Well, I’m back from my two week jaunt around some of the Western US (I’ve started chronicling it on the site and more will come soon, I promise), and while I was on the road I kept feeling bad that I wasn’t able to share more cool bikes each day with you. I’d like to make that happen, so let’s chat about some administrative nonsense.
If I’ve learned anything from the CEO of my day job, I know that the best part about this site is you, my loyal reader. So when I make changes to the site, I want to run them by you and explain what my reasoning is so you at least have some background before you tear me apart in the comments. =)
This little site has grown more than I ever expected in the last few years and it ends up taking out more and more of my day. I want to be able to share more fantastic bikes with you each day but I just don’t have the time – which is why if you’ve been following the site for a while you may remember that I reached out for more contributors a while back. I was really touched that a few of you reached out and shared several great bikes on this site. Full disclosure – that was done on a volunteer basis and it’s unfair to expect something like that to continue on indefinitely (though special mention should go to Joe N, who’s been cranking out some great stuff for months). All this is to say that I would like to bring on some paid contributors so you can enjoy more bikes every day, but for that to happen I’m going to need to increase revenue from a site that’s always just been a passion project for me.
In other words, I’m going to look at more advertising. As someone who spends too much time on the internet each day, I hate online ads so I’m not tremendously excited about this. In fact, hopefully you’ve noticed I actually got rid of the Disqus-based advertising near the comments section. The money wasn’t worth how dirty I felt every time I saw some nonsense on my own website about “You won’t believe what this celebrity did!” or “John Oliver EVISCERATED some trending topic in America.“:
Pictured: Something you don’t give a shit about.
Instead, I’m going to try to get more targeted advertisements with products or services you’ll actually be interested in. I won’t have anything that pops up or takes over text and tries to link you somewhere else – the goal is to keep it image based and slightly out of the way. Please check these people out, they support me so that I can keep sharing bikes with you! For example, you may have noticed that a few days ago I started sharing the logo of Austin Vintage Cycle in the top right corner:
I’ve featured some of their bikes in the past and I got a chance to look at their work in detail at this year’s Quail. Soon I’ll share a post that gets into more detail about why you should check out that shop in detail – but the point is that I want advertisers that understand who you are and what you think is cool, not bullshit about if Lindsay Lohan got naked at a McDonalds or a Taco Bell yesterday.
I’m sharing all this with you because I really do respect your opinions and I want you to understand where I’m coming from. If I can make this work, you’ll get more cool bikes for sale every day and I can get rid of those ugly Google Adsense ads to instead share companies and products that you’re interested in. If I can’t, maybe I’ll blow the whole thing up and try to recreate the Million Dollar Website. Expect a post in the next few days asking if anyone’s interested in coming on board as a paid contributor – or if you’ve made it this far and are interested now, send me an email: abhi at bike-urious.com. Otherwise, if you have questions, concerns, or anything you want to talk to me about, you can either leave a comment below or email me at the above address.
(If all that was just too much text, the short story is that I want to bring on paid contributors and I’m going to show you some advertisements so I can afford to do so.)
As always, thanks for reading.
-a