The problem our industry has is ironically, the internet which sounds potentially incestuous but we really have fuk'd ourselves here.
To produce a magazine, digital or hard copy, costs money, especially the latter.
The digital mags do cost a lot less to publish but where can you create a revenue stream?
Traditionally advertising has been the core finance stream of magazines.
The online culture doesn't lend itself to charging the viewer, people go somewhere else where it's for free ... it's a somewhat skittish arrangement but it lies at the heart of the problem because the focus for revenue falls fairly and squarely onto advertising.
I'm extremely lucky with our advertising because all who do, are friends of mine but that doesn't mean to say they would pay for ads on here just because they're friends of mine, that doesn't happen - this is the real world.
This site has to perform and not just that, I give all my advertisers open access to my Google analytic data which can't be falsified in any way - not that I'd ever do that to friends of mine anyway but I like to give them free and complete access so they know there's nowhere else to go in European paintball in terms of on-line advertising.
People accuse us of all sorts of things in the past but the bottom line is this, all of the top companies advertise here, there has to be a reason for that coz I ain't holding a shooter up to anyone's head to advertise, they do it coz it makes financial sense, nothing else.
We get on average from 17k to 20k unique viewers per month .... that's a lot of paintballers' bums on seats and we're lucky that no other paintball forum/website in Europe gets close to those figures.
There is no way I could produce a digital mag in the present economic climate - if people do manage to do it, then it's either gonna be crap or financed from a single industrial source.
And so the internet has created a diminished paintball market with no light at the end of a tunnel with respect to digital mags ... it's a real shame I know but if someone wants to finance one, great, good luck to them but they will lose money.
I'm gonna be talking to Bon and Lump and the rest of my mods to see what we can do about providing some sort of article / tourney coverage thing but I'm not altogether sure how far we can go down that road yet but my mods have a much better handle on things than I do at the moment and so I'll trust their opinions over mine and day.
Let's see w2hat happens .. but I ain't promising Jack-Sh!t ... not just yet anyways.
To produce a magazine, digital or hard copy, costs money, especially the latter.
The digital mags do cost a lot less to publish but where can you create a revenue stream?
Traditionally advertising has been the core finance stream of magazines.
The online culture doesn't lend itself to charging the viewer, people go somewhere else where it's for free ... it's a somewhat skittish arrangement but it lies at the heart of the problem because the focus for revenue falls fairly and squarely onto advertising.
I'm extremely lucky with our advertising because all who do, are friends of mine but that doesn't mean to say they would pay for ads on here just because they're friends of mine, that doesn't happen - this is the real world.
This site has to perform and not just that, I give all my advertisers open access to my Google analytic data which can't be falsified in any way - not that I'd ever do that to friends of mine anyway but I like to give them free and complete access so they know there's nowhere else to go in European paintball in terms of on-line advertising.
People accuse us of all sorts of things in the past but the bottom line is this, all of the top companies advertise here, there has to be a reason for that coz I ain't holding a shooter up to anyone's head to advertise, they do it coz it makes financial sense, nothing else.
We get on average from 17k to 20k unique viewers per month .... that's a lot of paintballers' bums on seats and we're lucky that no other paintball forum/website in Europe gets close to those figures.
There is no way I could produce a digital mag in the present economic climate - if people do manage to do it, then it's either gonna be crap or financed from a single industrial source.
And so the internet has created a diminished paintball market with no light at the end of a tunnel with respect to digital mags ... it's a real shame I know but if someone wants to finance one, great, good luck to them but they will lose money.
I'm gonna be talking to Bon and Lump and the rest of my mods to see what we can do about providing some sort of article / tourney coverage thing but I'm not altogether sure how far we can go down that road yet but my mods have a much better handle on things than I do at the moment and so I'll trust their opinions over mine and day.
Let's see w2hat happens .. but I ain't promising Jack-Sh!t ... not just yet anyways.
