"Profiting" is probably the wrong word for it as a VBulliten deployment of this size requires a lot of resources to run smoothly. I would be surprised if they do much more than break even--advertising revenue is usually pretty modest.
I visit everyday and welcome the ads. I am their target audience. I was just wondering if it was a big corporation behind it. It must be profitable as they have been running them for a long time and for several sports including road and golf. It's an interesting business model as they are the go-to forum for mountain biking.
I'm Francis Cebedo and I started this site in 1996 as a hobby. It grew, I quit my job and I've been doing this gig ever since. The good news is through all the ups and downs, I'm still here and this site still holds true to it's vision. It helps mountain bikers share experiences and buy better products.
We have always been advertising supported and have never been highly profitable. Last year was a big loss for us and we're trying to recover and be back in the black this year.
Some factors:
- Mtbr and roadbikereview have almost 2 million monthly users and our server costs are enormous.
- Ad blockers really harm us.
- Some of our users don't really buy through us or support our advertisers. We're trying to change this!
- Our site is old and starting to look old. We upgraded all our software and are now redesigning.
So, that's it in a nutshell. We have 10 sites, as you see in the footer of this page. We have about 12 employees running all our sites. The best/biggest site of all is mtbr.
With your help, we can rebuild this thing and be around for a long time!!
Thanks for providing a great service and forum for like minded consumers and advertisers to connect. While I'll always shop for the best price, I'll continue to utilize your links when they provide the best deal. :thumbsup:
I'm Francis Cebedo and I started this site in 1996 as a hobby. It grew, I quit my job and I've been doing this gig ever since. The good news is through all the ups and downs, I'm still here and this site still holds true to it's vision. It helps mountain bikers share experiences and buy better products.
We have always been advertising supported and have never been highly profitable. Last year was a big loss for us and we're trying to recover and be back in the black this year.
Some factors:
- Mtbr and roadbikereview have almost 2 million monthly users and our server costs are enormous.
- Ad blockers really harm us.
- Some of our users don't really buy through us or support our advertisers. We're trying to change this!
- Our site is old and starting to look old. We upgraded all our software and are now redesigning.
So, that's it in a nutshell. We have 10 sites, as you see in the footer of this page. We have about 12 employees running all our sites. The best/biggest site of all is mtbr.
With your help, we can rebuild this thing and be around for a long time!!
It had no revenue stream, specially back in 2000. No online sales and online ads for that demographic a few years ago. Things have changed but there's bigger fish to fry
It may come back some day. But first I'm working on beerreview.com
If you use AdBlock, you probably shouldn't advertise that you use it. I'm sure a lot of revenue is lost from people using AdBlock. I believe even some modest income is generated from simply loading and displaying ads, let alone the click-thru.
I'll never understand people who actively use a site like this, and then brag about using ad blockers. To me that's kind of like going into a restaurant and bragging about how you never pay the bill (or otherwise support the business) after you eat.
Because the ads are big, colorful, and blinky. I think more subtle google adwords type ads are more pleasing and targeted. Having some chick in a bike outfit staring at me is cool, but I'm married and have no intentions of finding singles in my area.
In the world of IntErWebZ advertising, targeted relevance is key. This sites ads have none of that. The data is out there, but you have to spend money to make money. Time to ditch the blinkies and put up google ads.
As for the comment of MTBR looking outdated, until you move away from vBulletin and towards a new social networking platform, it will not get better.
My .02 worth of honest opinion. Take it or leave it.
Lets not make posts like that mate, if google thinks for a second that the site owner or anyone really is asking for clicks their adsense account gets pulled.
Yeah a fee based plan would be ok. I pay a couple r so tenners to bikemojo---it gets the ability to edit posts and to post pictures that appear without having to wait for moderation..and a supporter banner.
Consumer Review is owned by Invenda (E-centives "renamed"), experts at advertising and digital marketing. The website appears to be dumbed down from several years ago where one could actually find how much each operating unit was really in the red or black and what future outlook was.
I choose the "mtbr" option in the "how did you hear about us" drop down every time I buy something from Price Point. Its not exactly true, especially after the first time, but I like to hope it helps the site in some small way.
I'm not a computer development wiz or anything, but I like v bulletin the best of any forum software I've seen/used. I don't know if the actual forum software is out dated or just the way its being used.
Look - the internet if FULL of really annoying ads. I block them all without discrimination. I don't want to see them. If that means MTBR goes belly up... so be it.
I like the site and I will visit it no matter what ads you have or software you use. As a married guy, I do think the "find singles" ads are annoying, but they are everywhere not just here. I am also told it has more to do with search history of the user as opposed to something the site admin has set up.
Th singles ads are on Hotmail, most motorcycle forums and MTBR. I am not sure that my cruising CNN, Hotmail, Moto and Biking means I am the target audience, but it could be. Hey, at least for me the pics are of women, so they have that part of the advertising done correctly.
It's about 15 machines. The forums, galleries, wordpress, classifieds are Unix. Our product reviews are on PC, DotNET platform. Then there's load balancers and SQL Server database machines. I think they're mostly Dell server class machines.
Thanks for this site! Virtually everyone I know and every ride I've done is due to this site. But please ask the moderators to tighten up a bit on the non-mountain biking posts that keep cluttering the place. Recently Passion is looking more like an Oprah or Dr. Phil forum.
FWIW, I strongly dislike the wider ad space on the right.
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