The Roaring Season Questionnaire: Please Read And Reply

[Steve Holmes]

I started The Roaring Season 20 months ago in early 2011, as a place I could write articles for enjoyment, and keep in touch with fellow car enthusiast friends. It started as a hobby, and one in which I controlled and could work around my other commitments. In the 20 months since it began, the site has grown at pace, and become much larger than I imagined it would in such a short space of time. Like a living creature, its taken on a life and character, and personality of its own, and its fascinating for me to see it evolve. I love opening the site each morning to see what has been posted the night before.



The knowledge that is on the site, through the members who all contribute something special, just amazes me. Everyone here, whether through filling in the gaps, sharing their knowledge, or even asking questions, help, or advise, all play a role in making this site what it is, a large and enjoyable motorsport community. I’ve been privileged to have been offered some fascinating photo collections, mostly amateur, some professional, and each telling its own amazing story.



This is a website, and, more importantly, a community I’m proud to be a part of. However, its also a website which is taking up more and more of my time, its taking a toll on my ability to earn money through working on my business, and its taking a toll on my energy. Since I began The Roaring Season 20 months ago, I’ve spent thousands of hours working on it, and thousands of dollars. Each morning I spend at least a couple of hours here, working through recent posts to make sure everyone is behaving, working on articles, and working on photo collections, both resizing images, and researching where I can the stories each image tells. I have to analyze every new member who joins, to decipher if they’re genuine, or a hoax just trying to use the site to sell unrelated advertising. I pay a web developer each month to check through all the files to make sure there have been no attempts to hack the site, and clean up corrupt files that shouldn’t be here. In the very near future I’m going to have to invest in making the site mobile, so when travelling, I can keep a constant watch on it.



Basically, I’m spending so much time working in the site, I’m not working on the site. I want for it to be fascinating, for there to be acres of reading material for people to enjoy, and increasing photo collections. But the number of articles I’m able to write is slipping, because I can’t commit the time to them anymore.

Essentially, for me to spend more time on The Roaring Season, to grow the site and offer more of interest to my fellow enthusiasts, it needs to be earning money. And its not. And as a result, I’m becoming increasingly frustrated that its nowhere near as good as I want it to be, because I need to go off and earn a living. I have bills to pay. Eventually, as the site grows, advertisers may come on board, but right now, I’m spending large amounts of time each month on something that doesn’t even pay its own running costs, let alone my time.



Recently, it was suggested to me by a few people on here the idea of members and visitors (there are approx. 10 times the number of non-members who visit the site each month to actual registered members) paying a donation. Although I appreciate the gesture, that thought just didn’t sit right with me, as this site is not a charity.

However, other than being an online community, The Roaring Season is essentially an online magazine. It features articles, photo collections, event previews and reviews, in addition to having a very lively and interesting discussion forum. And so, as is the case with any magazine, my thoughts of late to grow The Roaring Season as I’d like to see it grow, would be to charge a small annual subscription, just as any magazine would.



As I’ve let this idea grow in my mind, so it feels like the right direction for the site. My thoughts are that each person wishing to gain full access to the site, the articles, photo collections, discussion forum etc, would pay an annual subscription of NZ$45 (which works out at NZ0.86 cents per week). As the average time spent on the site each time they visit (and for some its several times a day) is 7 min: 12sec this seems like a pretty good bang for buck. However, I’m wary that people may resent being asked to pay for what they currently get for free. But, with money coming in from subscriptions, the amount of time I could spend on the site, on photo collections, and on articles, could greatly increase. Furthermore, I could also pay other journalists around the world to submit articles, be they historical, event reviews, or other, so subscribers could enjoy a far more diverse an interesting website. The content would greatly increase, as would the quality of what will be on offer, to make this altogether a more fascinating place, but without losing its all-important community feel.

However, I’d also like your feedback on this. To take the site to the next level, you’re going to be the people who help make this happen. So I’d like to know what you think of paying an annual subscription. Is NZ$45 too much to pay, or too little? Is the thought of asking you to pay anything at all an insult? If you had the choice of the site being shut down tomorrow, or pay NZ$45, which would you prefer?



I’d really like to get as much feedback, good or bad, about this as possible. To make any step in this direction would be high risk without first hearing from those affected by it. Please let me know your thoughts, either by replying in this thread, or emailing me personally: theroaringseason@gmail.com I want to know what you think, good or bad.

Thanks for your time everyone.

Cheers
Steve Holmes