Cycling UK Forum

http://www.touringcyclistclub.org.uk/index.php

Touring Cyclist Club - the real club for cycling tourists


A fresh resource & voice for cycle touring . . .

Early days in the thinking process but the plan is to create an online community for like-minded cycle tourists - not another Facebook but a website full of resources for a wide variety of touring and technical matters.
So, just real cycle touring as we know and love it. We're still thinking about a "membership" mechanism - early thoughts are for a modest one-off contribution to offset costs and for funding to come from cycle-touring related businesses.

Add your thoughts on the site's direction through the discussion Forum and I'm interested form links

Philip Benstead wrote:... We're still thinking about a "membership" mechanism - early thoughts are for a modest one-off contribution to offset costs and for funding to come from cycle-touring related businesses....

Not looked at the site yet but initial thoughts from your funding thoughts: costs are generally recurring and go on and on each month/year. A one off contribution might help with the initial set-up and costs but if you are trying to create a club for the longer term, in 5 years when those modest contributions are long ago spent you might face financial challenges.

I agree that you might manage to get some contributions from cycle touring related businesses, but in some respects that can also complicate life a bit. For example, say you have a forum and people start publishing their feedback on <company xxx> who are also a financial contributor and that feedback you are publishing as not good. You might face having to censor genuine feedback or seeing part of your funding disappear (or have strict "You must give the 'supplier' good opportunity to rectify complaints before posting negative stuff").

To get companies to contribute I'd expect you need to have loads of traffic - which will probably mean logs to demonstrate the visits. Most companies will want to know their money is getting them some benefit. And to keep that traffic you need lots of stuff and new stuff on an ongoing basis.

You will need a forum - so people can ask (and hopefully get answers to) questions rather than just having to search for existing content.

And to succeed you need loads of content. (See if any ex-CTC employees have any content they have rights over and could contribute). Ideally as much as possible as soon as possible.

Ian

Psamathe wrote:

Philip Benstead wrote:... We're still thinking about a "membership" mechanism - early thoughts are for a modest one-off contribution to offset costs and for funding to come from cycle-touring related businesses....

Not looked at the site yet but initial thoughts from your funding thoughts: costs are generally recurring and go on and on each month/year. A one off contribution might help with the initial set-up and costs but if you are trying to create a club for the longer term, in 5 years when those modest contributions are long ago spent you might face financial challenges.

I agree that you might manage to get some contributions from cycle touring related businesses, but in some respects that can also complicate life a bit. For example, say you have a forum and people start publishing their feedback on <company xxx> who are also a financial contributor and that feedback you are publishing as not good. You might face having to censor genuine feedback or seeing part of your funding disappear (or have strict "You must give the 'supplier' good opportunity to rectify complaints before posting negative stuff").

To get companies to contribute I'd expect you need to have loads of traffic - which will probably mean logs to demonstrate the visits. Most companies will want to know their money is getting them some benefit. And to keep that traffic you need lots of stuff and new stuff on an ongoing basis.

You will need a forum - so people can ask (and hopefully get answers to) questions rather than just having to search for existing content.

And to succeed you need loads of content. (See if any ex-CTC employees have any content they have rights over and could contribute). Ideally as much as possible as soon as possible.

Ian

I am just passing the information on , I join but I am normal member

This post is not the "official announcement" - that's in the Touring section - we'd really welcome comments and discussion on the TCC's own Forum as that's going to contribute towards formulating a plan and possible way forward.

Rob

See the announcement viewtopic.php?f=16&t=103688