Quote:
Originally Posted by Purple AK  It was suggested that the Website be owned by the Club and that some areas of it be restricted to Members only as at present there is no incentive for people to join the Club as all the information is there for all to see. Tony agreed to talk to Robert to see if it was possible, and how much it would cost. |
There seems to be a misnomer doing the rounds regarding the CRC site, so I thought it best to put some of this to bed.
Advertising
I run the google ads on the site and also the banner ads, now some of you might have the misconception that this brings in a shed load of cash. I wish that were so. Last month, this site generated the grand sum of $115, thats DOLLARS, not sterling. Please see screen shot attached. Unfortunately, under the google terms and conditions, I can only display the revenue, not the impressions and CTR etc.
There are some additional funds through the banner ads, but those are £100 per quarter, so again not a great deal of cash.
In comparison, the resources needed to run this site mean that I spend £300 a month on hosting charges, thankfully I have a couple of paid sites on this server which helps to cover the costs.
So, as you can see, I don't run the site for money, in fact it is losing revenue but I am happy to cover the loss.
Restricited Access
This has been mentioned a number of times in the past, and I have resisted restricting visibility of the site as that would not be beneificial to anyone. I have seen paid access models fail in the past and I am not prepared to see this site fail, I have put 9 years into this forum and I don't want that to go to waste.
Restricting access to the website will do us no favours at all and will fragment the users, instead we need to look at reinforcing membership at a grassroots level, members parking at event, member only event etc. The forum is only a small part of the equation here and forcing restricted access is a knee jerk reaction to a wider issue.
Membership
There also seems to be a misnomer that due to the open access on the forum, we have lost members. When I initially started the membership system on the website, we increased membership significantly to over 1500 members. Membership dropped off over the last couple of years, probably due to lack of direction within the club, so we need to understand where and why we lost members during that period and what we need to do to bring them back.
Any comments are more than welcomed.