Would you pay for access to this site?

[Major Catastrophe]

****it. I give up.

It's a language problem.

 

[photodog]

2 nations seperated by a common tongue.

 

[Tommyrot]

No, lots more fora to post on, don't buy magazines anyway....

 

[LadyInBed]

If IPC Put all the editorial content of their magazines on line here... including all of the articles

I suspect that the total would be far less than the sum of the parts

 

[Major Catastrophe]

2 nations seperated by a common tongue.

I'll have you know my tongue is not at all common.

 

[pyrojames]

But it is my belief that any subscription to content has to be entirely serparate from forum use. To make the forums paid would kill them, as it is the wide range of views, and quick answer to questions that make them work in the first place.


So, the time that you spend here... and the entertainment and knowledge that you gain... is worth NOTHING to you??

It actually costs me, as I should be either working for real, or working on the boat etc. It is a distraction only, and Iwouldn't pay to be distracted.

 

[webcraft]

.
If IPC started charging to post on these fora a free site somewhere else would take up the slack and the majority of posters would move.

I only buy a sailing comic every second month these days, so even a fiver a month would be exorbitant.

- W

 

[nimbusgb]

No.

Haven't bought a sailing ( or any other magazine ) in years apart from a 5 year subscription that I have to a gliding mag. Not about to start now.

I rarely ( once or twice a year? ) purchase newspapers either. Current affairs are available on the web/radio/tv. Don't want to pay for waste paper!

There are alternatives already. There may be a model in having access to content and back issues but I would not pay for access to a forum.

I would rather pay say £2.00 for a view of the magazine, on demand, certainly not by subscription.

 

[silver-fox]

I used to get PBO, YM, ST by mail but stopped a few years ago. I thought the content didn't
justify the cost. There was duplication of content between PBO & YM. Why buy both? Also seemed like there was lots of easy to test articles, stuff a load of chart plotters on a bench, next month, VHFs etc etc instead of what I would call more practical things. Something has gone, I can remember reading them cover to cover, now I skip though them in Smiths. Maybe I have changed?
So if all the mags were available on this site plus the forums/fora then I would pay a fiver a month maybe more.

PS to the twenty percent who have stopped reading this after the first sentence due to spelling and grammer/grammar, well you won't have got this far anyway.
To the rest of you who took part in the poll, forgive my poor education.

PPS I would insert one of those smiley fings here but don't know how!!!!

DaiB
Here is a smiley on me (Put the cursor where you want it to appear and then left click with your mouse on the smiley thing to the right of your post thatyou want to appear.)

Your post sums up my views on content exactly... although I still sadly buy YM & PBO each month like a druggie looking for a buzz and not getting it anymore.

Recently I switched to electronic copies which is much cheaper and hated it at first but then I got used to driving it and, if anything prefer it.

But to repeat your words

"I can remember reading them cover to cover, now I skip though them . Maybe I have changed?"

 

[mtb]

no

I think this forum more than covers it's running cost's
We all say what our opinions are, plus the huge input of advice, these forums save the editors both time and cost's they can get a fair measure of opinion and access the huge knowledge available here
if at some point I was asked to pay I wouldnt and thats that

cheers
Mick

 

[lw395]

No.
I would not want this to be a forum where all the other posters were prepared to pay.

£5/month is a lot, loads of clubs run forums, even the RYA has one on its site included in your £30 or whatever the membership is.

The only value in a forum is the members, and they don't 'belong' to a magazine publisher so it has not much to sell.

I don't object to paying for online content in principle, but it would have to be a specific need and a known quality of information. Not much of the magazine content stands the test of time, I see it as mostly something to read on a train, or in the club bar.

It's interesting that the FT has done ok with a subscription service, but all the other newspapers just talk about it. I don't think the status quo can last as more people like me are allegedly being subsidised by less magazine/paper buyers...

 

[dylanwinter]

advertising revenues and sailors

A definite maybe! But all the costs in your poll are far too high - remember that IPC probably fund these pages entirely from the Google Adverts that appear in the side bar and top bar. .

the side bar advertising revenues are pretty pathetic - my you tube site gets 1.5 million hits a month - nearly all for truck and tractors videos - one truck video has had 7 million hits -

My site revenue hovers around £15 a day - often lower.

the biggest hitting sailing video has had 30,000 views- but the average hit rate is 5,000 a year

The trouble is that us sailors are a a very, very small market compared to the footy supporters, car fanatics or even truckers and farmers.

I am a one-time magazine and newspaper hack and former IPC employee. I have even written a couple of articles for PBO - but that was over 20 years ago now.

I bet they are paying the same word rate now as they were then. as I remember it was £100 a thousand plus £20 for pictures.

I assume that the yachting mags are having a pretty awful time of it at the moment - they are thin because advertising revenues are down.

Here we have a forum supported by the magazines - and all they get is an earful of people saying how lazy and incompetent the journalists are.

Having said that, my sort of sailing is so far from the sort of sailing they generally write about, my main expenses are petrol for the car, moorings for the boat and food - not much an advertising spend in any of those.

I probably only buy one or two sailing mags a year - and that is generally only when the railways are being difficult. A PBO and a bar of chocolate can be a great comfort when the trains are up the swannie

Dylan

 

[jpcarter30]

[QUOTEYes. If it included access to the back catalogue. [/QUOTE]

I'd go along with this. YM has a wonderful archive and I'd like access to it please, otherwise no.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

the side bar advertising revenues are pretty pathetic - my you tube site gets 1.5 million hits a month - nearly all for truck and tractors videos - one truck video has had 7 million hits -

My site revenue hover around £15 a day - often lower.

Google Ads for IPC is probably a better deal than you can get from YouTube, and I seem to recall one of the YBW people on here once stating that the advertising revenues paid for the upkeep of the forum. IIRC, Goggle's payment structure is a per click model, not a per view model, and I guess that ads here get a higher number of clicks than they would (for example) on a general news site, and those clicks are more likely to generate revenue.

However, we should remember that even for the print copy, it is advertising that keeps it on the news-stands; I suspect that the problem right now is that there is a curve of revenue versus price which climbs as the price increases up to a maximum, and then decreases again as the number of punters willing to pay the price decreases. There is a similar curve which starts high and ends low of the number of copies sold; advertising revenue basically tracks this curve The more readers - especially very targeted readers - that you have, the more you can charge for advertising space. So, my hypothesis is that in the long run, magazines might well make more money by REDUCING the cover price - for example, I might buy a magazine if it were £1 - there's no way I'll buy it regularly at £4 (I'm a Yorkshireman!). However, the problem for the publisher is that the short-term revenues would drop until the new circulation figures allowed advertising prices to be raised in line with increased circulation figures.

It has certainly worked this way for London newspapers - even the respected Evening Standard is now a free paper. So, I reckon that a low-cost internet distribution of Yachting Magazines might well make more money than the current high cost print version. Snag is, of course, that you might still want to have a print version for those who can't use internet facilities. however, perhaps this could be sorted (by IPC, not by the Yachting press alone) by having a print-on-demand system run from newsagents. Given IPC's stable of specialized magazines, I reckon that setting that up might well work very well for them!

 

[V1701]

Perhaps IPC could introduce a "poll tax" to generate some income...

 

[Fire99]

No because the bulk of the interesting stuff, including magazines, is from the postings of forum members.
No doubt a decent enough percentage would go if it became subscription only so the forums would be worse and you'd be paying for them on top.

OK back catalog information would be interesting, perhaps for about 2 months but after that I would lose interest and look for (or setup) a new free forum.

 

[Phoenix of Hamble]

Reality is that IPC need to get with the times...... running a forum isn't going to be a money making machine... it might be covering costs (or it might not), but they will sooner or later get stuffed big time by a better proposition elsewhere....

Go look at the market... there are many mags out there that are starting the process of getting very creative in terms of using their sites, along with their users to generate new and larger revenue streams*....

IPC don't seem to have identified any way of doing this except running a large forum... its not going to last forever...

*i'm aware of one mag that has created a complete side site collecting huge volumes of data from their users relevent to the specific area of interest, by helping the users to share and analyse the data... from this, the magazine will no doubt be driving highly targetted advertsiing (and highly inflated premiums), along with value add services for small subscriptions... they'll offer even better sharing tools, for again a small sum... and before you know it, the site has massive momentum, the users are producing all the content, and away they go... can't see IPC thinking innovatively like this can you?

So thats a long winded way of saying.... nope i'm not paying... they just need to get smarter and better at what they do, and they'll make more than enough money.

 

[Boathook]

Clicked no. I prefer a magazine to be paper so I can read it when I like with out having to turn the computer on.

I would like to have easy access to past articles on line where they are described in a summary and possibly a few pictures. I can then view and make the decision as to whether to purchase the article, as long as the price is sensible.

 

[Resolution]

Photodog
Have you considered putting this poll on the MoBo forum? Yachties are notably less keen to spend on anything than their gas-guzzling mobo counterparts.

 

[David_Jersey]

No the number of users would fall and it would die . Also I dont believe the mag content would/will improve Ipc just dont understand the readers.

I would add that IPC just don't understand the Internet - or to be generous are waiting to see if anyone else comes up with a viable business model.

I voted under a fiver a month. and by that I meant around £1.50 and for that I want:-

- The Forums to remain free of course to all (but perhaps with a few minor enhancements available only to paying subscribers? - but nothing too divisive)
- The Forums Moderated well (that may come as a surprise to some )
- The FUlLL Archive, but only if indexed well. and with searchable content (and that includes the boat reports ).
- Both the PBO & YM (and maybe also MB&Y) monthly online magazine.
- A monthly paper magazine! (PBO or YM)

To retain me as a subscriber in the future I would want:-

- the YBW site to be full of useful "how to" articles, both as a part of and in addition to the printed / online Mags.

- If their have been 7 articles written on replacing a headlining / sailing to Scotland / whatever I want to see them all - even if some go back to 1977. And I would not only be prepared for these Articles to include click though adverts, I would actually demand relevent adverts as opportunities to buy the items / services mentioned in the Articles........but only if done well, not as a US style infomercial and I had a degree of trust in the content / Editorial control...........how YBW monetise that is an opportunity for them to address (I don't think Google ads alone are the way forward ).


- The capacity for readers / subscribers to contribute comments / experiances on articles and their own articles to YBW.com (only if subject to YBW editorial vetting / control) would be a draw..........as the subjects covered would be wider and better covered by folks with hands on experiance.

- The capacity to "ask an Expert" would be nice - but for me is sufficiently well covered on the Forums (even if part of the price is "ask an Idiot" )

In exchange for that, in the future I might (probably) would be prepared to accept a quaterly or annual paper magazine. or none at all.

To summarize: you need to reel me in on the online stuff , first by making me a Magazine subscriber - online alone at the moment? not good enuf to pay for. Magazines? not good enuf to pay for every month - hence me not being a subscriber...........to tempt me would take the paper subscription price of around £15pa PLUS online content being worthwhile (at the moment it is not).............I'm a hard sell me