Forum Suggestions & User Assistance - Suggestion's about BF

After trashing another post, and glancing at the forums, for about 6-18 months or longer this forum is just sorta/not/oh wait..great working. Rather than rehash the endless discussions, please come up with a working model for a bicycle forum. One that makes the owner finacially solvent, the participants happy to pay a nominal fee, and a good exchange of ideas and discussions.
I have been using this forum for several years, and it's never a dependable website. I realize the difficulties in running a forum with a thousand people, and I think some personal time and emotion have been expended in the spirit of bicycling.
As a former small business owner, I never mix business with pleasure. If the bottom line is continually negative, you must change. If your mom's the boss, if you help homeless people, or if you really like doing the job, if you don't make a profit, you'll fail.
I think the boss is Joe, and thanks for the effort.
I look forward to a $59.99 yearly/ $259 lifetime membership fee or a co-branded Preformance/Google/Yahoo forum.

Some people might say it shuts out guest's valuable input. I would argue this post is already on Google, sharing our collective wisdom/drunk rants/spandex-specific comments. Other people would opine "I can't afford that" The answer is of course "send me your Ipod, your pink hub, your car stereo, or your newer computer" Still others might imagine their value judgements preclude paying for a discussion of the most efficient, clean, sustainable and elegant form of transportation. Buy the bike to express yourself and pay up to discuss it, as in magazines or your internet/phone connection.
The most popular sub-forum is roadies. People who have matching tops and bottoms like pro's. I don't go there, it gives me performance anxiety and I figure my weight in grams- huge. I don't like people looking at my "Kit". In any case an aero-carbon-Lance/Like-H20 bottle is $60 bucks, if the LBS wraps your bars and listens to you----$60 bucks, If you spend a 10% body fat evening after yoga, dissing the shaving cream a minor german cyclist uses, or the sanctity of Lance's 96' urine, cough up.
The cheap crowd, the majority I think, myself included, want value. A constant experience, outrage and advice, but never an error/time out/unusable feature. If the users dropped in half, yet it was great for us I argue that would be dramatically improved over slow/wondering/frustration.
I would like to leave you with my typical post here. There's a guy from Sacramento, CA who gained big wt. He's just starting and he has some questions/needs reinforcement/ what kinda bike. There is 2 pages of advice/ encouragement/specifics. I'm from Sac, lost weight, discovered cycling and felt totally rewarded with my helpful links, personal goals (3K-earn a bike), and cheerleading. I signed in, yet my post said I hadn't. I went back and it's gone.
I copied this from Notepad. Good thing because, I'm not signed in for the 3rd time.

Thanks for the suggestions. :)

I got waaaaaaay lost. What did he suggest?

I got waaaaaaay lost. What did he suggest?
That BF is a viable business. That the owner be rewarded for his risk and capital. If the true price for this forum is much higher than we are paying it won't last or be substandard. It's either your attention span or my personal padding of the original idea that steered you wrong.

That BF is a viable business. That the owner be rewarded for his risk and capital. If the true price for this forum is much higher than we are paying it won't last or be substandard. It's either your attention span or my personal padding of the original idea that steered you wrong.


It could have been both.

Even in the slow times, the forum has stayed active. I think the forum would lose a lot of vibrancy if the costs were increased as you suggested. Of course, many of the users have already purchased "lifetime memberships," so he really couldn't get more money from us. And that means he'd have to get money from people who haven't yet been willing to cough up even $25.

Ad dollars. Problem solved.

carless, I don't see a little red star by your name either.

carless, I don't see a little red star by your name either.
You sir, are correct. See my original post.

After trashing another post, and glancing at the forums, for about 6-18 months or longer this forum is just sorta/not/oh wait..great working. Rather than rehash the endless discussions, please come up with a working model for a bicycle forum. One that makes the owner finacially solvent, the participants happy to pay a nominal fee, and a good exchange of ideas and discussions.
I have been using this forum for several years, and it's never a dependable website. I realize the difficulties in running a forum with a thousand people, and I think some personal time and emotion have been expended in the spirit of bicycling.
As a former small business owner, I never mix business with pleasure. If the bottom line is continually negative, you must change. If your mom's the boss, if you help homeless people, or if you really like doing the job, if you don't make a profit, you'll fail.
I think the boss is Joe, and thanks for the effort.
I look forward to a $59.99 yearly/ $259 lifetime membership fee or a co-branded Preformance/Google/Yahoo forum.

Some people might say it shuts out guest's valuable input. I would argue this post is already on Google, sharing our collective wisdom/drunk rants/spandex-specific comments. Other people would opine "I can't afford that" The answer is of course "send me your Ipod, your pink hub, your car stereo, or your newer computer" Still others might imagine their value judgements preclude paying for a discussion of the most efficient, clean, sustainable and elegant form of transportation. Buy the bike to express yourself and pay up to discuss it, as in magazines or your internet/phone connection.
The most popular sub-forum is roadies. People who have matching tops and bottoms like pro's. I don't go there, it gives me performance anxiety and I figure my weight in grams- huge. I don't like people looking at my "Kit". In any case an aero-carbon-Lance/Like-H20 bottle is $60 bucks, if the LBS wraps your bars and listens to you----$60 bucks, If you spend a 10% body fat evening after yoga, dissing the shaving cream a minor german cyclist uses, or the sanctity of Lance's 96' urine, cough up.
The cheap crowd, the majority I think, myself included, want value. A constant experience, outrage and advice, but never an error/time out/unusable feature. If the users dropped in half, yet it was great for us I argue that would be dramatically improved over slow/wondering/frustration.
I would like to leave you with my typical post here. There's a guy from Sacramento, CA who gained big wt. He's just starting and he has some questions/needs reinforcement/ what kinda bike. There is 2 pages of advice/ encouragement/specifics. I'm from Sac, lost weight, discovered cycling and felt totally rewarded with my helpful links, personal goals (3K-earn a bike), and cheerleading. I signed in, yet my post said I hadn't. I went back and it's gone.
I copied this from Notepad. Good thing because, I'm not signed in for the 3rd time.

Why not 1st give the current business model a chance and cough up $25?

Not to be personal or skip over the questions, but how much $ to make BF dependable and profitable? The current business model isn't working for anybody.

Seems to work pretty good most of the time, and when it doesn't, Joe seems to take care of the problems in a fairly timely manner (thanks, Joe!). Not bad for free, eh, carless?

Not to be personal or skip over the questions, but how much $ to make BF dependable and profitable? The current business model isn't working for anybody.

I'm not too sure how much $ it would take to make BF dependable and profitable, but it is a good question. I don't think it's undependable now. And do we really know if it's currently profitable or not? I'm guessing there's not tons of $$ rolling in, but I'm not aware of any imminent threat of BF going "bankrupt" and eventually going into never never land either. I would think more paying members would give a better chance for profitability and also provide dollars for making the site more reliable, which leads us back to the current business model.

I don't see how raising member costs would bring in more $ when it seems to me there's a high percentage of users not even willing to pay $25. I'd like to see the number of paying users vs. non-paying users. Also, you'd have to know how much $$ is being collected via advertising.

Seems to work pretty good most of the time, and when it doesn't, Joe seems to take care of the problems in a fairly timely manner (thanks, Joe!). Not bad for free, eh, carless?

I have a supermodels ATTENTION, er (suck in gut) I uh.. my throat is kinda dry, I agree- what was the question (did I say that out loud)?