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THE ATLAS F1 SUBSCRIPTION FAQ
The below is in response to posts and e-mails we received.
Why wasn't this announced in advance?
I can lay forth the reasonings, but I will precede this by saying that in hindsight yes, we made a mistake. We should have made an announcement here on the Bulletin Board, if not on the website's front page.
Our thoughts were that announcing it without actually launching the new model would be counter productive. We also believed that as far as 'free trial' goes, well, you've had almost 7 years of that
Again, in hindsight we were wrong. Why? Because we didn't think of many reasons some have mentioned, among them allowing those who do not own a credit card to pay by check without finding themselves locked outside the website.
Therefore, I ask that anyone found in this situation, whereby he/she would like to pay by check, contact me personally at goren@atlasf1.com. I will give them a free week's entry, to allow them the time to send us a check instead.
Why can't Atlas F1 make a living off advertising
I don't expect people to be well informed on economic news. But anyone who thinks advertising alone can keep a website in the scale of Atlas F1 alive is wrong.
In the case of Atlas F1 in particular, advertising has always been a failure. You can put it down to us being utter flops at advertising, having too high a morals, but let me tell you what you gained out of thise all these years:
* never did we have a pop-up ad
* never did we include obtrusive ads within the text itself
* never did we accept advertising deals which included involvement in the content of the website
In this day and age, not agreeing to make such concessions means extremely little income.
March 2001 is a fantastic example of what we have come to:
We had in march 1.5 million visitors to the website - a new record for Atlas F1.
At the same month, we spent about 22,000 USD.
And, at the same month we made about 3,000 USD.
Someone mentioned acceptable market rates. Atlas F1's rate sheet is about 33-50 percent lower than that. And yet we couldn't make a sale. Why? Because for the most part, the Atlas F1 readers were notoriously a hard crowd to advertise for.
We have had the lowest clickrate among the RealMedia and DoubleClick network of websites. Do I blame you? No, I don't. Most of these ads didn't appeal to me or sell me anything I'd be interested in, so how can I expect it of you?
But that is the reality, and you are going to have to understand that advertising was simply not a solution that was working for us. Two years ago, even a year ago - maybe. But not for the past year.
And, if you do the math you will soon realize how much money we spent of our own pockets over the past year alone!
Atlas F1 is following Bernie Ecclestone's greedy footsteps
For the record, I don't hold Ecclestone the epitome of greediness. NASCAR are far worse
But to the point. As I've said previously, producing Atlas F1 costs about $20,000-$30,000 a month -- anyone who will register can contact me and I will gladly give him/her a breakdown of the costs, treating subscribers as though they were investors.
I don't know where people think that money came from before. It would take lightyears to make Paul or myself or anyone else involved in Atlas F1 rich, considering the hundreds of thousand of dollars we have already invested, but that is hardly our aim. If it was, we'd have taken up the offers to sell our soul -- and the offers existed.
No, we really really love Atlas F1. We hope there are enough people out there who love it as much and are willing to show their support to the site. I honestly believe we earned this, and more importantly - I honestly believe we can justify it.
The price is very high! I can get a print magazine for less!
A quick look at some of the prices of competing publications:
* Daily F1 Newsletter: $20 a year. (for that price you don't get HALF the content and options our newsletter alone offers!)
* RaceFax Dot Com: $50 a year. (great PDF newsletter that covers not only F1 but other forms of North American motor racing, and as such has significanly less F1 content than us).
* Autosport magazine: $240 (for USA subscribers), $300 for Australia and such, $200 in Europe and $160 in the UK.
At the same time, we take into consideration that some -- though definitely not all, and most certainly not overall -- of our content can be found elsewhere in the same quality or less.
Taking the above into account, calculating as well how much we need to earn to keep the site running at a high level, has brought us to the figures we presented. And I honestly believe these figures are fair.
For some, however, any figure would be "unfair" in which case arguing about the price is a moot point. When someone says "if you charged me $20 a year then I'd have paid" I cannot help but doubt his sincerity. And even assuming we'd have slashed prices to 50% of what they are now, I have no doubt we would NOT have doubled the number of potential subscribers. Because, subscribing to a website is primarily NOT an economical decision.
Not completely the same, but a famous newspaper slashes his price to about a 1/10th a few years ago in order to run a large increase of its readership. It was a controversial and much talked about move. The readership increased, sure, but by 20%, not by 1,000%. The moral of the story was: yes, people want to pay as little if any as possible, but there is a level of pricing in which the difference between how many people will actually pay if the price was x, and how many will pay if the price was y, is not as big as the difference between the income you'd make in both cases.
The bottom line is: the price is a directive of what we need to earn to keep this site alive, what we believe our product is worth, and what we believe those who are willing to pay can and will pay.
What will you do with the money? Why can't you just cut costs?
As I said in a previous post, every cent that is paid to Atlas F1 goes directly to producing it. Our aim is to break even and reach stability. When we have achieved that - not a small feat in itself - we will use the money to shower the readers back with direct bonuses.
As for cutting costs, it's bit of a damned if we do, damned if we don't.
Why do you think Atlas F1 has had over 1 million visitors a month this year, and only a 1/10th or even 1/20th of that 3 years ago? Simple. Better content. And more importantly, versatile content.
Some said that 10 articles in one magazine issue is too much. Oh really? What would you have us remove?
There are those who visit the magazine because they are interested in the history of motorsport, not in the current racing. To them we offer Don's excellent bi-weekly column, Rear View Mirror, as well as features and regular articles by Marcel Schot, Mark Alan Jones and Thomas O'Keefe.
OK, so we can't cut that out because then we'd lose the 'oldies'.
There are those who visit the magazine because they love reading Richard Barnes's commentary, and/or Karl Ludvigsen's informed opinion, and/or Roger Horton's Reflections.
If we cut these, some or all, we'll lose these readers.
There are those who visit the magazine because they love Mitch McCann's satirical F1 Insider column, or Bruce Thomson's hillarious cartoons, or Marcel Borsboom's fun quizzes.
If we cut these, some or all, we'll lose these readers.
There are those who visit the magazine, and first thing they do is read Pablo Elizalde's GP review or Ewan Tytler's GP preview or the weekly dosage of speculations in the Weekly Grapevine.
If we cut these, some or all, we'll lose these readers.
And, if we offer ALL OF THIS and MORE for what is truly a nominal fee, we will lose many of the readers.
Damned if we do, damned if we don't.
There s one other thing I must add, from a personal perspective: in the choice between serving and working for 10,000 or 5,000 subscribed users and one million anonymous users, I select the first group without a blink.
Volume isn't necessarily good. And people who pay for the website are showing their loyalty and deserve every service I can offer them.
Some of the reactions have been so rude ("I hope you go bankrupt" for example) that I ask myself, why did I even serve this person for so many years for free? Had I known how he felt about Atlas F1, I'd have refused service to him years ago.
So yes, paying to Atlas F1 is both buying our service and giving your faith. You show gratitude in paying for the service you receive, and we will work our butts off to show gratitude in return. Simple humane give and take, if you like.
You are not offering anything we cannot find elsewhere for free
Well, freedom is a matter of perspective. And quality is a subjective thing.
I stopped visiting ITV-F1 because their advertisements kept crashing my browser window, or driving my mouse pointer insane.
I stopped visiting autorace when I realized that they don't have one single original report and those that are 'original' come from fabricated rumours that some users sent them.
I look at other sites and I can think of some good things that very few have, and a lot of bad things most of them have.
Atlas F1 is far from being perfect, but I venture to say that we know much better than anyone else what needs to improve and how to do it. How can I say that?
Fact: Atlas F1 is the only website to have grown and add more and more options, content and versatile writers
Fact: all other leading websites have changed in design, but never in content
I challenge anyone to find me more than one or two sites that do not fit what I just said above.
Take F1Live for example: it's a great website. It's strength comes primarily from the weekend's live timing which is very well done. They also have a nice photo gallery. Other than that, their evolution over the past 2-3 years was in design, and only in design. As far as content goes, there is no difference between what it was 1-2 years ago and what it is now.
Why do we want writers to Grands Prix? Well, because having your writers actually be in the scene of the action makes ALL the difference in the content.
We sent Roger Horton to Malaysia a couple of months ago. He came back with an interesting interview with Juan Montoya. We sent him again to Austria last week, and he came back with an insightful interview+profile on Ralf Schumacher.
We had Tom O'Keefe at Silverstone last year. He came back with a four-part interview with Max Mosley.
Tom was in Imola last month, which resulted with an illuminating article on what the life behind the scenes of the GP is like.
We have Tim Collings in every Grand Prix. That results in the fastest, original and most accurate news directly from the paddock (and I can prove to you by a third party measurement that we ARE the fastest in GP weekends.)
And Tim is also able to perform exclusive interviews there from time to time, such as the one he had with Mika Hakkinen, such as the one he had with David Coulthard, or the one he did with Kimi Raikkonen last month.
These features are the most read features on Atlas F1, so there is no dispute they are also the material we most want and need to offer the readers.
But where will the money come from?
Up until now, almost all travel expenses came from our pockets! We are talking about an average of $1,000 to $1,500 travel expenses for one GP alone!
But when you think of the amount of insight these articles bring, it's worth every dollar. No commentary column about Montoya can compare with that of someone who has been sitting across from him and talking to him, seeing his body movement and how he interacts with other. Period.
And I don't know how anyone in his right mind could suggest we run interviews over the phone or via e-mails! We might as well publish only press releases and call them interviews, in that case.
You are not offering anything unique. We would pay for a unique product
It's true: F1 news is not unique. We can argue about whether our News Service is better than others', but the bottom line is, you're not being asked to pay for a news website - because Atlas F1 is not just that.
I don't know ANY other F1 website that offers a weekly magazine, high-res images AND full laptimes from all the races. So there's unique content for you right here. And, if you purchase a subscription, we'll throw in as a bonus free access to our News Service and Daily Grapevine...
;)I am not completely happy with some of your services
OK, talk to us. Directly. Not through insults and bashing, but through a dialogue. You are now a paying clients, you have every right to ask - even demand - but do it in a constructive way.
You can ask dozens of people here who approached me or the others on the team directly, we never ever turned down a good conversation on how to improve Atlas F1!
How many subscribers are you expecting? How many signed up already?
We were hoping for about 2,000 in the first months and 5,000 in the first year.
We need to eventually to stabilise on about 6,000 to 8,000 subscribers.
In the first 36 hours since we opened subscription, 1,000 people have subscribed, 90% of them for an anual subscription.
Why was my thread on this subject deleted?!?
Threads started on this subject were not deleted, but rather merged with the 'Reactions' thread in the Atlas F1 Forum.
The only two threads I've deleted were POLLS. I will NOT have polls run on this subject, period. You want to discuss this issue - you are welcome to do so. But I will not provide the poll tool for what is an utterly irrelevant and unbalanced anonymous poll.
You want the real poll results? I will tell you: 100% of those who feel loyal to Atlas F1 and can afford it, will subscribe.
100% of those who feel the exact oposite won't subscribe.
And yes, the latter group is by design far bigger than the former.
But like I said, 10,000 paying and loyal users far exceed in quality 1 million anonymous faces passing by.
Adios Atlas F1!
Adios
* * *
That's it for now, folks. I will add more Q/A to this page as we go along.
I have closed the previous 'Reactions' thread, as it became too long and scattered for people to follow. I have started a new one, also in the Atlas F1 forum, and again request that all questions and comments be made there. -- http://www.atlasf1.c...&threadid=21937
Thank you,
Bira
