Reply With QuoteGuess your missing the good ol' days too. Glad to see I'm not alone.
One thing is very clear. If you got 6,000 requests for a Special Edition Classic Hot Boat Magazine on such short notice it certainly tells you the direction the magazine should take! At the Performance Boats Forum Both V-Drive and Jet Tech forums out pace ANY other forum by a 10 to 1 margin each! Your own forums have a 2 to 1 and 4 to 1 margins. The enthusiats that want to buy your magazines are the guys that work on thier own boats. Just about every boat/car/motorcycle test these days are at a minimum 85% favorable on all aspects on a modern vehicle of any type.
No magazine test is going to sell a guy a $300K boat. They are going to go to the boat shows and take the boats for a spin for themselves. Sure you may make a ton of money on the advertising (which is nothing more then a tax right off for the advertiser in the first place) but how many of your subscribers are actually going to go buy a $300K boat each year? You need to cater to the masses that can and will afford to spend $500 to a couple of grand a year buying a new carb, Intake or whatever for their boat! I can assure you that there are a 100 fold more new people to the sport of boating each year buying a $5,000 boat then there are buying a $300K Deck Boat. I am willing to bet that 50% of your readers cant even afford a house that costs as much as many of the boats that you show case in your magazine! I dont mind seeing them but I would like to see them get as much space as Jet Tech articles are currently getting in your magazine and make the magazine more like a Classic Hot Boats magazine is supposed to be whenever it arrives! Be unique and you will have a viable business plan! Be just like the rest and you become what? Your magazine set the trend and now you have just become apart of the trend and that is not what got you to be a trendsetter back in the beginning! Get back to your roots and your business model with thrive!
Joe
PS. When is my NEW Classic Hot Boat Magazine going to hit my mailbox?
Guess your missing the good ol' days too. Glad to see I'm not alone.
Both you guys ROCK.
I think you may be right that the magazine should have more tech stuff.
We have had this discussion here before, but its been a few years. Comparing boat mags with car magazines led us to suggest that ***boat should be like CarCraft or Hot Rod magazine since Powerboat is already more like Road and Track.
For a few months ***boat had an author that did help move the focus to DIY articles and tech info. It was a nice change from the same old articles about Howard or DCB, Lavey or Ultra or Eliminator and how they are all unparelleled in their fit and finish. There is rarely anything less than wonderful said in those reviews.
If they move the focus towards tech and old school boats they might generate a larger readership over time, but does that help them generate ad revenue? I fear that articles about jet boats and old school boats won't help them sell enough ads. Putting out a successful magazine is all about collecting advertising dollars. Sellers of old jet boats aren't buying full page ads, and are there enough guys selling parts to fill all the ad pages?
Plus, you gotta think that a real perk of running the mag is getting to use all those badass new boats, eh? If the builders aren't sending those fancy new boats over for test drives, where's the fun for the test staff?
All you have to do is see the level of enthusiasm on this message board compared to the rest of the same cookie cutter ones to see where this one is headed. This magazine is trying to be like the others now and that needs to change to get the respect of the people that will buy the magazine if they were to turn it into an Enthusiasts magazine once again. Look at the vendors that spend money on advertising at Hot Rod and/or Car Craft! Summit, Jegs and the rest I am sure would be willing to spend some money advertising in Hot Boat (IF) they knew there was viable market enthusiasts to market to. If this magazine could pull in 1/4 of them they would be better off then they are now! Sooner or later Hot Boat is going to lose market share to Performance Boats if they dont do something drastic VERY SOON!
Joe
[QUOTE=Mandelon;2968973]If they move the focus towards tech and old school boats they might generate a larger readership over time, but does that help them generate ad revenue?QUOTE]
That is exactly how they generate Ad Revenue! More readers equal more exposure to the advertisers! I can assure you that not a single boat manufacture is selling a $300,000.00 boat because of an ad in a magazine. Sure they may get exposure but that is not making the sale.
Joe
After ***boat went "mainstream" if you will and lost the tech articles I went searching for another mag and found Family & Performance Boating. It was a great mag that featured a ton of tech stuff for jets as well as I/O's and they even had there share of outboard tech. It was my favorite "new" magazine and they had a good run but unfortunately fell by the wayside last year for whatever reason.
Anyway I'd like to see the old ***boat return too...I may even renew my subscription someday:idea: Chad
One of the problems the new management has at Hot Boat is that they believe that they know what you want more than you know what you want. There was a time just before the meltdown here that they wanted to do away with all the classic style boats. Then they just kind of "cleaned house". Unfortunately they threw out some of the better parts of what Hot Boat was. Not unlike the magazine, they decided that they wanted to take this forum in a different direction. Not as a social forum, but a boating forum. They didn't want things like "Song Chain" in it. Now that's the biggest thread here. Sure there was the drama, but those that had any intelligence just didn't get caught up in it. I actually became a subscriber because of the forum, not a forum member because of the magazine.
Performance Boats cater to both side of the boating community much like Hot Boat use to. I would love for Hot Boat to go back to what they once were. I'd renew my subscription. I'd have two boating magazine much like I have three or four car magazines.
I'm curious to see which direction the magazine goes if they ever get a buyer for it.
I think you may be right that the magazine should have more tech stuff.
We have had this discussion here before, but its been a few years. Comparing boat mags with car magazines led us to suggest that ***boat should be like CarCraft or Hot Rod magazine since Powerboat is already more like Road and Track.
For a few months ***boat had an author that did help move the focus to DIY articles and tech info. It was a nice change from the same old articles about Howard or DCB, Lavey or Ultra or Eliminator and how they are all unparelleled in their fit and finish. There is rarely anything less than wonderful said in those reviews.
If they move the focus towards tech and old school boats they might generate a larger readership over time, but does that help them generate ad revenue? I fear that articles about jet boats and old school boats won't help them sell enough ads. Putting out a successful magazine is all about collecting advertising dollars. Sellers of old jet boats aren't buying full page ads, and are there enough guys selling parts to fill all the ad pages?
Plus, you gotta think that a real perk of running the mag is getting to use all those badass new boats, eh? If the builders aren't sending those fancy new boats over for test drives, where's the fun for the test staff?
Bottom line is the more readers that see any add the better. If every Eliminator owner read a nice DCB article, how many are gonna dump the Elim and go buy the DCB. Compare that to a boater that running around in his father's SleekCraft and is looking to make it faster for just a few buck. He might see the same DCB add and say "I want that boat". Keep in mind all names are used as examples only but I hope the point is made. These advertizers are looking for the guys ready to step up an buy there boat. Hot Boats are not bought off a show room floor. A "Hot" boat is one that somebody has busted there ass on in the garage and spent rent money on. I don't buy Hot Boat to hear what a good time HB staff had on a certain boat. I want to know how to make my boat a "Hot Boat".
Some of us who have been here since the 70's and Chuck Pierce have been begging for this rag to go BACK TO IT'S BOATING ROOTS, without success. YES a magazine/business needs lots of advertising dollars, but without readers, who will pay? (IMO) Ad sales have been done on the "easy road" and not on the 'broad spectrum' of this boating universe. I feel it's very easy to get Nordic boats to buy $20K in ads (they sell $3/500K boats) VS getting Frank and Tina Place to buy $20K ads (they sell $1K jet systems). The magazines (as we know them) have taken to the 'easy money road' instead of the "true boater point of view". "One stop at a boat builder will bring enough ad money to offset all the small boat equipment guys I missed". I started the "High Performance" and the "V-drive" sections of this magazine under Kevin and Chris. They promised a number of things to me and delivered NOTHING! When I wrote for the magazine, I pointed out current advertizers to help questioners in every case. I NEVER (took customers) told anyone to COME TO MY SHOP, but Wilkes still steals customers in that way today. Why do they let him do it? I feel it's unethical and at least just 'sleazy business'. Wilkes does a "tech section" (as part of the magazine staff) while guys like Bergeron and Prime only get to BUY ADVERTIZING, even though they too may be able to answer many more 'tech questions' more accurately, without bias. All of the boat magazines (IMO) have gotten too far away from the REAL BOATER and have actually created a 'sudo-boater' personna. If they wanted to cover a broad spectrum of boating levels then really needed to offer more than 30 pages to do so. Hot Rod Magazine covers both 'homebuilt' and 'professional' built cars with equal coverage, why is it that the boat magazines can't do the same? I feel it's "company direction, lack of knowledge, and lack of interrest" on the part of the people who put this stuff together every month and then expect you to pay money to read about ADVERTIZER'S BS, instead of technical, informative and pleasurable reading. "How to" should not include BUY THIS FROM ME! !!!
Posting Permissions