A labour of love
WillCycle has always been a labour of love for me, but running this site costs me money. Sure, I have some income from T-shirt sales, sales of cycling caps and from multi-day GoCycle route guides. However, all the money I ever received for route guides doesn’t cover just my web hosting costs.
My very first route guide, for Drake’s Trail, has had almost 20 000 views. I created that route guide because, when I got back into cycling, I was looking for exactly such a guide.
My new series of traffic-free cycling routes in the UK is proving very popular, and is attracting many visitors. I hope you’re one of those and I genuinely hope what I provide offers you real value.
Great content
I created some excellent content on here. How do I know this? Simple: I can tell by visitor numbers. On a single day my Traffic-Free page had over 2 000 views, so you all seem to like what I do. If you didn’t, the content I create wouldn’t be so popular. My Crash Card post receives thousands of views, as does my Bikes On Trains post. That’s because both posts contain oodles of good information for you. I’ve done the legwork, so you don’t have to.
That’s before we even begin to look at my Back To Basics series. Honestly, explore WillCycle for a bit – you might be amazed by how much information I have to help you.
Full time job
I have a full-time job, and my wages from that job subsidises WillCycle. That’s very far from ideal. In an ideal world, WillCycle will bring in enough money for me to pack in my full-time job, but I cannot see that happening anytime soon, or perhaps even happening at all.
Options
My options are limited:
- I can continue to spend many hours, after work, creating resources and content for you, while using my wages to help pay for this site.
- I can somehow try to convince everyone visiting WillCycle to buy ten10 thousand T-shirts, each. You and I both know I have more chance of falling pregnant than of that happening.
(It would be nice if just 1 in every 500 visitors actually bought a T-shirt or a cycling cap, though). - I can win the lottery. In theory, it’s possible, but I probably have a greater chance of being crowned King of the UK.
- I can run ads. Yes, I know nobody actually likes ads, but unless you have a better option, this is what I need to do.
Now before you tell me that you’ll leave my site and never, ever return, just because I started running ads here, can I ask you something? Do the ads stop you from using Twitter, or Instagram? Do you refuse to watch TV channels with ads (that includes the BBC, by the way – they still run ads for their own shows and services)? Do you refuse to buy a newspaper or magazine, because they have ads? Do you refuse to listen to the radio, for the same reason?
If not, why are ads (let’s be frank – quite unobtrusive ads) on my site such a deal breaker?
Ad-blocker
If you run an ad-blocker, I completely understand why. I run one, too. However, there are sites that force me to turn it off, if I wanted to access their content, and sites that ask me nicely. Usually, I tend to turn off my ad-blocker for sites that ask nicely. Today, I’ll ask YOU nicely to do exactly that on WillCycle.com. I need the income from those ads to offset the costs of this site, and to help produce more content for you. Surely, what I’m asking is no big deal?
So please, will you turn off your ad-blocker, and whitelist this site?
Also, please will you look at some of the ads. If you see something that takes your interest, please do click such ads. After all, those ads are supporting this site, so you doing that means that indirectly you’re supporting WillCycle.