Going Full Time

Jon, I truly think that you could provide a directory of B&M tobacco resources, updated and for a fee. Actually sell some space that would open in a link and feature a capsule (they would be required to keep updated) of sales, trunk shows, featured tinned sample etc… based on their geography and one key descriptor.

I have a quantifiable rationale regarding this approach - please feel free to contact me directly.

Cheers, VC

I agree with everything Winelover has said. I think the emails is a good idea. Also, if I could buy pipes and tobacco from this site I will be extremely happy. It will be a one stop shop for pipers. We would then support our own database of information., how cool is that???

I think there are a number of us who sell pipes or tobacco or both who would be willing to pay a reasonable fee monthly to advertise or to have a link to our respective sites. As long as the premise is that anyone is free to post their own views - good or bad - about the various tobacco’s there should be no conflict of interest issues. Don’t know if that would provide enough to actually provide a living income.

I can see that you love this site and all the people would like to work ( earn money) at things they love but I think that if this site is commerccialised everything will change a lot. I beleive that this site is something special that belongs to all the pipesmokers and it should stay like this. That is the way I feel, I might be wrong

As a full-time freelance writer, I completely understand — and support — your desire to make a living at what you most love.

I am not against advertising, assuming it would be strictly pipe/tobacco-related. I’d also prefer that it be limited to the Home page or to the tops of all of other pages, rather than running down the sides. And I’d absolutely prefer NO animation.

In addition, you could consider charging a fee to those who wish to write and post reviews here. Viewing the database would remain free to all. But if you want to have the ability to post a review, then you would be required to pay a modest annual fee — say, something in the $20-$30 range.

Finally, I am *not* in favor of making this a retail outlet. There are sufficient tobacco storefronts on the Web already, and I can’t imagine what that would do to your workload. I certainly can’t see how that would give you *more* time to actually work on improving the site.

Bob

I like NapaWineLover’s idea on the directory of B&Ms. This could be very handy when travelling. Maybe you could provide different sizes of ads in the listing for different fees, the idea that there would be a level to list even the smallest B&M for a modest amount of money. I would think that you could leverage the popularity of tobaccoreviews.com for something like this.

I do agree with Bob Bittner about absolutely NO animation (slow download times) and to *NOT* turn this into a retail outlet. Links to other pipe related businesses are fine, but I really like that this is NOT a commercial site.

But I do disagree with Bob on the fee to post a review. I certainly don’t disagree with a voluntary donation (ala the late lamented The Pipe Smokers Ephemeris), but some budgets are severely pinched, and even $30 a year might cause you to lose reviewers. The number and breadth of the reviewers is what makes this site so terribly unusual and special.

– Doug Pearson

I disagree with Bob when he says you should charge a fee to be able to post a review. A lot of us are here because it is a free site and charging a usage fee would deter alot of folks from posting that have posted reviews here all along freely. I would go with the idea of some sort of advertising as some of the above responders have already suggested.

I wouldn’t be adverse to paying a nominal fee for the privilege of membership on this site. Any creative way of extracting income from this site which would not annoy and distract would be just fine with me.

Best of luck to you!

Your watch word should be caution. This site has brought in many people because of it’s informal premise. Charging a membership fee or a fee to post a review is not a good idea. Most pipe smokers tend to be frugal. You will lose a lot of traffic if it suddenly costs money to stop by. As with most internet projects your best approach is through advertising. Targeted to the tobacco industry is obviously best but it’s not a perfect world. Perhaps a collectors selling forum could be established with you receiving fees for sales similar to Ebay.

I share your desire to make a living at what you love and hope you can achieve it!

I would just like to say this is a great site .
I think you can make revenue by selling ads.
I also would not oppose a annual fee for the privalidge of using this site.I am a member but do not post revues yet as I feel a little too inexperienced to properly judged the great blends available us.I feel this site is of great value to our hobby.

The addition of non animated banner advertising would be ok to me. I was also wondering if you could form a core editors group, similar to the way Wikipedia works through volunteers (look for frequent posters). Many of the old timers have been very generous in sharing their views to keep the database going and this might give them an opportunity to help steer the site and lighten your workload. Best of luck, this is a GREAT site!

First, thanks to everyone who has offered their support and ideas. I really appreciate hearing what you honestly think about my little idea. There has been good discussion about the topic now, and I would like to respond to the various ideas thrown out:

1) Selling access to a resource directory: I am not overly interested in this idea for one simple reason — it would take more time to build one that I would feel merited charging for than it would be worth, and wouldn’t free any time to work on the other parts of the site.

2) Selling pipes and tobacco, aka becoming a retailer: There is simply no way I am ever going to do this. For one, Sykes Wilford at smokingpipes.com has employed me in the past, supported this site with his time, information and company resources, and to compete with him would be an enormous slap in the face to one of the industries most hard-working and honest businessmen. Also, running a successful retail site takes WAY more work than working on the site does now, and like the first suggestion would guarantee that I had no time for Tobacco Reviews.

3) Charging for access to the site, or to post reviews: Never going to happen. When I first started brainstorming ways to support myself a bit from Tobacco Reviews, one of the rules I laid out for myself is that everything that already exists on the site would stay exactly as it is now - free. Charging now for something I have provided free for many years would be the worst kind of bait and switch tactic, and something I could not stomach doing.

4) A Pipe/Tobacco collectors sales venue a la eBay for pipe stuff: This is an intriguing idea, and one that merits more thought. I would be interested in hearing more opinions on how such a thing might be organized.

5) Selling advertising: This is also a possibility, though I have some reservations about it. Would advertising convey the possible message that the reviews were no longer objective? Would it seem possible that I was ’sanitizing’ reviews so as not to damage the sales of advertisers?

6) Don’t do it: This is a very legitimate path as well. Perhaps the entire idea is a non-starter and Tobacco Reviews should remain a strictly non-commercial place for the free exchange of opinions and information.

7) Take donations: this is probably the least-offensive idea in the bunch, with the exception of #6. Easy, simple, voluntary. I like it.

Volunteer Editors: I really, really like this idea. The goal here is not to make my living solely off of Tobacco Reviews, but to not have to choose between making a living and improving the site. Having a group of editors that could do much of the routine work on the site (updating and adding blends, adding pictures, etc.) would free up quite a bit of the time I spend now on the site for actual development of the code, and would probably result in a better quality site than we have now.

In retrospect, the post I made was a bit hasty and not well thought out, but the responses and comments have definitely put me back on track in my thinking about how to accomplish this. I’ll post more later on this topic, and a possible outline of how to accomplish the goal. Thank you!

I understand that you want to turn your hobby into your job, but just like another poster warned; what makes it fun right now, is that it is a hobby. You might reconsider and just use some ways to make money; and it stays enjoyable.

I agree that you should NOT charge membership fees for posters or readers. What makes this site work and that will generate revenue is readership. Very few sites can effectively charge fees, and the most popular ones usually do not.

With that in mind, there are some ideas organized by:
1) Sales
2) Enabling of sales
3) Advertising

Sales: You could sell goods but this will cost you inventory and as you said, interfere with your relationship with others. I don’t recommend it.
Find a company or two you can partner with and sell goods off this site. They ship and an you take a piece of the action.
Sell something they cannot: Offer goods via Café Press or another site that puts your logo’s, designs, ideas, on stuff. No need for inventory, and you can make money.

Enabling of sales as other suggested: A few ways to do this:
1) Offer an auction site, similar to Ebay; where people can post and sell for a fee.
2) Auction it for people; they send it to you, and you take of the rest; for a larger fee.

Advertising
1) Sell ad space in a rotating banner.
2) Use Google Ads, where people click on it and you get a fee.

Good luck.

I work in marketing and PR, so my ideas need to be taken with a grain of salt…

First: You can absolutely sell advertising without compromising the reviews in this market. Since almost every vendor has *some* blends that are well received- and some that aren’t- I don’t think you run the risk of alienating one of them with a bad review. If your reviewer base remains “open source” you will have editorial cover as well.

Second: While you don’t have to become a retailer, it seems to me Steve is correct when he implies you can make money facilitating sales. Charge vendors a percentage of the sale to hyperlink their reviewed products to one of their sales pages. They can track how much revenue they get from this site and pay you accordingly.

Third: Pipe artisans and consumable manufacturers could probably be similarly charged the same way the tobaccos are. The listing in a vendor set should be free to maintain credibility and thoroughness. The link should cost the vendors money.

Fourth: People hate animating banners, and I understand why. And while I do not know how sophisticated this market is yet, the metrics don’t lie: Animated and interactive banners work better, therefore vendors like them. You can reserve the right to reject particularly annoying banners, but some of them can be kind of cool and entertaining. I humbly submit you should ignore our collective derision of rich media.

Finally: You’ll need to lay out some money to market the site. I think it will be worth it, though. As far as I can tell you have the premier site in this vertical on the web. It may be a small vertical, but you can own it. I do think it’s possible.

Best of luck. If you love your work you’re never working. Make a go. If it doesn’t work out, oh well. If you never try, you’ll regret it.

You’ve done yeoman’s work here, and I gotta’ think there’s *plenty* of big tobacco money to be made. They’re running out of places to advertise. Let’s take their Joe Camel BS money while simultaneously laughing at them and enjoying our hand-blended tobaccos.

After all, I’m *still* waiting for my check off the tabacco class-action settlement…

Cheers,
Karl

Jon,

Being new to pipes I have found your website BY FAR the best resource on the web for figuring out what the heck to buy and smoke. Thank you for all your hard work!

I have only a small suggestion, but one that might provide a bit of revenue. When a viewer looks at the reviews for (for example) pipesandcigars.com’s “Larry’s Blend”, your website shows a link at the top of the page, which takes you to the tobaccos by that blender.

My suggestion is to SELL THAT LINK to the online retailer, instead of linking it to the other reviews. This might work very well because there are so many excellent proprietary blends.

For brands sold at more than one retailer, you could offer more than one link. I’m no web expert, but I’ll bet you could get some substantial money coming in if you charge “by the click” - the retailer agrees to pay for every sale made from someone linking through this site.

In the alternative, I would certainly be willing to pay a small access fee.

Do whatever it takes. I know how time intensive maintaining even a small site can be. Certainly the proposed news section can be ad supported from the beginning. As for the original reviews site, I would not object to small banner ads - not animated - or better yet, Google style text ads.

When I’m reading about my hobbies in magazines, I spend a lot of time reading the adds. I like them. They add something. I read TobaccoReviews rather like I read a magazine… I’m always “thumbing” through it.

Web site adds *can* be intrusive and distracting and obnoxious, but they don’t have to be. I’m sure karlub is right about animated ads getting more response, but I’m also sure I would spend less time on this site if it had them.

Fixed-size ads in a banner area at the top of the page or Google-esque text ads would be just fine with me!

Also… I tend to forget about the blog… my history button takes me straight to the reviews. But I wish I didn’t forget about the blog. You could have a “Front Page” with news (say, the first three items from the blog) and ads… work on a site layout that encourages people to use this as a foyer into the site. I would *rather* come to a front page with news and ads than straight to the reviews. The current structure makes the reviews and the blog seem separate, stand-alone sites. Integrating them might help each, and it would provide a good way to keep separation of Church-and-State, Ads-and-Reviews.

Finally — I know this won’t generate a great deal of cash, but hey — what about selling customized TobaccoReviews Zippo pipe lighters? I’d pay for such a thing.

I agree with Dave Webber about selling the “buy it” links to the tobacco blenders, if it’s a workable solution… and why stop at one vendor per tobacco? For what it’s worth, I’ve used those links many times.
I’m glad you don’t support the idea of charging users for access or reviews. You’d lose me, among many others.
I could tolerate some advertising, as long as it was subject-related.
Let me be the first to volunteer my services as an editor. I’m retired and I have the time. That’s a way I could give back some of the help you’ve given me.
I’m not a businessman, but I see some good ideas here, and more will surely follow. Hopefully you can find a solution to your dilemma.

As a certified lurker you can take my opinion with a grain of salt.

If you are serious about keeping this site running (I know it isn’t free, and costs will continue to rise) then you will need to find a way to support it. If that means paying out of your pocket, and you are OK with that, then fine.

However, if you want to support it without having to pay for it yourself, ads are a must. I agree that some animated advertisements are annoying, but you can screen them and make sure none get in that are heinous.

Also, a possibility is to make up for lost ad revenue by letting people opt out of seeing them, for an annual fee. This is not the “bait and switch” you are worried about and it gives people an option.

Letting companies that sell the specific tobacco being reviewed link to that review is a tremendous convenience. If you did that I would no longer have to go onto google and search for the specific tobacco and someone who sells it. It is a win-win situation. I, the lazy consumer, don’t have to spend time looking for the product. You, the thrifty owner, makes money every time the consumer uses the links.

-James-