Cycle Chat finances - advertising?

[TheDoctor]

What you say about advertising couldnt be further from the truth you seem to have been going about it wrong. I wouldnt run PPC on a site like this for a start, forums are notoriously bad for click through ratios and ad blindness.

Ive made a living from websites since i was 17 and have been working at home self employed that whole time. A site like this could make some good money. I recently sold two sites receiving a combined 100,000 uniques a day for nearly 6 figures (adult sites) but the adult online industry is in the toilet at the moment.

And you still don't know better than to buy a bike at Halfords???

 

[Will1985]

Slight problem in your calculations there blazed - CC averages about 700 member visits a day, added to all of the guests who come in from searches makes maybe 1500 unique daily visitors. That is vastly different from your filthy smut empire which clearly has a much broader audience than cycling. Scale your figures down, and CC might go for £1500-2000.

The beauty of this forum as repeated many times is the distinct lack of advertising, no matter how obtrusive.

 

[thomas]

Scale your figures down, and CC might go for £1500-2000.

The beauty of this forum as repeated many times is the distinct lack of advertising, no matter how obtrusive.

CycleChat would go for a lot more than £1500-2000. I'd usually aim to sell my websites for 12 months revenue, but usually end up with at least 18-24 months. As this site doesn't have any real revenue you can't really work on that, but I bet it could make some money and for the user base and loyalty of members it would be worth more.

I was offered somewhere in your price estimate for here for my Guess My Age site (in my signature), which gets a lot less visitors than here and has a lot less too. Though the site makes some money, it doesn't make that much.

There would be other ways to monetise the site, such as premium subscriptions, selling the tops and things all the time for a reasonable profit....

You said that affiliate links can have a low click through rate with lower rate of success. It can be true, it depends how targeted they were. My idea involved members making an active effort to click on them before making a purchase, rather than hoping people A click on them and B buy something within 30 days.

 

[Crackle]

Attach an online shop to it, selling bike parts - There's a few sites do exactly that.

 

[TheDoctor]

Trouble is, if it became a paysite, or even if some changes happened that members didn't like, they'd soon be off somewhere else.
C+ became BikeRadar, and a whole load of us decamped over here. ACF imploded - CC could do the same. Admin seems highly reluctant to commercialise the site, and I think he's got the right idea.

 

[joolsybools]

£10 a year to use the site. Is that do-able?

 

[ianrauk]

nope, bye bye if CC turns into a paysite. What attracted me to this site (and I can imagine a lot of others) was that it is free and had no advertisements and/or popups. Being a paysite would put a lot of people off, especially newbies. However when Shaun has a funds drive as has had recently then I am more then happy to contribute something.

£10 a year to use the site. Is that do-able?

 

[MacB]

nope, bye bye if CC turns into a paysite. What attracted me to this site (and I can imagine a lot of others) was that it is free and had no advertisements and/or popups. Being a paysite would put a lot of people off, especially newbies. However when Shaun has a funds drive as has had recently then I am more then happy to contribute something.

agreed, and I think there is a tendency for people to see £ signs and assume that the rest of us see the same as well.

 

[Shaun]

Attach an online shop to it, selling bike parts - There's a few sites do exactly that.

I would like to do that someday (and many other things too), but unfortunately that's not something I can do at the moment.

I work full-time, then work on my revenue generating business site in my spare time, then manage CC in the remainder of my spare time.

I would love to make CC my living one day, but the transition needs to be one that's slow, steady, and managable.

CC could be much bigger than just the forums - there are many things we could do with it - but it needs to be done in a way that everyone feels comfortable with, and with a reasonably sustainable revenue stream.

Cheers,
Shaun

 

[blazed]

And you still don't know better than to buy a bike at Halfords???

They are the only place which sell Boardman bikes unless you buy second hand but i have bought so much stuff from there and never had many problems.

Slight problem in your calculations there blazed - CC averages about 700 member visits a day, added to all of the guests who come in from searches makes maybe 1500 unique daily visitors. That is vastly different from your filthy smut empire which clearly has a much broader audience than cycling. Scale your figures down, and CC might go for £1500-2000.

The beauty of this forum as repeated many times is the distinct lack of advertising, no matter how obtrusive.

No it would go for more than that, a site i sold a few years ago healthadel.com, was nothing special received maybe 100 uniques a day tops for nearly a grand. The reason it had a lot of unique content, just like this site. If the buyer wanted there was a good base to work from. I used to see apparent small forums going all the time for good sums of money, right now isnt the best time to sell but i would buy for £1500/£2000 in a heartbeat.

With porn you are selling a membership to a site/dating/webcams for say $30/month and taking a percentage of the sale, when you sell a bike you are selling something a lot more valuable the potential for bigger commissions are there but im sure a lot of manufactures would be happy to sponsor promotions on this forum on a flat rate basis. The advertising doesnt have to be obtrusive at all and could be beneficial to everyone. Also comparing to adult again, this sites users will all be prepared to get their wallets out and buy, whether a bike or accessory, the average porn site is full of free surfers and not prepared to do so.

 

[Dan B]

the adult online industry is in the toilet at the moment.

That would be what they call "scat", then.

 

[mangaman]

I would have thought that a cyclechat shop selling nice cycling kit and other things that people might buy would be a better thing. Something like this. You could also ask for a voluntary subscription - some of us could afford to pay and some of us probably would. It would have not to be compulsory and probably the only thing it would get you would be a little badge under your avatar saying 'subscriber' - but it's clear that cyclechat is an important resource for quite a few people, and we're not all broke.

This is what we did - seemed to work : the Blue Peter style Totaliser filled up.

I don't like the idea of a badge saying subscriber though - it should all be anonymous as a lot of people can't afford to give, and it might end with people perceiving "subscribers" getting preferential treatment from Mods.

 

[TheDoctor]

This is what we did - seemed to work : the Blue Peter style Totaliser filled up.

I don't like the idea of a badge saying subscriber though - it should all be anonymous as a lot of people can't afford to give, and it might end with people perceiving "subscribers" getting preferential treatment from Mods.[/QUOTE]


Like there aren't enough accusations of favouritism and cliques!!!!!!

The totaliser seemed to work, and I'd sooner just have another if and when we need it.