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[Richard230]

Mike Werner says that after 16 years of running his interesting and informative Motorbiker.org website he is giving up.  You can read his announcement here: http://news.motorbiker.org/blogs.nsf/dx/this-site-is-stopped-end-of-the-line-gone-fishing-for-good.htm

 

[teddillard]

Yeah, honestly?  I've never much read his site, and suffered several of his accusations of "ripping him off" on InseideEVs on stories that are pretty much common truck on the internet.  As for his claims of $300/month, I don't get that.  My blog is posted on, and hosted by Wordpress, for free.  My other sites are hosted on my Fatcow accounts for next to nothing.  So where's the $300/mo going, really? 

Sorry, I know you guys love this site, maybe the guy can find a free hosting deal and get with the program.  As for me, I'm a little tired of hearing him complain.  I've been at this game for at least as long, but the difference is I never really believed my site would make money...     I think at some point you have to be honest enough to admit you're doing all that writing because you want to, and frankly?  Would do it anyway...

[SteveInNC]

Well bye.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Mike Werner]

Yeah, honestly?  I've never much read his site, and suffered several of his accusations of "ripping him off" on InseideEVs on stories that are pretty much common truck on the internet.  As for his claims of $300/month, I don't get that.  My blog is posted on, and hosted by Wordpress, for free.  My other sites are hosted on my Fatcow accounts for next to nothing.  So where's the $300/mo going, really? 

Sorry, I know you guys love this site, maybe the guy can find a free hosting deal and get with the program.  As for me, I'm a little tired of hearing him complain.  I've been at this game for at least as long, but the difference is I never really believed my site would make money...     I think at some point you have to be honest enough to admit you're doing all that writing because you want to, and frankly?  Would do it anyway...

Ted, I have never met a guy who suffered that much of CRI. I hope you are medicated. If you had one ounce of technical knowledge you could in 5 seconds see what my platform is, and then 2 minutes afterwards see how much it costs to host that platform. The platform was historical and necessity because of other sites running on it. The 300 is the lowest available; not everyone uses WP or free software, run a more professional unit.

As for "hearing him complain", I rarely do, but all you do is attack anyone who does not agree with you, truly like someone who is suffering from CRI. Your opinions are very narrow as is you field. Once you get to the reader number if have had, even still have today, maybe then you can open your mouth.

As for the writing, I have been working as a journalist for Reuters for 7 years are a stringer (and UPI before that) and currently write for some big name newspapers and magazines. It's what I do professionally, and for the other sites and papers, I make a good living. Probably much better than you.

So if you like opening your mouth, attacking the whole world because the way you feel, why not keep it to your site, not in public sites? Or are you going to go running to site-admin again like last time??

[Mike Werner]

Mike Werner says that after 16 years of running his interesting and informative Motorbiker.org website he is giving up.  You can read his announcement here: http://news.motorbiker.org/blogs.nsf/dx/this-site-is-stopped-end-of-the-line-gone-fishing-for-good.htm

 

Thanks Richard. Appreciate the support. But I'm still alive in the motorcycle world, but on other sites, often under assumed names. And still writing about electric motorcycles....

[NoiseBoy]

That is a shame Mike but understandable. Did you ever discover what caused the 90% drop? Perhaps you could post links to your third party content on the forum or a blog page for your loyal readers to follow?

I have to admit that I use adblocker on my PC (but not on my phone) as many/most sites are borderline unusable without it. Advertising online has gone too far with constant full page interruptions, so I think the online media has brought the adblock problem on themselves.

If you had put a placeholder behind the ads asking for adblock to be turned off I would have put it in the whitelist, but as I never click ads it probably wouldn't have made any difference to your revenue.

Ted, I enjoy your articles but I don't think your vitriol does the EMF community any good,  especially when the time could be spent writing useful content.

[teddillard]

Thanks for pretty much keeping to form, Mike. 

Ted, I enjoy your articles but I don't think your vitriol does the EMF community any good,  especially when the time could be spent writing useful content.

Glad you enjoy them, and sorry you feel like honest criticism is "vitriol".  I've never called the guy names, (CRI?  Really?) or done anything but respond to his groundless accusations.  And as far as useful content goes, I'm going back into my hole to work on my book, thanks. 

[Justin Andrews]

That is a shame Mike but understandable. Did you ever discover what caused the 90% drop? Perhaps you could post links to your third party content on the forum or a blog page for your loyal readers to follow?

I have to admit that I use adblocker on my PC (but not on my phone) as many/most sites are borderline unusable without it. Advertising online has gone too far with constant full page interruptions, so I think the online media has brought the adblock problem on themselves.

If you had put a placeholder behind the ads asking for adblock to be turned off I would have put it in the whitelist, but as I never click ads it probably wouldn't have made any difference to your revenue.

Ted, I enjoy your articles but I don't think your vitriol does the EMF community any good,  especially when the time could be spent writing useful content.

Yeah tracking and data mining have gotten so bad that plugins like Adblock and NoScript are pretty much de-riguer basic protections when it comes to browsing these days.

[teddillard]

In probably a vain attempt to avoid personal insults by this member, I'll try to at least share some comments about the subject - writing a blog about motorcycles. 

Probably the best (at least from my perspective) story about motorcycle writing was posted by Wes Siler - a guy I have true respect for, though he bums me out that he doesn't write stuff like Hell for Leather anymore.   

http://indefinitelywild.gizmodo.com/how-to-make-the-next-great-motorcycle-blog-1695705804

I grew up in the days of Cycle Magazine and writers like Phil Shilling:
https://evmc2.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/funny-front-brakes-and-satisfied-minds-the-ducati-175-phil-shilling-and-obsessions/

...writers who were as much teachers as storytellers, and that level of work is sadly lacking in today's world of motorcycles. 

As far as monetizing a site, I kind of think I have a grip on how that's done, since I've done it on several occasions, successfully (but not in the electric motorcycle market).  InsideEVs gets over a million hits a month, and supports a good-sized staff.  So yeah, I feel comfortable "opening my mouth".  It's a tough row to hoe, and one of the reasons we're successful is that we cover the entire EV industry. 

I don't think even the "big boys" in the motorcycle industry, or journalism in general, have figured out how to survive in the internet, for what it's worth.  It's free content, subscriptions don't work and advertising doesn't work - at least within the framework of conventional journalism business models.  The bottom line, though, is wide-reaching content, and if you don't have it, you don't get traffic.  That was really my only point.

(For the record, my "running to the admin" amounted to me chatting John on Facebook, and mentioning what I considered a violation of the terms of use here - personal attacks, after I had the bad form to point out some less-than-critical reporting on that now-cancelled Impossible Scooter Kickstarter project a while back.  Good stuff.)

[Cortezdtv]

Ted I think you need to adopt my signature as well

Yours should be

"When keeping it real goes wrong"

Lmao


As I might not agree with everything you say; the world needs a devils advocate; without it no problems are ever solved and people just believe everything they see

[Richard230]

Mike, I continue to be amazed that the number of views to motorbiker.org dropped to such an extent. Every one of your articles was picked up by an automated news bot on the F800Riders forum and that is how I learned about each of your blogs, including your "last" one.  Since most of the motorcycle articles picked up by the news bot were about IC vehicles it was refreshing to see stuff about electric motorcycles, to hear about nutty motorcycle stuff and of course to read about the equally nutty French politics, which seem to be even nuttier than what we see in the Great Commune of California - but still don't hold a candle to San Francisco City lawmakers. 

I really enjoyed reading the off-beat subjects that you tackled via your Motorbiker website.     Best of luck to you.   

[Mike Werner]

Mike, I continue to be amazed that the number of views to motorbiker.org dropped to such an extent. Every one of your articles was picked up by an automated news bot on the F800Riders forum and that is how I learned about each of your blogs, including your "last" one.  Since most of the motorcycle articles picked up by the news bot were about IC vehicles it was refreshing to see stuff about electric motorcycles, to hear about nutty motorcycle stuff and of course to read about the equally nutty French politics, which seem to be even nuttier than what we see in the Great Commune of California - but still don't hold a candle to San Francisco City lawmakers. 

I really enjoyed reading the off-beat subjects that you tackled via your Motorbiker website.     Best of luck to you.   

Thanks. I've had several conversation with Google, even had a work team with my account manager, the registar, the DNS provider and the hosting company. No one can understand how from one day to another the whole thing collapsed. The day before I ran +- 130,000 page views, the following day 10K, the day after 2K. It's gone back to 20K, but it can never be people decided that they weren't interested from one day to another. It remains strange. But it wasn't the only reason I stopped.

But I'm glad you enjoyed it. I also got a lot of comments via social media, comments, emails etc thanking me for the 16 years. One site even wrote an obit. ;-)

Anyway, I'm still here, and elsewhere on other sites...