Throughout this past weekend on PretendRaceCars.net, we’ve had a staggering 15,000+ views from 8,500+ unique IP’s, and our little website in a dark, distraught corner of the internet attracted more people than the IHRA event in Edmonton that concluded just a few hours ago. Two weeks ago, this same scenario played out with IndyCar, as more people visited PRC.net than attended the in California.
It feels like only a week ago we were at 215,000 hits; now we’re rapidly approaching 300,000 and just shy of 100,000 unique IP’s.
Spikes in viewership aren’t uncommon for us as we post shit about subjects our competitors refuse to, but the tangible leap in popularity has us confused as to how we should expand the site. PretendRaceCars.net is not a large operation, but rather a small group of guys on TeamSpeak using a free Premium WordPress account to tell it like it is and putting nightly discussions into something you can read on the shitter.
There are two potential paths we’ve looked at when it comes to expanding the site:
First, several users have suggested for us to open up a message board. Yes, we’re aware the comments section here sucks in terms of functionality, and the sheer amount of traffic might warrant a dedicate forum – RaceDepartment, TeamVVV, InsideSimRacing, and SimHQ all have them, but a message board brings its own set of problems. Myself and Chris both have full time jobs, and owning a forum gives us additional reasons to burn company time locked to our phones to read about autistic internet drama. Neither of us want to spend our free time solving disputes between two kids calling each other faggots on the internet, and neither of us want to pray we didn’t hire a third party moderator who’s a biased, power-tripping piece of shit, because this tends to happen on message boards. If there’s a way around this, we’d like to know.
Second, even though it would make us giant hypocrites, a Patreon might not be a bad idea. – a tool used by narcissistic teenage girls so they can pretend they’re E-List celebrities, but the reality is that some sort of optional monetary aspect is becoming the standard across many different aspects of modern gaming. RaceDepartment has a premium membership subscription with the occasional sales, ClassicGameRoomHD on YouTube lets you send in your old games for Mark to review, Slightly Mad Studios let you pay $20,000 CDN to go on a dinner date with Ian Bell, TradingPaints offers a pro subscription for marginal improvements to alternate livery management, and TeamVVV offers a Patreon with several different donation levels. As I’ve said, I personally think essentially asking for donations is retarded, but people appear to like this sort of thing enough to where it’s popped up everywhere, and if people genuinely like PRC.net that much to where many readers willingly want to toss us a fiver, we’ll whip something up designed to keep any monetary donations strictly optional and also constructed in a way to limit compulsive spending.
As always, the comments section ultimately decides where we’ll go from here, what’s above are mere suggestions that have come across our own private drawing board.
Start taking bribes from developers and shill
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this, its the only way
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This idea might work;
Step 1:
Write articles about sexism, patriarchy, rape culture and the gender “pay gap” in sim racing.
Step 2:
Claim that you’re being harassed over Twitter while flashing your Patreon account.
Step 3:
Profit.
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Since I am the undisputed numero uno Kunos and AC fan, I might start writing an article every here and there spotlighting a new or improved (or maybe even shittily ripped) AC mod. It will contain a link to me making sloppy laps in the mod on my Youtube page so it will be click bait for sure…too bad I am too stupid and stubborn to enable ads on my youtube so i will actually gain nothing but view count; which can count as another E-penis compensator, so there is that.
It will not read all nice and flowing like James articles; it will include crap words like shittily and compensator so people will probably hate it. But I might do it anyways, we will see.
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I one man show produce a website exclusively on F1 news and since 2009 have had 30,994,671 (yes 30 million) views and anything between 10,000 to 30,000 views per day with most views on a day ever 59,019.
But web stats means shit when it comes to money – I am still poor – as people want everything for free on the web and reading the stuff you guys spew is cool and fun to many, few if any are going to pay for your pearls of wisdom.
End of the day it’s about longevity and your site being established in the long run and that way build regular traffic which you can then leverage if you use Google Ads – but then you need serious traffic to make money of any sort – the Google ‘maths’ is you make $1 for every 1000 views.
Formula 1 can do that because it is a huge market, but sim racing ‘news’ is so niche that I doubt it has potential to lure big traffic that will allow you to leave your day jobs.
So my advice is be patient, keep up the good work and a year or so down the line check where you stand – the amount of work you guys deliver on here is impressive – but when you start getting laid suddenly you might not have time to be Pretend Journos.
Maybe a PayPal donate button is something to consider showing a running total like they do on NoGrip ($325 this month) but you will be shocked how little you will get in the long run, because IMO real sim racing people are not nice people…
For now what makes this PRC project a success is what it is, not what you think it is going to be…. I vote stay as you are!
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This^ – PRC is great because of what it is now. Yeah the scrolling-through-comments-and-stories sucks, but I deal with it, there’s worse shit out there.
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I landed on your page because of an article about the trees on the Nurburgring pissing off AC players. Ever since then I’ve been reading reading and enjoying your work A LOT. Just wanted to say that ’cause yours is one of the few websites that I visit almost daily.
About the forums… I don’t know, it’s been a while since I’ve seriously kept up with a forum. There are so many and I have so little time. Man, I can’t count the forums I’m registered on, but the last one I visited was (probably) the Sector3 forum a few weeks ago. I got into the Sim Racers group on Facebook and have been a little active there as well, but not too much. If you have a busy schedule and poor time management like I do, you’re probably sim racing whenever you get the chance and rarely getting involved in forum discussions. The modding community though might be pretty happy with one, as they need to communicate a lot more than shutouts like myself :) .
Ads… I really appreciate the lack of ads, however I wouldn’t mind if there were some, of course kept in reasonable amount and positioning.
I’m new to Patreons (yes, look at me weird). Donation buttons would be nice too. I can’t promise I’d give donations too often (I have to mine more minerals), however getting some cool asset after donating might work. See if your knowledge of sim racing might help others on the track. I’m using the baseline setup and learned to adjust it for faster tracks (thanks again!). The assets could be some donator-exclusive stuff like that, while still keeping some of the advice 100% free. It’s just an idea, I’m in no way sure it would be any good.
Whetever you do, I just hope you stay 100% independent because that’s what earns so much interest. So donations from developers might be awesome, however even if they do not influence the content in any way some might end up saying that you’re shilling.
Cheers!
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If you start a forum, you’ll hate all the cunts that come on shilling about their favourite game. The same cycle happens, and once you turn around to a bellend and shoot him down and put him in his place, you’ve accidentally become Ian Bell himself.
Don’t be a Bell End – don’t start a forum.
And Patreons are the faggiest thing in the world. Don’t become Alan Boiston begging for cash so he can sit playing computer games all day long.
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Oh yes – get rid of all these anonymous commentators – nicknames etc are fine but the anon shite must go!
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Nah, fuck off nobody gives a shit who you are kid.
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LOL @anaonymous coward rather hide under a rock;-)
Cool thing about this site is that the rules are: there are no rules – so agreed let the poofies hide behind the anonymous who gives a shite
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At first I laughed given the site’s origins, but then I remembered that James was a tripfag and now I’m worried
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How about leaving it as it is now? Perhaps people like it because it is what it is – a clear, simple-to-follow site about racing titles and such. If you expand it, add a forum and so on, with lots of clicking, it may suddenly lose its appeal.
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He wanna have some free cash from dumb ppl… ;)
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I honestly expected someone to mention J-list ads…
I’m kinda disappointed, haha.
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Learn to write better articles. You make great points and I love the site, but holy shit you write like a spastic sometimes.
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