BMW M3 is back in ALMS for 2008

February 7, 2008 – 12:21 pm

I can’t remember if it was five or six years ago now, but the BMW M3 was absolutely dominating the American Le Mans Series in the GT2 class for a short stint. The only problem with it was that per the ALMS rules the race car had to run the same “type” of engine that the street car came with, or they at least had to sell a certain number of cars with that engine package. And in this case the M3 was running a V8 when their street cars all had two fewer cylinders. Needless to say the Porsche guys were all over that and BMW was soon out of the series. Many of us were sad to see such a beautiful, well-built race car disappear from the series.

In 2008 the BMW M3 will be back in the GT2 class with the new E90 body style with the Rahal/Letterman team. And this time the V8 that will be powering the race car is based on the same engine that powers every new M3 on the street. It will be fighting new competitors this time around and the battles should be fierce. Ferrari has the crown in the once Porsche-dominated class and they don’t seem interested in backing down. Not to mention that the class now feature cars from at least eight different auto manufacturers. BMW has their work cut out for them. It should be fun to watch!

To read more on the new BMW racing effort go to the ALMS site.

Posted in Cars and Car Hobbies | 1 Comment »

Getting Sponsorship for your Racing Hobby

February 6, 2008 – 5:48 pm

If you enjoy taking your car to the track for racing or just for lapping days I’m sure you’ve come to learn that racing is expensive. I’ve been taking my car to the track for years now. First it was just to go out and have fun with friends (and that’s really what it’s still about now to some extent) but recently I’ve decided to start competing a little bit. Nothing crazy, just some Time Trials competition. Time Trials is basically a race against the clock on a road course. You compete with other cars (in your class) that are similar to yours in terms of performance capabilities. It’s a blast and it can also get expensive. Especially if you’re planning on seriously competing to win. One of the things you come to realize is that you’ll likely need a big budget to play with or some type of sponsorship to help pay for the costs of competing.

So how does one get sponsored? It’s not really all the difficult for some people really. It’s just a matter of finding ways to sell yourself to sponsors. Imagine yourself being the person making the decision to sponsor someone like you. What would make you want to pull the trigger on a sponsorship deal? It has to make business sense and you want to be assured you’ll get something out of it, right? That’s what it comes down to. Sponsors don’t like throwing money away. If you show them how you can promote them or their business you’re half way there. Businesses are always looking for ways to increase profits and/or get more exposure.

You don’t have to be a professional racer to get sponsored. You don’t even necessarily have to win races, though that helps you get more sponsors. You just have to learn how to promote yourself and your sponsors effectively. You can do this in a variety of ways:

- First of all, create a detailed online profile for your car and your story. You can create your own site or use a forum that you frequent to house your profile. You need something that you can point people (and sponsors) to. This page should include your car’s modifications, photos, background, your racing experience, some write-ups and photos from events you’ve participated in, etc.

- Become a “virtual expert”. Participate in popular online forums that are focused on the car you drive. The more you help others and give advice on how to modify the car, the more people will ask for your help. Be sure to fill in your profile on those sites and add a photo of your car if you can. Any time you can highlight your sponsors in your discussions or in your profile is a huge plus. If you happen to be a forum site owner you’re in an even better position to market yourself and your sponsors.

- Find ways to get yourself into positions of influence on various forums. If you can become a Moderator for an online forum you’re seen as a leader in that community. That will tell potential sponsors that you can give them exposure and that the members of that community value what you have to say due to your status. Just as I mentioned above, be sure to fill in your profile and have photos of your car displayed for the community to see.

- Attend as many events as you can. While at the events, keep an eye out for any photographers or media people who may be covering the event. You want to try and get photos of your car taken for any and all press opportunities.

- Try and get exposure by getting featured in magazines, websites, blogs, local print publications, and other high visibility sources. Take good photos of your car and send them in to as many magazines as you can. Submit your photos and stories about your car/yourself to various relevant websites asking to be featured on their homepage. If you have a photographer friend have them take the photos for you.

It’s all about exposure for sponsors. The more you can give them the more they will dish out for you. Try out some of the tips above before you start contacting potential sponsors. You’ll want to have something to show them before you ask for money or free parts.

Once you get to the point where you think you’re ready to start contacting some potential sponsors you’ll want to put a plan together. Make a list of all of your accomplishments, your existing and past sponsors, and goals for this coming season. What parts do you need for the season? What businesses would be a good fit for what you’re doing? Do you need cash for racing expenses? Make a list of companies you will be sending a proposal to, and don’t just limit yourself to automotive companies. Start thinking about companies in your area that might be interested as well as online companies that will be interested in what you can offer them. Start drafting a proposal to send to your list of potential sponsors. It doesn’t have to be overly formal, just try and convey your excitement.

In your sponsorship proposal be sure to list all of the potential ways you plan to gain exposure for your sponsor. List all of the media sources you will be “attempting” to get exposure through. Invite them out to attend your events if they’re local. Ask them for a print-version of their logo for your “marketing materials”. If you’re creative enough you can even sell them on the idea that you’ll be creating t-shirts that will have all of the logos of your sponsors on them. You can do this using an online printing service like Cafepress. It’s all about being unique and innovative and getting them excited about the opportunity. The more you can sell them on you, the better chances you have of getting the deal. Get feedback on your proposal from friends and other racers.

Don’t be afraid. Just go for it! The worst they can do is say “no” or not respond to you. Chances are you’ll get someone to say “yes” if you’re persistent and that’s better than paying for it all yourself.

Posted in Cars and Car Hobbies | 2 Comments »

Monetizing your vBulletin (Forums) Community

January 29, 2008 – 5:16 pm

Through the years I’ve been building and managing online communities without really putting a lot of effort into monetizing them until recently due to fear of driving visitors away. My thought process was; the more ads I place on the site the more intrusive it will be for my users and the more visitors I’ll drive away. Don’t let this logic stop you from doing everything you can to increase your revenue. As long as you have good content you won’t lose many users due to your ads, if any at all.

The first thing you have to keep in mind if you plan on monetizing your vBulletin Forum site is the layout and where you’re going to place your ads. I strongly suggest that you plan for this ahead of time. If you set your ad spots up from the beginning your members will have nothing to complain about compared to if you do it later. Let them sign up for your site and get used to the ads right away. I typically suggest that you at least plan for a 468×60 and a 160×600 spot on most pages of your forums. You will have ads in other strategic spots but those are the two most commonly used throughout forums on automotive sites.

Before you can start looking at implementing ads on your site you’ll need a banner rotation script. The most popular free script on the market right now is OpenAds. I’ve used this script for years and love it. It really makes managing ad banner campaigns easy. Having a banner rotation script will allow you to rotate banner ads across all of the pages of your site. And plugging the code into the vBulletin Forums Software is simple.

Now let’s discuss some of the best ad programs available to help you monetize your community!

Direct Ad Sales

When I say “direct ad sales” I’m talking about when a business pays you directly to place an ad on your website. For example, Bob’s Tire Shop contacts you (or you contact them) and you agree to run a banner ad on your site promoting their business for $XXX per month. Direct ad sales will likely be your biggest revenue source overall but also the most time consuming. It takes time to sell and implement these ads and collecting payments can also be time-consuming and frustrating at times.

I suggest first setting up an Advertising page on your site explaining the different types of ads a business can purchase on your site. Give them a reason why they should choose your site for their marketing and have a very visible path for them to contact you to get started. You can post prices but I tend to avoid doing so. You’ll find that smaller businesses won’t have the same budget as the larger companies. I think it’s better to feel them out before quoting them. Ask them about their budget and what type of exposure they need. You might leave money on the table by quoting all businesses the same price.

When it comes time to collect payment I’m a big fan of using Paypal. With Paypal you can set up automatic subscription payments and allow your advertisers to automatically send you payments every month. This takes all the work out of collections. It’s simple. All you have to do is go into Paypal > Merchant Services > Create Buttons > Subscribe. You’ll create a button for each price point and paste the generated code into a page on your site. You send the page to your advertiser and have them sign up using that button. If you have different advertisers paying different monthly prices simply create multiple pages with a unique button for each. It’s that easy. Sign up for Paypal.

How much can I charge? That’s going to depend on your traffic numbers, the popularity of the market you’re focusing on, and the quality of your content. It’s not uncommon for newer sites to charge $50-$100 per month if the site looks busy enough. If you have a busy site and you’re confident in your content then charge more. But you’ll want to make sure you do everything you can to provide value for your advertisers so not to lose them after a short campaign. As in any business customer service is a big part of the puzzle. If you’re just getting started consider offering a discounted rate in the beginning with a higher price after 3-6 months. This is very simple to do with Paypal subscription buttons as well.

Google Adsense

If you haven’t heard of this ad program you must be really new to the game, or just not paying attention. Adsense is an advertising program Google made available in order to resell ads in their network. If you do a search on Google’s site you’ll see ads show up in the right column. Those same type of ads can be displayed on your site if you sign up for a Google Adsense account. Once you create an account with them you’ll go in and create ads to place on your site. You select the size, the color, the type, and you’ll take the code that is generated and place it in various spots on your site. The ad will then scan your pages and automatically determine the most relevant ads to display on each page of your site based on the content that fills up each page. It’s pretty effective. And the best part is it’s all automated. The most relevant ads will show up all the time without any work on your part. No negotiating pricing, no trying to renew agreements, no collections work. You can tweak your ad settings and location to help increase revenue whenever you want and you collect a check at the end of the month.

The trick with Adsense, as well as most ad programs like Adsense, is to place these ads next to your content in strategic locations. I recommend trying a few spots to find the locations that work best. Try to stay near the center of the page whenever possible and next to your content. In vBulletin Forums I like placing ads below the navigation bar and above the content.

ShoppingAds - formerly known as AuctionAds

Another great program for car enthusiast sites is ShoppingAds. ShoppingAds is basically just a big eBay affiliate. ShoppingAds puts all their publishers into one big “collective” to go after the higher revenue share. Publishers are able to set up ads on their sites that target eBay’s auctions and take advantage of ShoppingAds’ ability to achieve the higher performance incentive tiers with the aggregate volume of traffic to make more money than they could with their own eBay affiliate relationship. At the time of this writing affiliates get 100% of any money they make from the system. As the collective moves up the eBay revenue share tiers, ShoppingAds will start to take a cut of revenues. The goal is for you to make more with ShoppingAds than directly with eBay’s affiliate program, which will be the case as the network increases its volume. Like with eBay’s affiliate program you only get paid if someone bids on an item, clicks a Buy Now button, or signs up for a new eBay account. Though that doesn’t sound as good as a CPC program it can still be very profitable.
Sign up for/get more info about ShoppingAds.

HOT TIP: I also came across a great add-on for vBulletin Forum Software that will automatically add ShoppingAds referral code to any and every link posted in your forums that points to an eBay auction. This means that if your users have posted (or are likely to post) any links to eBay you could potentially get paid for those links. The beautiful thing about this add-on is that it’s transparent to the users. They can’t tell you’re making money from this (unless of course they know about this add-on themselves). Any time you can add transparency to any revenue-generating programs on your site you have a great chance of making money without pissing off the users. You can find this add-on here.

Amazon Affiliate Program

Amazon isn’t necessarily the best affiliate program for automotive sites but it could still make you some money. And the beautiful thing is you can set it up just like ShoppingAds in your forums using an add-on that will convert any links posted in your forums that point to amazon pages to include your referral code to increase your revenue potential. You can find this add-on here. You’ll have to sign up for an Amazon Affiliate account first of course.

Yahoo Publisher Network

This program is basically the same as Google Adsense but hasn’t really caught on as quickly as many would have thought. Sign up for an account, create an ad and place the ad on your site. You’ll receive a check at the end of the month. They’re a few steps behind Google in terms of contexual ad relevancy but everyone is expecting them to catch up before long. Some have had great experiences with this program.

Kontera ContentLink Ads

Kontera ContentLink allows you to make money from advertising without giving up any current advertising spots. Their technology reads the content of your page and turns certain words into an text link ad with a double underline. This is great for forums since you’ll have your members virtually creating the ads for you. The highlighted words are double underlined and when hovered over, an ad pops up. Normally, Kontera requires a site have a minimum 500,000 page views per month before being accepted into the program but I know for a fact they’ve accepted sites with much less traffic than that.
Sign up for/get more info about Kontera ContentLink

DealDotCom Affiliate Program

DealDotCom sells software tools that help generate revenue. They offer a two-tier affiliate program that pays out a 35% commission on anything purchased by new registrations referred from your site. Unlike other affiliate programs that place a time limit your your commission (like ShoppingAds’ 5% for 6 months), the DealDotCom commission is forever. What’s more, anyone that they refer to DealDotCom goes on your second tier. Anything people on your second tier buy nets you a 15% commission, forever.
Sign up for/get more info about DealDotCom

Open a Cafepress Store

Cafepress is a printing service that allows you to easily open an online store and add your designs to t-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, stickers, bags, calendars, and a whole slew of other products. You choose the products, you upload your designs, and you mark them up as much as you want. This is not only a great way to make some extra cash but it can also be a great marketing tool for your site if you plaster your logo/domain name all over the products you sell. And you don’t necessarily have to be a designer to use this service. Create a contest on your site and have your members submit designs. Or do a search for a graphic artist to create a design for you. You’d be surprised how easy it can be to get a design created for little or no expense.
Get more info/sign up for Cafepress.

Posted in Building Communities, Making Money Online | 4 Comments »