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Basil

Basil

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Staff member
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<span style="font-size: 12pt"><span style="font-family: 'Arial'">Dear Members,

The future of BCF is uncertain at best.

As you may know, I started BCF for fun eight years ago and ran it completely out of pocket for the first several years. Eventually we grew to the point that I started accepting voluntary donations. I later started accepting advertising from vendors for a reasonable fee and also offered web hosting and optional paid member subscriptions. Long story short – the cash flow from all of these methods has all but dried up. This may be due partly to the current economic situation and partly to my ineffectiveness at selling BCF as a viable advertising venue.

I know for a fact that there are vendors on here who benefit greatly by conducting business behind the scenes (via PMs) but apparently the benefit they gain is not worth their supporting the forum as paid advertisers. Also, I only have a few folks hosting their web sites on our servers and have had no new web hosting activity in a long time. The same is true for paid subscriptions which have all but dried up. Classified ads are few and far between as well.

Long story short – I can’t continue running BCF if it is not going to pay for itself and pay for the tremendous time I continue to put into it. For the time being, I am not accepting any new business of any kind. I am also not accepting donations, so please don’t send any – I will only return the money.

Believe me, shutting down BCF is not something I want to do, but I am going to have to think long and hard about the future – my future. Due to the current economic crisis, my own economic situation has taken a huge hit. Thus, I can’t continue here much longer without +positive cashflow. In the coming days and weeks I will be considering all options, but in the end, if I can’t come up with a good business model that will make continuing BCF worth my time, then the forum will eventually have to shut down. If that does happen, I will probably offer the domain name and forum database and files for sale (NOT CHEAP), but I’m not at that point yet.

For now, I am not accepting any money for anything while I think through my options. If I do decide to continue BCF and am able to come up with a viable business plan, it will be a “one more try” kind of thing.


Basil

<span style="color: #FF0000">PS: If I do decide to shut down and members still have active subscriptions or advertisers have active campaigns, I will make pro-rated refunds to all.</span>

</span></span>
 
This is truely sad news. Have you considered a subscription only foum like other forums ( 6pack is $25)? Having no idea what it actually costs to run, or what you would need to be content it is hard to garnish ideas.
There are a lot of smart people on this forum, and if it is truely that grim of an outlook, I am sure many/most would pay a reasonable sum to continue participating.
Time for everyone to brainstorm for the boss.

# of members willing to pay $_____ = $_________ is a starting formula.

If some have the attitude they think every thing on the web should be free - too bad. Anyone whom uses this forum saves money, gains confidence and knowledge and if all members contribute a yearly total of say $25, how many members total would you need? Would there be enough willing to pay? Hopefully so.
 
Please let us know what we can do to help, Basil. I fully understand the financial and time issues (I'm a webmaster myself), and the current financial mess definitely complicates everything.

I do hope you understand what a fantastic place you've created here; it's truly like no other I've participated in. I can't imagine my day without my BCF fix. I was willing to subscribe before to do my part, and will do so again. The thought of losing this forum has really sobered my day.
 
I can't say that I'm surprised at this turn of events. I pretty much expected that the contributions would dry up after the last effort to encourage them brought in some small amount of donations.

It's pure business math. It costs $X to run this and if you have X number of subscribers today, one divided into the other is what it will cost to run it. Increase the amount of subscribers and the cost goes down per subscriber.

The economy has hit us all hard but it's time for everyone to realize that this can't be free forever and if you want to have a place that will provide instant support and help, sometimes within minutes, it will begin to cost you money to participate and enjoy that service and help.

I know that Basil never wanted to do this, but why not offer a membership based forum and see if enough will commit to becoming paying members to cover the costs. If you don't want to pay to be a member, that's up to you.

This is not meant to be snobbish, arrogant or cruel. I just hate to see this go away for those who would pay to support it and have access to a great forum.
 
I'm with Roofman on this one 100%

My goodness, I pay $100 a month just to sit and talk
fishing and drink beers with my pals at the marina.

This forum has saved me literally, $tens of thousands
of dollars in shop mechanic costs.

I say if you own a LBC- you can well afford to pay a
membership fee to belong to the BEST LBC club around.

I don't want to sound harsh BUT ................

no one gave me a free ride in life and I don't expect
one here at BCF. Goodness I pay $120/month for cable
internet.

It would be a damned, damned shame to see the BCF fold
because folks would not stand up to the plate.
The friendships I have made here are priceless!

just my opinion!!

keep it open Basil and charge whatever you need to charge.

d
 
I appreciate the sentiment guys, but this is not about a handful of folks willing to subscribe - this is about coming up with a GOOD BUSINESS MODEL. I have put thousands of hours - literally - into this forum and it is high time that, not only does it pay for itself, but little old me starts getting reasonable compensation for the tremendous time I put into the place. The time I've put into it over the past eight years is sunk cost - I can't get that back, but going forward this place needs to be worth doing for me personally or I can't keep doing it. It's just that simple.
 
Basil,

I know it's not something that's always a good thing for end users (and I hate having to do it on my site, but it does help ay the bills) is to expand the advertising.

Have you looked at trying Google's Adsense? When you consider the volume of pageviews & vistors that this forum has it must be pretty tremendous. I would be willing to guess that implementing Adsense within the forums should garner a fair bit of revenue for the site.

If you'd like to know more about my experience with it I'd be happy to share. As with everyone else, I can say that I would hate to see this forum go away. I love the sense of community and how much help I've recieved over the time I've spent here.

Jody
 
As I understand it there are firms out there that pay to have adds placed on active forums. We don't really care about adds in a side bar, What we do care about is the forum going away.
 
As I understand it there are firms out there that pay to have adds placed on active forums. We don't really care about adds in a side bar, What we do care about is the forum going away.
 
Basil, I can fully commiserate with your situation.

I started an internet business in 1995, I built it to the point where it provided me with a 6 figure income.
Then due to health problems in body and mind my business began to deteriorate. I lost customers due to inattention and it was completely my fault.

Within a year of my illness my income from the business had fallen to only a fraction of what it once was. Within two years I needed to go out and find a JOB.

This fall I decided to finally close the books and pronounce it dead. Of course it was dead long ago, I had a few web hosting clients still but it just wasn't paying its own way any more.

Having started out as a business I had some business rules in place. At the top was this one:

<span style="font-weight: bold">The time to close the business is when it doesn't pay its own way.</span>

I gained a great deal of experience and I learned a lot about many things, not only technical but also business.
I could write a book on dealing with the IRS.
(but I guess that's been done...)

I suggest that you look around and try to find others running a business like yours that does pay it's own way. Hopefully you will be able to find some. Hopefully you can find out what they are doing and then emulate their success.

We here may come up with some good ideas, hopefully you will find a way to keep this going. We all love this place and would be so much less successful without it.

As far as having a members only forum, that's hard as you know there are many who genuinely can not afford to give money but who can contribute their talent.
I've been a member of a forum where there was a "members only" area. That could be a start. People generally don't want to be left out, they want to be a part of whatever is going on "behind closed doors". I am sure that would entice more to join up and subscribe.
 
Basil, I echo all of the above, the forum has been a tremendous help in my restoration activities. I have met and made new friends, and gained knowledge that would have taken years otherwise.

Understand your plight and feel that if you can put a plan together I and many, many others like myself would be more than happy to help.

Tell us what you need, I suspect much help will be forth coming.

Regards, tinkerman
 
I pay 30 dollars a year to belong to an airplane type club. I'd gladly drop that and give you my money if it is possible. to keep this going. Time to sell the airplane anyway.
 
RickB said:
<span style="font-weight: bold">The time to close the business is when it doesn't pay its own way.</span>
Click to expand...

Then I never would have started in the first place. This place has never paid its own way, but then I didn't really start out with a business in mind - just a fun hobby. However, I have reached the point where I can't continue to put in the time and effort without some sort of compensation that makes it worth continuing.

Also, I've been neglecting too many other things in life to continue this if I can't find a way to make it worth while. Not looking for 6 figures here - just reasonable income relative to the time invested. Subscriptions don't seem to be the answer and for some reason, British car-related vendors (most of them) don't see sufficient value in spending their hard-earned marketing dollars on some [censored]-ant forum...can't say I blame them.
 
I would be willing to pay to have a memebership for the forum to keep it going.

Why not conduct a poll to see how many would be willing and at what cost to get a feel of the possible business model?
 
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:]I didn't really start out with a business in mind - just a fun hobby[/QUOTE]

That is a major distinction that really makes a huge difference.

When you start this up as a business (if you do) I strongly suggest you come up with a set of your own business rules.
You already have many of them, but they may not be codified as such. When you have your set of business rules written out you will always have that as a foundation. These should be a part of your business plan.
Of course you can change them as you go, they are your rules.
I suggest you start at square one, as though this were a brand new business, and write out your business plan as though your were going to convince others that this business would be a good and profitable one to start.
This plan must convince you and the members of your family that the business will work.

In my case I had to sell the plan to my wife. She was most closely impacted by the decision to become self employed, she was the largest stakeholder.

I decided early on that if my business could not be self sustaining after a certain amount of time then I would not continue it as a hobby. Even though there were many enjoyable things about having that business I could not justify running it at the expense of my family.

In other words they would not be forced to pay for my hobby.

It was successful for a time, that time came to an end before I was ready. Even so, my family supported me and I deeply appreciate them for it. I ended up changing careers rather than continuing the business - mainly for them.
If I had been alone I may have been able to recover but it would have been very hard.
 
Seems simple to me...subscribe and participate in the give and take on LBCs, or it is a read only forum for the rest! Non-subscribers can benefit from the knowledge and help offered by members to members thus benefiting the broader interest in LBCs, but non-membership will preclude asking questions or participating in the give and take of the forum. Basil, there should also be a charge for show-casing the pictures in the photo galleries, i.e. you want to show it off...you gotta pay a fee.
 
https://www.britishcarforum.com/bcforum/u...sing#Post482503

Did you have any luck at all with these ideas?
IF you thought about selling the forum , whom would you think would be interested? If they bought it, how would they make money to recoup thier investment? Do those things they would do.
 
Basil,

One of the most successful forums I've seen is VWvortex; see https://forums.vwvortex.com

It's completely free to members; looks like the whole thing is funded mainly by banner advertising. Some vendors choose to sponsor entire forums. Any vendors wishing to do business on the site must register and pay a fee. Non-members may view all content, but may not post.

It's a very popular site, and pretty much anyone who is a VW / Audi enthusiast (and internet-literate) is a member. I would strongly suggest that you look into a similar format.

HTH,
Duncan
 
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