I can't believe this - I'm not only angry, but I'm extremely disappointed.

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Spark

Spark

HPIC - Hatas gonna Hate
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I'm not only angry, but I'm extremely disappointed.

I cannot believe what I am reading on KnifeForums.com right now, or what I am reading right here.
After all Mike and myself have gone through to try to make sure that we could provide the very best solution that would help the most amount of people, some of you actually have the gall to tell us that we are wrong to try to make this site pay for itself?

You think it was our ultimate intention to start a knife store? Do you really think that we would have if we had any other option that would have worked? Hell no!

Let me give you a quick breakdown on what BladeForums.com has cost us so far in the 17 months we've been open.
$5000 for a dedicated server
$500 a month in bandwidth, *after* we got billed a one time $2000 fee for excess usage, x17= $10,500
$250 a month for colocation costs x17 = $4250
$500 for shopping cart software so we could process orders in the BladeForums.com store
$500+ for banner ad software
$2000 for other software, including the UBB that runs this place.
$1250 in tech support when the server has had problems
Over $10,000 in magazine ads and booth space at the Blade Show

That's over $34,000 *before* you even count the number of man hours Mike and myself put into making this site run smoothly, moderating the forums, etc.

Now lets see, hmmm, we have so much traffic we need a T1 line. That's now $850 per month. Oh yeah, and by moving into the new colocation building, we now have to pay $300 per month for the half rack we take up. And there's the $55 per month router charge. Then theres the other charges which wind up being a solid $1500 per month from March 1 on.

We've sunk a lot of money into making this site the best resource for knives out there, all so you guys didn't have to pay a dime to check it 3 times a day, from anywhere in the world.

Let's see, hmmm, how many ways have we tried to get this site to support itself, let me count them.
  • Banner Ads - We saw complaining when they were $200 per year, and now that they are $500 per year (less than $50 per month), people still aren't taking advantage of them. Today we've got a total of 25 paying advertisers, most of whom either are either on a month to month basis, or have paid at $200 or one of the other specials. BTW, almost half of them aren't dealers. We've taken in less than $7500 for banners since we've had them running - and several dealers couldn't be bothered to pay their bills when the time came.

    Any paying advertiser who doesn't believe we're running the banners fair and square can email or call me and I'll be happy to show them just how fair we're running the banner system - we're not screwing anyone.
  • The BladeForums.com Blue Native - We ordered 300 of those for you guys, and still have some almost a year later. They cost us about 75% of what we were selling them for, all told. We didn't even break even until almost the end of last year.
  • The BladeForums.com tshirts - those went over so well that we wound up giving most of them away with the Blue Natives
  • To the point - Only 125 of you signed up for that. About 50% wanted refunds, the rest were kind enough to donate the subscription fees to help keep the site running.
  • The BladeForums.com Store - Well, since we weren't selling knives, how many of you actually think we made any money from it? Outside of the Special knife sales, we didn't make much. Most looked at our prices and said "I can get that cheaper from Discount Knives / KnifeCenter / insert dealer here"
  • The Carbon Fiber Spyderco sale - Didn't do much either.
  • Busse Combat Basic sales and REKAT SIFU sales - when you subtract all of the ones that got "lost" in shipping both here and overseas, the profit from those wasn't that great either.
  • Third Party Banner Advertising and Amazon.com Books - Less than $80 per month, folks.
  • Offering TurnKey knife stores - Can anyone say ZapShip? 3 guesses what happened to that.

Guys, we've tried literally *everything* that we could do to keep this site open before we opened 1StopKnifeShop. Everything.

All so that we could keep this site open without you people paying a dime.

Now that we finally decide that dealers who make money off this site should be paying for the priviledge, what do we get? A whole bunch of grief from those who can't be bothered to support the very site they use to line their pockets!

Patrick Ma (Triple Aught), Leslie (NWCutlery), Fred Whitlock (KnifeOutlet), James Matthis (ChaiCutlery), MJS, and the other few banner advertisers who have done their part have a valid complaint. They've supported us since the beginning, and have done what they could to help out, and by us opening a knife store to keep this site open, we've essentially hurt them. We knew this would happen, unfortunately, there's nothing else we could do.

Unfortunately, however, it takes more than a token few to make a site pay for itself. We tried guys, everything we could.

So, we opened OneStopKnifeShop.com. And even while we're trying to keep our heads above water, some of you would rather throw stones at us, instead of offering to help.

So, we try a new thing - we try to eliminate the parasite dealers from our forums and make the Knifes For Sale: Dealers section strictly for our paying advertisers, to reward those who have supported us.

This makes me sick. We offer dealers the chance to sell an unlimited number of knives in the Dealers section for $50 per month, less than the price of one 4 line classified ad in a newpaper. Less than 10% what it would cost for an any similar ad in any knife magazine, and yet this is too much for them to pay?!?!?! I can understand some of you not being able to afford that, but there's a good number of dealers who a frigging parasites.

I'm halfway tempted to say to hell with it, and let KnifeForums.com have it. I'm glad James Nowka is turning things around over there, he can have the parasites. Oh wait, he charges to let dealers post in his forum as well... hmmmm, yet we're the bad guys.

But you know what?
I'm not going to.

Because I owe it to the 5000 members who actually give a damn. And to the dealers who've supported us. And to the manufacturers who have made BladeForums.com their home and who we've helped out, and who have helped us out. And to all the custom makers who come here to learn. And to all of the first time buyers who don't know anything about knives, and have come here to learn.

Guys like Alan Barta, Carl Jacobsen, Cliff Stamp, Dexter, Joe Talmadge, TheMartialWay, automantic, Gollnick, Jailhack, RGRAY, rockspyder, Walt, Gus Kalanzis, Ryan, Chiro, Scott Bieg, CopFish, Lizzie, Jadis, Jackyl, Adam, md2020, and all the rest make me glad I left KnifeForums.com to open this site, and that Mike and myself have gone through what we have to make sure that everyone can use it.

You count all of the expenses, and add in the man hours that Mike and I have put in to make this site work, and you have over $100,000 in expenses - and that's an extremely conservative estimate.
How many of you guys would have stepped forward and done this?

We've brought together about every segment of the knife society, and put more manufacturers in one place than anywhere else in the world.

And we've done it all without censoring posts. Deleting threads. Hiding the truth. Kissing Ass. Telling Lies.

Dealers, I'm sorry that we had to open OneStopKnifeShop.com. We knew by starting this store, we'd hurt a lot of our friends, and would have to go back on the biggest promise we ever made - but we did so so that we all could continue to use BladeForums.com.

We're trying to do the right thing here, and run BladeForums.com the right way.
We're not hiding your banners - though we could.
We're not deleting your posts - though we could.
We're not keeping you out of the Knives For Sale section - though we could.
We're not censoring your sites - though we could.
We're not advertising in the other forums - though we could (the only knife that will be advertised is the BladeForums.com 2000 commemorative).

We are keeping the freeloaders from taking your business in the Knives For Sale forum.
We have always given you the opportunity to change your banner once per month for free for sales or what have you
We've always allowed you to post an unlimited amount of times per month
We've given you free advertising for a whole month for donating a knife.
We've always allowed you to plug your sites in your signatures.
We've given you the chance to earn new customers in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
We've given custom makers their very own place to sell their knives.
We've given you the chance to earn customers by answering questions in any of the forums.
We've given you a free links section where you can list your site in every appropriate category.
We've given you the chance to have your own forum.

I'm sorry that we couldn't do more. But, we can't keep this site open by throwing our money away day after day without any returns.

So, if any of you have any ideas, please let me know.

But do me a favor, and don't condemn us for trying to survive.
Don't judge us before you've walked a mile in our shoes.

Spark

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Kevin Jon Schlossberg
SysOp and Administrator for BladeForums.com

Insert witty quip here

[This message has been edited by Spark (edited 03-09-2000).]
 
I hear ya man, it's great that the site has done soooo well, but because of that, it takes a LOT of time, and money. It is a shame that the dealers are being hurt by this too, but what can you do? All I can think of is to charge a yearly member's fee, but that won't go over too well either, I'm sure. It doesn't seem like the knife store would be the best option either. (Not that much profit to be had out of production knives.) I'd think that with all the traffic, someone would be interested in taking advantage of it some how. Beats me man, all I know is that we need to come together to try and solve this problem. *DUH*

-AR

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- AKTI Member ID# A000322
 
Don't take it too personally, you're just seeing the limitations of consumers. There are people who create things, make them work, provide valuable resources and services...and there are people who consume those services. People are used to being self centered and competive with the suppliers of their services. We have too much of a win/lose mentality in our client/server interpersonal relationships. You already knew this, it's just more pronounced than you hoped.

I could tell you tails of sweating blood for people, who just complained about the mess. Most people never attempt anything approaching the magnitude of running Bladeforums. They haven't a clue what you have to do, sacrifice, and risk in an enterprise like this. I've done some things that gave me a taste of what it's like. Let me say that you've done a wonderful job and I hope you can find a formula that lets you make it work out financially. I think you've been more than generous and reasonable with your business practises.
 
This may be a terrible idea, but here it is.

- Anyone can visit BladeForums anytime, and read everything.

- Everyone is allowed to make 100 - 500 posts, at no charge.

- Anyone wanting over 100 - 500 posts must pay a one time fee, or a yearly fee.

- Anyone wanting to make over 1,000 posts, must pay a higher one-time fee, or yearly fee.

This may help, and keep from scaring away new members. I'd gladly pay for what I've already posted, and to keep the privledge.

-AR

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- AKTI Member ID# A000322
 
I guarantee you that if we made people pay to use BladeForums.com tomorrow, it would be dead the next day.

You could not convince me otherwise. Trust me on this.

Spark

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Kevin Jon Schlossberg
SysOp and Administrator for BladeForums.com

Insert witty quip here
 
I can understand your frustration. The problem seems to be that a lot of folks are kind of igernant (misspelled on purpose) of the fact that running a forum like this is not free. I hope you have educated them.

A lot of good forums have shut down because the people who used them failed to support them.
 
You tell 'em Spark!

Bladeforums.com is THE best knife discussion venue on the internet bar none! A lot of the criticism is just jealous sour grapes.

Bladeforums.com is, in fact, one of the best online discussion forums I've seen for any subject.

Bladeforums.com has got to make money. It costs a lot of money to run this place. With over 5000 members making upwards of 1/4 million posts a month, with a dedicated server and high-speed connection, this place costs a lot of money to run. Somebody's got to pay those very real bills.

I can't belive dealers balking at $50/month! I know of no even modest sized knife show that'd let you have a 10 foot table for a day for less than $50. This place has the potential to expose your products to more serious customers than most knife shows. Banner ads and the dealer forum are bargains. Smart dealers and manufacturers should snap these opportunities up while they're still available.

But, it's up to us members to really support this site. We can do that by posting and building the reputation of this site as the place to go to discuss knives and the place to go for information about knives. We can also do so by following the banner ads, remembering to use the links, to Amazon.com, for example, and by telling advertisers, "I saw your ad on bladeforums.com," when dealing with them.

Spark, you and Mike should be very proud of what you've built here. (Oh, and thanks for the special help this evening. You're the greatest.)



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Chuck
Balisongs -- because it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!
http://www.balisongcollector.com
 
Amen ! Spark,

I just recently got on board here, so recently that my banner isn't even up yet. Talked with Mike on the phone for a little bit this morning, so I know how things are around there. Feeling a little discouraged and like you have been backed up against a wall. Remember the email I sent to you, and you asked me if you could post it ? Well, here it is

Well, I have only been posting sales here for about 48 hours and I have
> >already cleared enough to pay for all the advertizing for 3 months, and
my
> >banner isn't even up yet ! Well worth the price. I was even contacted,
> >very nicely, by a competitor today asking when I was going to run out of
> >Emerson Commanders, that I was "killin" them with all of this.

The banner ads are definitely worth the price, if you want to sell knives. Just the priviledge of posting in the dealer section is worth that.

By the way, Remember when we ended up on different sides in a price-fixing argument last year and I nearly got booted from the forums ? Times change, and we end up in agreement. Strange times, Peace Brother ?!

And another thing, this crap about 1Stop killing off the dreams of other dealers and you all breaking your words. I was worried about this, as I should have been, when Mike was talking about plans for the last several months, but now I have looked over the website thouroughly and find that you guys are not out to dominate market share at all ! Just trying to make some sheckles for expenses, and let he who is without sin cast the first stone on the "honor of your word" issue.


Got to go now, soapbox just collapsed.


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Visit john@cumberlandknives.com

<A HREF="http://www.cumberland-knives.com" TARGET=_blank>www.cumberland-knives.com
</A>
for all your knife needs.
 
Spark; I am sorry, but am convalescing from my most recent course of ECT (Electro Convulsive Therapy) treatments, and therefore haven't been thinking too clearly.

But I have been perusing the forums, and haven't the foggiest idea about what you are talking about. Can you direct me to the egregious thread in question?

(slightly less) whacko Walt
 
Spark, I know you are angry and disappointed right now, and rightly so, but I still feel that many of us are here for the "long haul" and will stoutly support whatever you must do to make this wonderful contraption fly.You might be pleasantly surprised at how many of us there are who don't mind helping bear the load if need be.May God bless you all.

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AKTI Member #A000934
"Always just one knife short of perfection!"
 
What's the ole saying? You can please some of the people some of the time, but not all the people all the time! ( or something like that )

Or, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make 'em drink!

Don't worry Spark, the proof is in the pudding, member counts and posts to these here forums says a lot. This site isn't dead, right!
wink.gif


Mark




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" Knife Collectors Are Sharp People - Most of the time that is! "
 
Righteous Rant Spark!

Some good info in there too. I'm sorry there are those who choose to look a gift horse in the mouth.

You and Mike have done an incredible job with BladeForums and I really appreciate it. I try to support BladeForums as much as I can. I know hundreds of others do also. If it were thousands, there would be no money problems. Sigh.
rolleyes.gif


[This message has been edited by Bob Irons (edited 03-09-2000).]
 
Sparks,

While I understand the delema (or am beginning to); I will need to withhold judgement since I am not party to whatever assurances have been exchanged.

In my mind what you and Mike have started here is nothing less than a 24hour x 7day knifeshow with global access and bargan rate travel and rooms. I would suggest that if you need to sell knives to support the facilities that you could do so by renting some virtual "tables" to your dealers. Your dealers would provide the knives (in a fully competitive environment) and you would provide the hosting facilities and payment clearance services.

I probably would never miss the over priced hot dogs - so feel free to ommit them.
smile.gif


Just my .02
 
I can agree that there is a lack of support for the forums. I do feel however that not all of the dealers who are not advertising or were advertising were or are non supportive. I feel that I am a legit casualty of the new policies. I have bought knives, subscriptions
ticketts gave donations, etc. I have talked to Mike about donating a knife for the monthly givaway etc. I was dealing in mostly limited availability knives as Busse combat and Chris Reeves. I felt and still do that for me to place a banner add I would mostly have to reply to inquires with "not in stock at this time" now I do understand and do not hold ill will to the site, I would like the members to know that I and some others should not be thrown in with the "bad" just because of the banner and forum add issue. I was never required to "buy" the stuff I did and was trying to support without being asked. I do feel that unless things get to the point of being profitable, and profit IS Not a dirty word, then eventually the site will shut down. I mean really how many of you would work for free or support a hobby with money that eventually won't be there. I do hope all this can and is worked out. God Bless-paul
 
I apologize, Paul, in the heat of the moment last night I didn't include you with the others who have supported the forum - in truth, any list I make is probably going to miss a few people.

Those who have done their part know who they are. Those who don't do squat know who they are as well.

I also should have included TaulPaul (Paul above), TopofTexas, Discount Knives, Bullman Cutlery, Bayou Lafource, and some of the other advertisers from the beginning. Then there's the new advertisers like Dantes, Straight River, Writers Edge, and some of the guys who try it for a month or two. My lists are not complete, so if you are omitted, please forgive me - it wasn't intentional.

But those who don't contribute, yet want everything for free, know exactly who they are.

Spark

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Kevin Jon Schlossberg
SysOp and Administrator for BladeForums.com

Insert witty quip here
 
Spark,
I, for one, applaud the opening of OneStopKnifeShop.com.

I didn't subscribe to the online magazine even though I thought it was a good idea, but then, I also don't read the hardcopy magazines. For that matter, I've been a bodybuilder for better than two decades, and I don't read those magazines, either.

However, I was one of the forumites who expressed an interest in supporting BladeForums by purchasing knives. And I have already made my first purchase at OneStopKnifeShop.com. Whether or not I continue to purchase from OneStopKnifeShop.com will depend on how satisfied I am with the service; same as any other dealer.

For the record, in the last year I've ordered items from Top of Texas Knives, Skylands Cutlery, BestKnives, TripleAughtDesign, MJ&S Knives, Discount Knives, and Chai Cutlery. I expect to do more business with these dealers in the future. OneStopKnifeShop.com is just one more factor in the equation.

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Dave

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of More Knives
 
OK, everyone know's my feelings about the differences between a "dealer" selling personal knives and a "dealer" taking advantage of a place for their own benefit(profit), so I won't harp on that situation.

I do however have something to say about some of the dealers complaining about "supporting" this site through banner ads.

If you are a dealer who has ANY Internet presence or you are a dealer who is looking to make ANY money by posting your wares(business, not personal) on this site, then not only does the Adminitrator /Owner of this site have a right to ask you to contribute by advertising here with or without a banner ad (your choice), but I think he SHOULD be compensated. After all, do you really think that most of your Internet sales come by way of search engines? I think not.

I would be willing to bet that a fair amount of the dealers posting here have a decent amount of their sales because of this site.

And as far as what some dealers are saying about Mike Turber going back on his word about not selling knives and "competing" with other dealers, he has already stated that he was wrong in thinking that this site could survive without knife sales.

I also very highly doubt that ANY of you have taken money out of your pocket and just handed it over to Mike for the upkeep of this site. People seem to forget that this is a privately owned site and cost money to operate.

As long as your banner ads run the same amount of time that Mike's ads do, who cares? Last time I checked, America had a free enterprise system. Do any of you complain about any other dealers advertising and taking away your business?

I come to this site to learn more about knives and that is what 95% of the other people that come here do too, so stop all of your whining, sell your products, and let the masses get back to enjoying this site.

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C.O.'s-"It takes balls to work behind the walls "
 
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