Honest Feedback Required, Needed, and Wanted

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Monetize, advertisers, making money, etc…
I’m getting these ugly words out of the way, but it is the topic of this thread.

I have my own karting site, www.norcalkarters.com, and the focus is promoting karting and karting events, or a promoters promoter. (Go check it out and report here how it needs improvement from your view point)

As with some other karting sites, many of us are pulling money out of our families budget to support a hobby or a passion, for what we believe is for the greater good.

In order to take my site to the next level
, I need to start generating its own revenue.

Why am I sharing this with you?

Because you are engaged in an online karting community. My vision for my site is to bring karting to new people with a regional focus on NorCal.

For you, what is the breaking point of advertising saturation?

YouTube 30 second ads. I know you’ve seen them recently explode on that service.

Banner ad pages that induce seizures before you can find the content. Think Idiocracy.

Podcast ad right in the middle of a great segment.

Next, would and how would you want to support another karting site, as a viewer, subscriber, or contributor?

Ideas that you would suggest to raise the funds to grow the site and services, while still consuming and enjoying the content it provides.

I’m looking for straight forward and honest feedback. After all, the idea is to promote karting to grow the numbers at the local levels. Take a few minutes to visit my site, www.norcalkarters.com, come back to this thread and share 1 thing you liked, and 2 things that need improvement.

Feel free to ask questions as well.

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First observation: site well organized but I wonder if the lack of media and color is an issue? Feels dry. But it does contain all the info clearly etc. so that’s a stylistic thing.

How does the site try to connect the community of racers to each other? Is that part of the objective?

Personally I hate the forced video ads in YouTube and mute them. But I am a reasonable adult and expect to have to deal with muting ads so that content creators can make some $ from their efforts.

As a consumer of this kind of stuff I’d be ok with some adverts.

Forum? Race results with pics and little write ups? Maybe if there’s a community you can leverage some of the participants that like to shoot pics and write etc. I know very little about this stuff so my thoughts are uneducated basically. There’s an Irish bloke who might be smarter though.

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Hi Dom, Thanks for taking the time.
I agree the site feels dry and lacks visible attraction at this point. I am aware of that but I am trying to avoid the current rabbit hole of the site looks cool, but there is not content. As the site morphs into the current needs and wants of the racers, I will adjust with more photos and colors. It is also a branding thing, and at this time, I don’t have enough there to “force” a branding approach.
At this time, I don’t have an executable plan in place for building a community directly on www.norcalkarters.com, but working with kartpulse.com to integrate their forums into our site. KP has done a great job at developing a community. Any attempt I make to replicate will hurt the greater good. I would rather point people to this site to add to its growth.
At this time, the site really has been dedicated to promoting existing events, so I think it is important to help foster those clubs or micro communities on their own.
I will start offering a post and pre race press release service, but it will be a fee based program. #1 roadblock I run into with submitted press releases is the time to edit, format, and load so there is a common structure. #2 - I could waste my life chasing other peoples content. Right now my sole focus is creating my own unique content that I can control when and how it is created.
I have reached out to most of the Norcal clubs looking for contributors for race results or pre race posts, but I generally just receive a forward email or canned PR.
Regarding the photo and video, that is in the works and I’ve had some great communications recently with individuals that have that skill.
Again, thank you for your time.

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You are welcome. I unfortunately don’t have much wisdom. The site does appear to be very useful as a resource to the karters in the area. Maybe it’s good enough for now. It sounds like the hard part is figuring out how to make it generate some revenue to pay for itself etc.

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If you are a karter and you have an opinion, I’m interested in your feedback. Last thing I want to do is put a bunch of energy into a website that I think is perfect for me, but everyone else hates it. I appreciate the time you took on your feed back

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That’s exactly what you need to be doing in my view. I ran a successful karting media website and managed to scrape an income as well as creating several opportunities for myself. However as soon as I did anything that resembled ‘pleasing the crowd’ my heart left the project and it turned to shit.

Long term find what your passionate about and promote that. If you want to earn an income… then don’t start a website about karting. My biggest failure was relying on the site as an income source. You soon start pulling articles and ideas in fear of pissing off the wrong people.

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Hi Alan,
Thank you for the feedback. I agree and understand your position about pulling content because someone might be upset. I see that all to often as it is. It’s a shame, but it is reality. At this time my focus isn’t re-publishing old press releases or regurgitated content. There are enough services for that. Hell, its called facebook and do it yourself. :smiley:
I guess I should clarify my comment about building the site for others and not myself. There are certain things that I think should be done in the karting world and I’m opinionated about them.
However, I’m also very open minded to other peoples perspectives and what they see as a problem. I feel as soon as a think of myself as the expert, I leave myself open to becoming stale and stuck in my own ways.
For example, Instagram. I resisted for a long time to start an Instagram account for the company I work for because I didn’t get the concept or value. I thought it was going to be just another distracting app. Then the younger karters kept asking for my IG account. I finally succumbed to the new app and I must say it has been a positive for the company I work for.
It was a valuable lesson in learning to listen the different demographics represented in karting, explore them, and then base my future decisions on to implement or not.
I see in karting now, our biggest problem is reaching new people. The mission statement for Norcal Karters is Growing the Sport of Karting, Together!
I’d love to take this conversation private to get your thought and experiences as a karting media site.