A tale about Woodworking Magazine Availability

[mr]

I would like to see at least one of the UK mags realise how useful the FWW website is and really make an effort to do the same.

I am sure if you can come up with a business model that can at least cover the cost of maintaining it if not the setting up in the first instance their will be a few takers.

In itself not an easy thing to do. setting up and maintaining a quality website is not a cheap thing to do. For example the new Getwoodworking site has a full time employee in its editor. So there's a salary for starters. Magicalia have an in house team of web developers but if that resource isn't available and needs to be bought in ...

Cheers Mike

 

[Steve Maskery]

I am sure if you can come up with a business model that can at least cover the cost of maintaining it if not the setting up in the first instance there will be a few takers.

And that's just the problem - there will be a few takers. There needs to be lots of takers for it to be viable. Few takers means that no-one will be willing to spend much on advertising (I speak as someone who considers himself to have been fleeced in this regard recently!). As MR points out, it's not just the cost of the server and cyber-facility, it's salaries- salaries for the techies, salaries for the content-creators (we have to eat too, of course) and a return on investment for whoever spends their own money setting it up. The idea that all this can be provided "free" is, I fear, economic twaddle.

We are very lucky here to have someone like Charley who has the skills and passion to make this work, and has a proper job too which pays his bills. Doing it as a commercial proposition is a whole different ball-game.

S

 

[devonwoody]

Google managed it SM.

How many millions are those two blokes worth.

 

[mr]

Google managed it SM.

How many millions are those two blokes worth.

Many millions because they had more than a few takers for their services and were able to pay themselves huge salaries and award themselves large stock holdings. I think Steves point still stands.

Cheers Mike

 

[wizer]

FWW manages to do it very well and I guess they had the same problems at the outset. I don't subscribe to the FWW magazine because I don't need to, it's all online and i'm more than happy to pay for that. I haven't heard anyone say that the subs are too high. Their site is going from strength to strength. Infact I would say that the whole WW scene in the US is taking off on the web in a big way. Agreed, this sort of quality service and content is not available for free. Someone with a bit of balls needs to make an investment to fund the launch, after a few months i'm sure it would gain enough paying subs (plus ads) to be a business. How many members do we have on this forum? How many subscribe to paper magazines? How many would be prepared to pay a similar price to FWW Online for similar content? I don't think it should be completely written off as an idea.

Par Example: https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/view ... 087#235087

 

[mr]

How many members do we have on this forum? How many subscribe to paper magazines? How many would be prepared to pay a similar price to FWW Online for similar content? I don't think it should be completely written off as an idea.

...but how many would be prepared to pay a subscription based on the promise of content to come, FWW has many years worth of archived content to add value to their subs cost, and what would be a fair subscription price? FWW with all its "perceived quality" costs less than GWW or British Woodworking because of the way the money markets work. Does this mean that a reasonable cost for UK based "publication" should be the same as that of a US based pub? Obviously costs may be lower for a net only enterprise but the UK pub still has to pay out UK costs of doing business. The American market is both bigger and cheaper to service but is equally available to us here in the UK with regards to net based publishing. This is a problem.

Cheers Mike


Cheers Mike