FanofDan wrote:
I fully understand all these questions. You can act offended, but this is the first website i've seen EVER that asking for money..... I think it's reasonable that there comes a good explanation why people should pay for continuation of ths website, while all the other websites don't ask for money.
I will try to explain why i think the situation is not honest at this moment.
An internet webpage is just like a telephone:
For the telephone you pay a subscription fee, each month the same
This is comparable with a domain space and name
If you don't make much calls with the telephone, your costs for talking will be low, but when you make lots of calls, your bill will be more expensive.
Internet works in the same way. When you have less visitors, you pay less. When you have much visitors you pay more.
We at Sidecarcross.com have many many visitors, so we have to pay a lot.
But do I need to pay the bill for the things you have the effort of it?
I think it is not a honest solution, thats why we ask for a small donation of each viewer of these pages.
There are many ways to get our money, but we (Scott and I) want to keep Sidecarcross.com open for each person without any restrictions.
It is already common that many webpages have a login system and which only is accessable after a payment. We can introduce this.
Or for example try to download a ringtone or MP3, but to recieve this you must send an SMS. This also payed internet.
We could use a cheaper website hosting (or even free) but then there is not enough space to put all the information on, or it has not the services we need, or the bandwidth is so low that after a few hundreds views the website will be disabled or you get a lot of popup windows and so on..
Another solution is to sell all YOUR e-mail adresses to marketing companies. These companies pay very good money for e-mail adresses, but do you want a lot of spam in your mailbox. I don't want this, do you?
And what about payed advertisements from commercial companies with a lots of popup windows and spiders who collect information about your behaviour on the internet. This is another option we can use, but i don't like this way of treathing our guests.
We offer you a very nice webpage, but unfortunatly i can't pay this all by myself.
This means that when there is not enough money i will (
MUST) stop to offer you all these services.
Where do you think to find then the results of a qualification or from the races.
How do you think that all media worldwide will have this info, results and news.
This is because there is a very very small group of just a few people who takes care about this sport and do all they can to promote this.
You will probally say that those media (like newspapers, magazines and others) should pay. Well i can assure you that some of them pay a little bit, but most don't want to pay. But if we don't give them this information, they will not publice anything for reason that is is not interesting enough.
This is not good for our sport, we need all the publicity we can get. Even in the worst case they read it here on Sidecarcross, copy the results and stories and publice it. So what can we do??? Stop posting results and info on Sidecarcross.com?? Then better close the complete website.
Now i did only talk about cost for this website, but how do you think that all comes on the website?
Do you realy think there is a magician who can do this without any equipment?
At home you need an computer, software, internet connection and then you can start updating a website.
Then at the event:
First of all someone has to go to the event. Maybe you visit an event abroad, then you know about the costs.
I was very lucky in the past years to get support with transportation and staying at the track (thanks team van Duijnhoven and BSU Sidecars
). But if i must do it on my own, then i was not able to visit the rounds in countries far away.
Just make as example a small calculation what a trip to Latvia will cost> that are 4000 Km. if you have a small economic car on gasoline which runs 1/20 (which is very economic) then it would be already 200 liters of gasoline. You have to sleep somewhere in those days and if i could find a cheap place to stay it would be 5 days always. You also need to eat. At home you can prepare a cheaper meal then outdoor and so on.... so a few hundred euros is gone for 1 GP and nothing specials happend.
Then you must be accredit to be able to get the information which is available for the press. So accreditation is neccessary.
If you have the information there must be a way to put it on the website.
The time all was sended by fax is over (still some has to type it over on a computer) and a dove is never used. So a laptop with internet connection is neccessary.
Did you ever see a possibility to send results from the track to another person? Therefor you must have entrance to a pressroom and hopefully the organiser do have a working telephone or internet connection. In some countries your never sure about this. Therefor i do not have only a laptop, but also a big bag with cables, connectors and installation materials with me to fix all possible problems and in the worst case i can use my personal cellphone to send data over the internet. Who do you think has to pay this.
On some days it is even possible to write your name on the screen of the laptop when it is switched off, so much dust and sand is on it.
These are not normal conditions so this equipment is doing an heavy duty job and those delicate electronics don't like dust and sand.
But i am so crazy to use my laptop for it because nobody offers me a his laptop to use ! Or can i have yours, you will get it back after an year.
These are some simple examples, but there are many many more. I could write this all down, but then this topic would be to long to read all.
I hope you can understand that we make all the cost, just for your fun ! !
Do you think, it is still strange after reading this, that we ask for a small donation to continue this work????
Rien