My new carsite->The 200mph Club

Originally Posted by JoachimWichmann A site like www.the200mphclub.com is very expensive to create - not only because of the design and layout costs, but also because of the man-hours behind the whole project.

its a good job we can throw something like JW together in 5 minutes or we would have to charge you to keep promoting your site here

[adamwich]

I personally doubt that we are going to get a lot of members! Of-cause it would be nice to earn a couple of bucks - but that is not the reason why we have made the site!

[Wutputt]

First of all, the design of your site looks awesome! It must have taken a while to create it.

But I've to agree with other. Though asking some money for silver and gold membership sounds like a good idea to earn back all the effort you guys have put into the site, I can speak out of experience that it doesn't run all that well. I've been part of the editorial staff of a relative big amateur F1 site (actually I still am, but I'm on a break right now). And we also thought we should find another way - other than advertisement - to pay the bills for our site. So we put up a special gold membership part of the site. You had to pay to become a 'gold' member, but in return you got some exclusive features, special highres pics, etc. in return. Sadly only a handful of the regular visitors became a 'gold' member. And almost everyone of them was an ancient visitor of the site who did want to support it. The reason why it didn't pull off? People can get the same (or a big part of it) for free elsewhere and a lot of our visitors were pretty young and they don't really want to spend their precious money on those things.

I personally think you're site will suffer the same problem, even so the design is mind-blowing. You can only gain out of such special membership, if you're an established value in the 'market' or if you have something really special or new to offer. Don’t interpret this as a criticism, but as an advice. A beautiful site like this doesn’t deserve to be faced such problems.

[RC45]

Originally Posted by Dan Originally Posted by JoachimWichmann A site like www.the200mphclub.com is very expensive to create - not only because of the design and layout costs, but also because of the man-hours behind the whole project. its a good job we can throw something like JW together in 5 minutes or we would have to charge you to keep promoting your site here

And I figure for looking at the pictures I posted here... less your .21c commission. carry the 1... divide by the Daily Upload quotient... subtract the Google effect...

That's about $7.54 a week as far as I can figure... can I have him send the money to your PayPal Dan?? hehehe

[adamwich]

Originally Posted by Wutputt First of all, the design of your site looks awesome! It must have taken a while to create it. But I've to agree with other. Though asking some money for silver and gold membership sounds like a good idea to earn back all the effort you guys have put into the site, I can speak out of experience that it doesn't run all that well. I've been part of the editorial staff of a relative big amateur F1 site (actually I still am, but I'm on a break right now). And we also thought we should find another way - other than advertisement - to pay the bills for our site. So we put up a special gold membership part of the site. You had to pay to become a 'gold' member, but in return you got some exclusive features, special highres pics, etc. in return. Sadly only a handful of the regular visitors became a 'gold' member. And almost everyone of them was an ancient visitor of the site who did want to support it. The reason why it didn't pull off? People can get the same (or a big part of it) for free elsewhere and a lot of our visitors were pretty young and they don't really want to spend their precious money on those things. I personally think you're site will suffer the same problem, even so the design is mind-blowing. You can only gain out of such special membership, if you're an established value in the 'market' or if you have something really special or new to offer. Don’t interpret this as a criticism, but as an advice. A beautiful site like this doesn’t deserve to be faced such problems.

Thanks for the advice Wutputt! I think we maybe have to rethink some of our ideas behind the silver- and gold memberships!
I think we are going to keep the ability to become a member - but maybe add some features - I need to work on that over the next weeks

My brother and I have actually talked about making our own rally - maybe that would be a great reason to become a member?

[No.1]

Originally Posted by adamwich Originally Posted by Wutputt First of all, the design of your site looks awesome! It must have taken a while to create it. But I've to agree with other. Though asking some money for silver and gold membership sounds like a good idea to earn back all the effort you guys have put into the site, I can speak out of experience that it doesn't run all that well. I've been part of the editorial staff of a relative big amateur F1 site (actually I still am, but I'm on a break right now). And we also thought we should find another way - other than advertisement - to pay the bills for our site. So we put up a special gold membership part of the site. You had to pay to become a 'gold' member, but in return you got some exclusive features, special highres pics, etc. in return. Sadly only a handful of the regular visitors became a 'gold' member. And almost everyone of them was an ancient visitor of the site who did want to support it. The reason why it didn't pull off? People can get the same (or a big part of it) for free elsewhere and a lot of our visitors were pretty young and they don't really want to spend their precious money on those things. I personally think you're site will suffer the same problem, even so the design is mind-blowing. You can only gain out of such special membership, if you're an established value in the 'market' or if you have something really special or new to offer. Don’t interpret this as a criticism, but as an advice. A beautiful site like this doesn’t deserve to be faced such problems. Thanks for the advice Wutputt! I think we maybe have to rethink some of our ideas behind the silver- and gold memberships! I think we are going to keep the ability to become a member - but maybe add some features - I need to work on that over the next weeks My brother and I have actually talked about making our own rally - maybe that would be a great reason to become a member?

Start big, why don't ya?!

A rally - similar to Bullrn/Gumball etc. - thats gonna cost a lot, and with no pedigree or experience in such, this has to be a pipe-dream for the forseeable future :shock:

I still think the membership idea is bad

JW set up a donation system, and as has been noted, support for this has been limited. - And that's here on JW, perhaps the greatest car site on the web

I really don't see how you can pull this off :bah:

[adamwich]

Originally Posted by thenumber1 Originally Posted by adamwich Originally Posted by Wutputt First of all, the design of your site looks awesome! It must have taken a while to create it. But I've to agree with other. Though asking some money for silver and gold membership sounds like a good idea to earn back all the effort you guys have put into the site, I can speak out of experience that it doesn't run all that well. I've been part of the editorial staff of a relative big amateur F1 site (actually I still am, but I'm on a break right now). And we also thought we should find another way - other than advertisement - to pay the bills for our site. So we put up a special gold membership part of the site. You had to pay to become a 'gold' member, but in return you got some exclusive features, special highres pics, etc. in return. Sadly only a handful of the regular visitors became a 'gold' member. And almost everyone of them was an ancient visitor of the site who did want to support it. The reason why it didn't pull off? People can get the same (or a big part of it) for free elsewhere and a lot of our visitors were pretty young and they don't really want to spend their precious money on those things. I personally think you're site will suffer the same problem, even so the design is mind-blowing. You can only gain out of such special membership, if you're an established value in the 'market' or if you have something really special or new to offer. Don’t interpret this as a criticism, but as an advice. A beautiful site like this doesn’t deserve to be faced such problems. Thanks for the advice Wutputt! I think we maybe have to rethink some of our ideas behind the silver- and gold memberships! I think we are going to keep the ability to become a member - but maybe add some features - I need to work on that over the next weeks My brother and I have actually talked about making our own rally - maybe that would be a great reason to become a member? Start big, why don't ya?! A rally - similar to Bullrn/Gumball etc. - thats gonna cost a lot, and with no pedigree or experience in such, this has to be a pipe-dream for the forseeable future :shock: I still think the membership idea is bad JW set up a donation system, and as has been noted, support for this has been limited. - And that's here on JW, perhaps the greatest car site on the web I really don't see how you can pull this off :bah:

We are not going to make a rally... right now

I know JW is the best car-site on the internet - nothing can compete with JW - and thats why people want to donate money!


Maybe the idea of having a membership is bad - but we are going to stick to the idea for a couple of weeks to see if it works!
If no one wants to become members of our site, then we have to figure out what to do!
The problem is that our webspace is limited -
and if we want to have a lot of pictures on our site, the pictures can't be in high res!

[TT]

Just out of curiosity, what kind of hosting plan did you get?

For a start I am sure you can live with some cheap 10 USD a month hosthing, most of them offering pretty decent space. And at first you won't burn lot of bandwidth I think. The real nightmare will come after a while

[adamwich]

^^ The webhotel has got 1gb of storage and free traffic!

[No.1]

Originally Posted by adamwich We are not going to make a rally... right now I know JW is the best car-site on the internet - nothing can compete with JW - and thats why people want to donate money! Maybe the idea of having a membership is bad - but we are going to stick to the idea for a couple of weeks to see if it works! If no one wants to become members of our site, then we have to figure out what to do! The problem is that our webspace is limited - and if we want to have a lot of pictures on our site, the pictures can't be in high res!

Obviously you need to experiment

I hope it does well, because there is a lack of decent car sites/pic sites on the net (with the obvious exceptions)

[TT]

Originally Posted by adamwich ^^ The webhotel has got 1gb of storage and free traffic!

I'd stay stay away from "free unlimited" traffic: that's bullshit and they will cut your website off as soon as you will generate some real traffic.

1 GB of storage should be good for the first months though and you can find cheap options in that range

[JoachimWichmann]

We would love if people wanted to support the site by submitting some pictures - otherwise we have too much storage !

Have a nice day

[JoachimWichmann]

at the point we are rethinking the whole concept - don´t worry about the costs - the site was not created to make money - it was created because of great interest in cars! All we need now, is people submitting their supercars pics to make the site grow!

[TT]

Beware insane: many hosts don't warn you when you pass the limit and they will just charge your credit card for the extra GB used! With my previous host, I had to manually "close" the website when I wanted to avoid that

yep and they usualy charge a ridiculous rate per Gb too