Hi, @Carol

It was, glad you could come and say goodbye.         

Some of our members donated and we decided to stay around, although the last donation was still over a hundred days ago...

We're clinging on, it's just not nice me having to foot the bill in between donations, it seems I'm donating more than anyone else and have for 10 years and counting... 

Still, what brought you back? Never thought we'd hear from you again. 😁 How's things?

Some sites do, but we've never had sponsors, it's always been a USP if you like, where there's no bias and members aren't hushed from saying negative remarks about products because the product's company contributes financially. We've had companies pay us small amounts here and there but it's always been made clear that it's a donation, and in return they can advertise their goods/services, but those are the terms. Anyway any interest of that kind slowly dried up over the years anyway.

There are Google ads, but you only get paid when people click them, not just for being shown them (impressions). The ads on some days might make 15 pence, on others, zero pence. That's why largely, we haven't run ads in the past, but now are trying everything we can to keep the forum going, but it's a vicious circle because the ads annoy people and then the bugger off.

We get a ton of traffic, see here, but if they're not signing up, getting involved, donating, or clicking ads then I'm simply paying for their visit and not getting anything in return. The server costs scale with use, so the more traffic we get the more it costs. It's only between 12 and 13 quid a month, but we'll get a donation, then nothing for several months, so across a year, of the £150 cost, I'm probably paying 100 quid of it.

I'll never just turn the site off, there'll always been plenty of advanced notice, but then that tends to spark donations, and then the forum is then funded for a couple of months, but then that runs out and no donations come in for months after that, to the point I have to start talking about shutting the forum down again and it seems an endless cycle which is a shame, because of the thousands of unique visitors per day we get, it's a core handful of loyal members that put their hands in their pockets to keep the forum here, we're all just paying for other people's flying visits, and when there's constant talk of the forum closing, you can imagine people don't really want to invest a lot of their time posting pictures, writing tank blogs etc when it could all vanish in the near future.

It's a difficult one, but thanks for listening... 

Oh Mike, I didnt realise that every time some one visited it cost you. That puts things into a whole new perspective.

Well he had a customised Triumph Speedmaster ,then a woman T Boned him ,bike was written off and Garry nearly was too. That was in 2018. Hes been pretty badly disabled by it. Both mentally and physically. Im his carer now. So theres not much time for hobbys.

Camper van sounds a great idea ,I always fancied a great big Winnebago and touring the country when we retired  and the Dogs had gone . Yep when it does go ,it goes. Bored out ,Turbo ,Boxer , lots of annoying software ,even got its own Laptop .

Gosh 35 , your still a puppy  . The older you get the quicker time goes by believe me .