[ian h]

i think maybe sponsership, but possible get a contract drawn up, covering the desired content of the site

however if merchandise / donations was what was decided on i would support that.

hope it all works out, as this is the only decent site for the uk

[neil@canaryclimbs]

yes man, get some T-shirts on the go, I'll have a couple.


But you should def have a comp for the best design.

Dont go down the line of sponshership or advertising. I went down that line and had to re-design my entire site for the adverts. Then I thought bollocks to this, Just keep it real. I now put small adverts in my PDFS for these companies and it pays for the site.

You could have a donation pot, but come on were all tight as a ducks arse on here.


But T-shirts are cheap and easy to produce, should make a few quid on each on

[neil@canaryclimbs]

you could try floating the site on the market  :

[grimer]

Dolly,
I never wanted to look, but I'm pretty sure we came nowhere near to breaking even with the Ape Index T shirts. That's why I'm wary of this merchandising angle.

[the_dom]

And what about boldering.com. How do they do it?

No idea, I'm assuming the guy just pays the server fees.

I'm not under any pretence that the site will suddenly pay for itself, but every little helps....

plus b.com if just a forum, they don't need to pay for servers for videos, galleries, articles etc.

As far as I know Criz and Pander pay all the server fees for b.com and 0friction.com out of their pockets.

[Paz]

People almost always ask what ape index is  if I'm wearing one

If you  put the URL on then most people can see it's a website.  

Can we have a blue -peter stylee competition where we all send in our designs and the best one gets made? Can we? Please?Please?

Surely the designs have to first prove themselves as prominent badass gangsters and demonstrate a pure blood line that goes back to Sicily?

[ianfitz]

What ever you decide it cant hurt to stick a "Donate here via PayPal" icon on the site.

At least that way you get all the money. No hassle of printing tee shirts or what ever.

Maybe not that many people will donate but every little helps.

Another option is to carry adverts and also run an ad free subscription only service - with the same content, that way you don't have a two tier site.

What about selling online topos for people to print at home, if you encode the ones you have already, so people can still browse them and just charge a small amount to download them.

Or get a second job to boost that income  :wink:

[dave]

lets face it, people are loath pay for thing on the internet that they canb't touch and feel in real life. hence why nobody pays to download music, and no-one will pay to download topos when they can but more-or-less the upto date info same info in a  guidebook. plus if ru's new guide does get sold on this site then whats the point?

I don't like the idea of paying to be add-free. its kinda of the wrong attitude, its like trying to force people to pay by penalising those who don't pay, rather than letting people choose out of thier concienece.

and anyway, you cen get free advert-removing software for most browsers these days, if your firewall won't already do it.

either carefully chosed merchandise or a low-key sposor/t-shirt sponsor will be the best bet.

[jonP]

I don't think donations would work very well, as only a few people would donate.

Subscriptions wouldn't work either - I don't think many people would be prepared to pay for the content of this site (that's not meant to be derogatory in any way).

The problem with merchandising is that it would take a fair bit of time & effort to set up & maintain, and you'd have to invest a bit of money in stock.  And the amount of money you could make is probably fairly limited, although every little helps I suppose.

I think the best solution is advertising or sponsorship - don't know if this is possible or not.

Or perhaps you could cut your costs & scrap the videos?  How much bandwidth do they take up?  I imagine it's fairly significant.

[account_inactive]

I don't think that £1000 is that hard to come by (hmmm!)

Put it this way :

50 t-shirts = £250 profit
Donations of £10 from 25 people = £250

That's half of the money already.  I think Bubbas right in saying that advertising will sell the site to the MAN.  Sponsership is going to work in a similar way and will always put a bias on the way people see ukbouldering.
I think that I could find 10 people to buy a t-shirt how about you.




I could also catch a monkey............if i had to

[dave]

i still think a good idea would be to do t-shirts but get a sympathetic sponsor in on the deal, so you get a good tshirt with a descrete sponsor logo say on sleeve or back of neck. they way you boost profits, yet keep the site itsself sponsor-free.

[account_inactive]

Why not then?

If you could get the sponser to pay for 1/2 of the t-shirt cost we could make a monkey on 50

[Tim Heaton]

How do the bleau.info people finance their site? Do they make all their money from selling the 7+8 plus Jardin Public book? I guess they must have a huge bandwidth with all their videos and stuff.

[vivahate]

The merchandise option is looking like the clear winner so far.

What would be the best stuff?

- T-shirts
- Hoodies
- Beanies
- Chalk bags/buckets
- bags/sacs
- Lighters

What else?

slipmats, im sure at least some of the large DJ community here would partake

i think you have an opportunity here to make some really cool stuff that will probally sell fairly well (how many registered users are there?), and if its good product then will spread the name o' the forum,

bo idea for the merch in my books

Chris

[dave]

dunno about bleau.info. i would imagine that initially i was paid for by jos, and now gets money from guides. thing is i know they've got a lot of vids, but they are realplaya which take up less room, and i find that their server often maxes out at busy times and you often can't view the videos, so they're money clearing is going far enough! buy more guides people.

[Tim Heaton]

How about norope.com?

I guess they get their money from the advertising if you go to the links section they seem to have a fair few sponsors the main ones being Metolius and Etch and there are 3 subtle ads on the front page. However before this discussion I went there quite often to look at the videos and I had never even really noticed their presence before, they certainly don't seem to have any influence on the content of the site other than providing prizes for some competitions. It might be worthwhile emailing the guy who runs it and asking him for any suggestions and how much they demand from you in return, I would think very little.

While I do very much admire your desire to stay unsponsored do you value it more than either paying £1000 of possibly mainly your own money or working damn hard to produce a load of T-shirts and other merchandise?

[account_inactive]

http://www.eshirt.it/carrello/gt_make.php?id_prj=04092353EA9F

[dave]

just tried to make a new design, think i might have just altered your instead Dylan - sorry

http://www.eshirt.it/carrello/gt_make.php?id_prj=04092353EA9F

[Nigel]

Very nice indeed. I'd buy one or two. Btw Dave, Mark Evans did a problem called Tru Playaz at the Snowdon Lady boulders, is your design a homage to him? Do you want to 69 him?

[account_inactive]

Seeing as I stole your design in the 1st place I will let you off

I competition would be fun

[dave]

Very nice indeed. I'd buy one or two. Btw Dave, Mark Evans did a problem called Tru Playaz at the Snowdon Lady boulders, is your design a homage to him? Do you want to 69 him?

no, or it would have read "shite lowballs till i die"

another one:

http://www.eshirt.it/carrello/gt_make.php?id_prj=0409232E307A

[dave]

http://www.eshirt.it/carrello/gt_make.php?id_prj=0409235051AB

that fucking site does soemthing queer with cookies to whatever you view turns into whatever the last one you viewd was - fucking shite. we' re not getting em from them!

idealy we get sponsored by a company that has its own shirts, then get them to run off a load of our ones off thie they're next batch, thus saying money and effort.

[Nigel]

no, or it would have read "shite lowballs till i die"

   I'll set 'em up, you knock 'em down!  

[Fingers of a Martyr]

i agree with owen's idea on pledging before making.

[Mr.Burns]

idealy we get sponsored by a company that has its own shirts, then get them to run off a load of our ones off thie they're next batch, thus saying money and effort.

Not a bad idea. Also getting people to pledge money before hand could work therfore you would get an idea of how many people are willing to support it.

Is this a long term idea bubba? or just to cover the £1000?

Don't get "Wacky bat" to sponser us though!!!!!