A few things have occurred on here recently and in real life that got me thinking. This might take some explaining so sorry if it goes on a bit.
In May '09 this forum will be 7 years old, it's well out of nappies, been through its terrible two's and is now off to school. I started it as a bit of fun to try and work out if the people looking at my original list of links and GTI pics at
www.golfgti.co.uk would want to have a chat. It was all innocent fun, I didn't promote it on other forums. It wasn't a way of going against the likes of ClubGTI, it was pure VW enthusiastic fun. Hard to believe now in the days of endless club forums but it was all a bit simpler back then. I carried on going to the events as I always had but now I could meet these virtual friends. Back in '03 at VW Action, getting drunk with the likes of Adamb and Richandhazel suddenly turned these random internet people into real friends. Later the likes of kniterider took up the challenge of arranging specific forum meets... and so things became way busier. I ran a 'Site Associate' scheme whereby a few people put in 30 quid each to fund buying a load of GTI tshirts and to keep the site in hosting for a while. I was never totally comfortable with the idea of taking money like that but people said they wanted to help out. As the site became busier, traders would join and/or email me to discuss advertising on here. Coming up with an answer or working out a price was a nightmare but it was a way to cover growing costs. I have never thought of this place as a business, it's not meant to sell advertising and run at a profit say in the way that the likes of PVW Magazine need to. The merchandise I sell is done with very little profit margin and takes a long time to get through (2 years to do 50 pairs of number plate frames!). Again it's just fun and it still makes me smile seeing someone with golfgti.co.uk stickers on their car. I give away a load of stuff at times because people put in the effort to turn up to club stands so deserve it. Whilst I have some advertisers on board here, it continues to be very non-commercial and comments suggesting otherwise in the past make me laugh. Running a busy website is not cheap - sure, thanks to Albo, in the early days it was. However once the demands on it went up you have to do something about it and that only really means spending money. A cheap dedicated server from 1and1 lasted well for a couple of years, there was a short detour and minor disaster with Rapidswitch before arriving at our current service provider. Hosting costs for the 6 months Jan 09 to June 09 have already been paid and due to the declining exchange rate with the dollar, cost £754. Total costs for 2009 will touch 2k I reckon. This is currently funded by:
Google adsense
HIC
MachineMart
Monza Car Care
R-Tech
Merchandise sales
Hopefully you are still with me... I want to keep that balance of fairly minimal advertising presence, support from really good traders plus a bit of site branded merchandise. I genuinely don't want financial support from forum members and friends as I am totally against the concept. A lot of people have offered it and it is something that came up again at the weekend. I genuinely appreciate the offer, it means a lot that people feel that way. However, you knew this would eventually have a point! I would like to start a charity golfgtiforum initiative. I thought I would tie it in to the forum birthday on May 6th and change the charity supported each year. For this year I have chosen to raise money for
Macmillan Cancer Support. The idea is this:
- If you join up to the forum, get some help on fixing your car for free (or way cheaper than dealer pricing), then think about chucking a few quid in as a thanks.
- If you have been here for years, perhaps look at it as some sort of forum subscription, just throw in a few quid whenever you can.
- If you save some money on parts through some of the deals and discounts bit, think of paying some or all of the saving at the charity pot.
- Maybe you didn't even ever register an account, you just got all the help you need from the huge archive of data on here, consider putting something back via the charity option.
- Perhaps you are a regular user of the free classifieds section - think of all that money you have saved against ebay fees, so how about putting something back?
I could go on but I am sure you are all sharp enough to understand
The link for this year is:
http://www.justgiving.com/golfgtiforum_is_7Now finished for the year £1426.36 raised!!Lets see if we can generate something positive.
Thanks for your support.
jv
