in my posts Junky, you are wide of the mark.
In fact it was a well behaved thread until you barged in and told everyone to **** off.

Anyone else concerned about the state of STW bank balance?
First the lifetime subscription, now this. I’m worried it sounds like the piggy bank might be a bit light 😕

Well I’d be surprised if the divulge that info, but Grit must have cost a bit and if the forum is anything to go by its probably not the success they’d like.

Also the competition over the years has upped their game, both in print and Internet.

STW still has plenty going for it if the right decisions are made.

P20 that’s abit rude. Maybe they don’t want to be a free online resource for a commercial company piggybacking.

No offence intended. I love this place, just expressing concern

Perhaps they could pay you as a consultant dragon. You could make them a heavily branded promotional film

The competition has upped it’s game both on the internet and print?

Who is that then?

Do you have the circulation/stat figures?

It’s all right for friends I don’t charge 🙂

In their own ways Pinkbike, Bikeradar, Velonews for web news and Cyclist, Rouler and Ride Journal for mag content. But STW have the best forum.

wrecker this is just you being rude to me whilst claiming to be the “victim” of me. I didn’t even tell you to **** off never mind everyone 🙄
Your posts are many things, fictional mainly, but polite is not one of them.

I know it’s not a video and not relevant but I feel a need to share. That Mallet DH ad with Loic Bruni which is at the top of my page – major man crush going on here. 😀

Edit: Oh no by posting it’s disappeared!!

Anyone else concerned about the state of STW bank balance?
First the lifetime subscription, now this. I’m worried it sounds like the piggy bank might be a bit light

I have no idea; it probably is running on the edge. But then surely that’s the whole point as to why “freeloading” doesn’t help? I don’t envy trying to maintain a business including actual staff salaries out of this, I’m not daft but Mark’s way more canny (and brave) than I’ll ever be.

Still not convinced we should be bothered about this at all… Seems very much like a storm in a teacup and some seem to be getting a bit too emotional about it. I can see both sides of the argument, but unless the situation gets almost impossibly and ludicrously extreme, we won’t as STW users (Premier and otherwise) lose out really.

Chill! It’s a magazine and a website. The aspects that make this place good i.e the community, isn’t likely to change for the worse as a result.

wrecker this is just you being rude to me whilst claiming to be the “victim” of me. I didn’t even tell you to **** off never mind everyone
Your posts are many things, fictional mainly, but polite is not one of them.

I’m not being rude to you! For example I don’t accuse you of making things up. I can’t figure out if this is a wind up. Are you intentionally doing all the stuff you are accusing me of? Is this s thing?
And there’s nothing wrong with my manners!

Junkyard – lazarus

wrecker this is just you being rude to me whilst claiming to be the “victim” of me. I didn’t even tell you to **** off never mind everyone 🙄
Ahem.

Dont like it **** off your “revenue” wont be missed one bit.

Looks like you’re giving advice to freeloaders, to me, in a less than courteous and non-aggressive manner. Oops. 😉

There’s going to be a lot of uneaten pudding about.

CBA to read this whole rambling thread – but I agree with the point Mark is making, but being right doesn’t necessarily guarantee success.

For me this all comes down to understanding what your product is, and who your customers are.

In meeja this seems to have got really confusing….. are we, the STW massive, the customer or the product? If we are both (which we are, I think) then a balance needs to be found. Do we want to see Chris Akrig’s latest edit? Yes we do. Do we want to see Nukeproof’s post WC team vid? Not so much.

HOWEVER…. look at pinkbike. They (as far as I can see) are making no attempt to find this balance – and just publish everything. I’m sure they have some sort of hidden pricing structure – but my point is that they don’t seem to curate their content quite so much.

I wonder if this gives them a broader, and therefore larger audience? Does the lack of curation drive people away from the site? I suspect not.

intrestin, innit.

Why would it effect us?

Seriously.

then a balance needs to be found. Do we want to see Chris Akrig’s latest edit? Yes we do. Do we want to see Nukeproof’s post WC team vid? Not so much.

conversely (as we are all different) I don’t mind so much the vids like Nukeproof’s WC team, (or the syndicate, or the Atherton project for that matter) as while, they are clearly adverts, there is at least something of interest (to me at least). whereas the Chirs Akrigg one, riding in bad weather in his Madison jacket, Madison shorts etc etc are JUST puff pieces. If you don’t think so, then open any magazine and look for Chris being used to promote the same jacket he was wearing in the vid. That one espicailly may as well be a 30 sec Madison ad, rather than the pretend “edit” it claims to be…

Can’t see what the problem is here

Mark using common sense and business sense and being clear.

In the context of complaints over Tudor/Maserati etc, telling to read…

You want access to our audience? That’s what we sell. That’s the business we are in.”

So all the “freeloader/put up with it” BS can be put to bed. It’s crystal clear what the role of users is and how that is viewed. The audience is (correctly) something valuable that is sold and monetised. Nothing wrong with that but often overlooked in “ad debates”.

Are you new here Captain!! 😉

It’s certainly an interesting stance from Mark, as until now there’s been a kind of consensus that media outlets will happily share free sponsored content with their audience in order to gain ad revenue.

Mark clearly feels this model isn’t working for ST (though we’ve already agreed that they don’t go big on sick edits anyway), and he’s pushing back.

It’d be even more interesting if Pinkbike had taken the same position, but I’m still keen to see what happens. If anything.

So all the “freeloader/put up with it” BS can be put to bed. It’s crystal clear what the role of users is and how that is viewed. The audience is (correctly) something valuable that is sold and monetised. Nothing wrong with that but often overlooked in “ad debates”.

There’s basically a dichotomy at the heart of every commercial media enterprise.

The editorial team create content to be “sold” to the audience, while the ad sales team “sell” the audience to the advertisers.

Some strike a better balance than others. I’d say ST are doing very well at it, despite the whinging from certain users on here.

Agreed…

…but judging by other media/magazine news I would guess that ad revenues are the more important value driver – albeit that you cannot have one without the other – hence the (occasional) “like it or lump it” comment comes across as a bit odd!!

The thing is though that the driver for the traffic on the site is the forum. So ‘we’ generate the content. I come on here to read your witterings, the ‘original’ content on the front page is often fairly uninspiring or feels quite a lot like regurgitated press releases.

If I want useful content (ride guides, tech guides, reviews,etc.) I go else where, if I want helpful input/merciless mocking I come on this forum.

I’d like to use a website and forum, yet in no way contribute to the financial upkeep of said forum, whilst complaining about adverts. I will then find another forum to complain on when first forum goes under.

😆

The thing is though that the driver for the traffic on the site is the forum

Just to add some more info on this point. While it’s true that the majority of traffic sits in the forum that doesn’t make it the place where the most ad revenue is earned. A content page earns far more revenue for us than a forum page, so while there are more forum impressions each content page is much more valuable.

High value advertising is always delivered capped. This means an individual user will see that ad only a few times each period (usually a day). This means that with each page view that user is worth less to us for that page impression.

Having 1000 people read a single content page and then leave the site (bounce) (Content pages are what we call stories on the front page) on our site is worth far more than 100 people viewing 10 forum pages per visit. Same number of page impressions but very different in terms of revenues earned.

When you start seeing the rubbish ads, like the B&Q one I’m looking at right now, it’s most likely because you have now exhausted all the high earning ads and are now having the network ads thrust upon you.

If we can at least book more brands into our ad system then you will see more relevant bike industry ads rather then the irrelevant network ads. Ads that are more suited to the audience they are presented to annoy you less and earn us more.

In the grand scheme of things, when brands bypass this simple concept by creating ads that are actually presented to us as ‘sick edits’ or the like it undermines that system and we see fewer of the relevant brand ads and more of the crappy network ads. We earn less and the spiral downwards continues.

There is no blanket ban on videos that contain logos – we are just going to be more careful with our editorial filter. Before we run one we will ask the simple question, ‘is it newsworthy enough to be run as a story?’. This is in lieu of the more common thought process of, ‘everyone is running this so we should too or we’ll miss out on page impressions.’

An example of where that is the case is with the recent Sealskinz funded video telling the story of how Traharn Chidley used mountain biking to escape an abusive relationship. It was funded by Sealskinz and featured their brand but it was a story we felt was worth telling.

If it doesn’t pass the editorial test then we won’t run it. If the brand involved pays us to run it we probably will but the fact they’ve paid will be made very clear to you, the viewers. there will probably be a clear ‘Sponsored’ label/category displayed on the story somewhere – we are working the details on that one.

Clearly there is an element of subjectivity involved in what is newsworthy and what is not and I suspect many may examine what we do next very carefully indeed and point out what they see is hypocritical or otherwise. That’s because there really is no definitive line as to that judgement call – or rather we would all probably draw the line in different places. But from our point of view the critical point to make is that judgement will be made by editorial staff and not sales/marketing staff. And their motivation will be less traffic chasing and more editorial worthiness.

That’s kind of what we are going for 🙂

Dropping my funloving windup online persona for one moment.

There are some people who’ve posred earlier on here who really struggle to grasp the normal world. Jesus wept.

You tell ’em Hora!

There are a couple of the very vocal ‘I should be able to see and do what I like, but I’m not paying for it’ crowd who would be well advised never to start their own businesses. As they’d be in for one hell of a shock when it slowly dawns on them how capitalism actually works!