Social Media and the demise of websites like this
I've been around long enough to remember the traffic sites like the old Hotboat.com used to have. I'm not going to compare the new Hotboat.com to the old Hotboat.com because I have not done this site justice, so I'm not going to compare this site to those that were booming back in the day. Nor will I compare this site to those that are still doing fairly well.
But I will say this, a few years ago when I invested a fairly large sum of money in to sponsorships, ads, promotions, giveaways, etc. I was right up there with the big boys, and I have receipts and cancelled checks to prove it. But those days are long gone. Even when I did have a few paying advertisers, that income paled in comparison to what I spent on boat races, boat shows, sponsorships, and other boating related events.
I've noticed a trend over the past several years and a transition from sites like this to social media sites, sites like Facebook or even Instagram. Many boating related social media pages have popped up over the past several years and I see new ones pop up all the time. For many of the boating industry advertisers, social media is a great way to reach your audience for pennies. Social media has already proven to be a great way to stay in touch with friends and family, now social media is capitalizing on advertisers. Good and bad for the boating industry.
The good is a fairly inexpensive way to reach your audience. You can capitalize on groups or a large user base that is already well established. Great for advertisers and a very low cost way to reach your audience.
Now the bad. Because advertisers are spending less and less on sites like this, the trickle down effect is less and less sponsorship or promotional dollars. For example, many of the small private boat racing teams have lost their primary source of sponsorship dollars. Even the bigger guys are feeling the squeeze. And its only going to get worse. The more social media is used to promote and advertise boating and/or boating related events, the fewer ad dollars are spent on sites such as this. And in the end, fewer dollars spent reinvesting in the industry.
Unfortunately I do not see this changing anytime soon. Social media is on fire and continues to grow at a staggering level.
Sometime back I set up Hotboat.com social media pages in an attempt to capture those who do not like forum structured websites, such as this. Ironically, the social media Hotboat.com pages appear to be doing much better than their parent website lol. I guess you could say that idea backfired. Most attempts to redirect that traffic to this site are futile. On occasion the redirects (pointing ads or info on social media websites back to www.hotboat.com) work, albeit temporarily. So after a few hours everyone goes back to social media and few, if any, post on the website.
Inevitably, this website will die a quiet death. And I'm afraid others like this too will eventually fall by the wayside.
The bigger community will eventually consume our little nests and our future choices will be limited to a couple social media websites.
Progress right?
Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere anytime soon. Fortunately for me my costs are extremely low and pretty much limited to hosting fees. If I had to count on this place as a source of income, I wound't be a fat fuck. I'd look more like a tweaker on the paleo diet wearing clothes that are 10X too big for me.
Hotboat.com will be 5 years old this December. Its been a great journey, and I'm extremely appreciative of those of you who are still here. And for those of you who post on a regular basis, God Bless you and thank you!!
I don't know if I'll make it to our 10yr anniversary, but I'm sure as hell going to try :partyguy:
