Thanks Twisted, i was looking at doing a fundraising to help cover the cost. I have the club stickers now, so thought perhaps we could do something where a contribution of £3 or so via paypal gift would be a donation plus it would get you a sticker.
Interested to hear peoples thoughts as we'll need to raise cash annually, and it's not too much (if we raise more now than needed, then i will keep the remainder aside to help pay for next year etc.). I'm also owed about £120, plus this site renewal that's come up, which brings it up to about £165. Tim's owed roughly the same i think from over the years.
We tried charging £5 for the for sale adverts but we only had 2 i think last year and i don't think they were successful in selling. I would like like open up the cars for sale section as free again, to help it be busy, as i'm sure people will add more if it's free. We also had a sponsorship but that was before my time and i'm not sure what the agreement was or what happened etc.
As a brief history of time, Tim setup the idea and funding of the site around 2009 and employed the help of Steve who did the tech side of things and EvilZee (Nige) as moderator. Steve parted ways with his Camaro after a few years so wanted to hand the tech reigns over, which i took on. So since late 2012, Tim remained the ideas man, Nige stayed as the moderator and i was onboard as tech guy. Nige sold Evilzee in 2015 so it was Tim and I left. Tim still has his 2 Camaro's but as of the start of 2016, has stepped back from the sponsorship side, as understandably 7 years of generosity is more than one can ask for.
So that leaves yours truly  One thing I don't want to do is annual membership. I know the Mustang owners club is £50 per annum (last time i checked) and Pontiac owners club is the same i think. It sucks when you have more than 1 car or even interest, and you end up shelling out 100's for memberships (i remember one day being 18, about to get £15k into debt for university, and one day at an American car meet, asking a Mustang owner how much they cost to buy (future planning) and he told me to buy a membership for £50 to access the for sale section. No.).
Times have changed. The internet has opened up so much. Owners clubs used to be great for getting tech help, vin decoding etc. but let's face it, you can google search anything these days and get a how to, so by putting a Membership wall up, you end up driving people to other sites but yours. Youtube is brilliant and especially with GM cars - you can find a tutorial for a non Camaro car and it will be either exactly, or almost the same process. I bring this up because i had a conversation with Pontiac owners club when i asked a question on their facebook page. I was told to sign up and pay as a member to access the tech section. I just did some google searching and found the answer, then posted it on here. Why? I'm in the mindset that we need to help eachother keep the hobby going, and we shouldn't hide information. Information is what helps us move forward and make smart decisions and get things done and keep the hobby alive.
So that's why i'm not a fan of club Memberships. There are some very big U.S sites that cater for our cars and some setup specifically for our gens, which are all free and have a tonne of information and Members ready to answer a question. Because of that, i think that our purpose is to be a hub for UK owners.
Agreed about Facebook. It has its benefits e.g. no worries about uploading images / videos etc. and response times are fast, as most likely you have FB open all day in your browser, so it's easy to keep an eye on and interact with. However, there are downsides and you can't do things like categorise subjects, find old ones, search for things. And yes, you do get a lot of nutters on there. I see a FB page as an extension of a website, but not the root of an organisation. I actually setup a FB page for our club a couple of years ago but kept it as unpublished, as i didn't want people to just go onto it and never use this site. Since then, someone else actually setup a Camaro UK owners FB page. There is another issue with FB, i've joined countless Camaro / 2nd gen / 3rd gen / z28 / all camaro / pre 92 / camaro parts / etc. groups... it just becomes impossible to remember which group is which and there are so many overlapping ones, often you get a replica of a site setup because someone said something that someone didn't like so they get kicked out and setup their own page and invite everyone that was in the old and it's like OMG what's going on. With a website, you know exactly the URL and that's that.
Open to suggests about how best to raise cash (short term and long term) to keep things afloat. If you know anyone who would benefit from sponsoring the site for example, that will help. Companies often get scared when you ask for sponsorship because they think it will costs £1000's, which it often does, but for us, it wouldn't. I would like to raise some additional cash to help for when we may need to pay for spaces at an event, or if we need to pre buy merchandise, but in the short term, a small sponsorship will go a long way. Whilst the current yearly website cost is just under £50, if we can raise more that will allow us to get a better hosting package i.e. more space. I can't tell you much i want to get a 20GB+ storage and bandwidth package so we can avoid relying on photosharing sites to host images, but that costs more (we've got less than 1GB storage at the moment!
Also open to suggestions on ideas on what to do with the site and the club. As you mention Twisted, about all Chevys, that would be great. Let me know how you picture it and i'll set it up. Any further ideas are very welcome! We will be doing some events this year (not our own specific ones, but joining onto others via clubstand).
What else have you guys and gals got? As you can probably tell, this is not a traditional club where you pay money and a couple of guys rake it in and decide what's happening. This is your club, for you to benefit from, so make it work for you. What do you want to get out of it? Let's make it happen!
|
and Facebook sucks arse now anyway unless your a closet racist or religious fanatic that likes videos of cute kittens , I have run a forum before so not short on ideas and I've been in the drag racing scene on and off for about 30 years so know my way around, would probably add a subsection for all classic Chevys though just to try and get some more traffic