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OPINION

How does road.cc make money? Wonder no more

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People often ask how Britain's biggest road cycling website pays for the palatial office, the jet-setting bike journo lifestyle, the coffee and cake... let's lift the lid on how road.cc pays its way

Welcome to the fourth (or possibly fifth) edition of the blog where I tell you how we pay for road.cc. Before I let you in on that secret though, I’d like to tell you what sets road.cc apart from the rest of the cycling media, and that isn’t how we make money. 

Unlike BikeRadar, Cycling Weekly, CyclingTips, Cyclingnews or indeed any other major cycling website I can think of (bar Singletrack) road.cc is independent. We’re not owned by a massive media conglomerate, venture capitalists or a private equity fund. We’re owned by F-At Digital, which is basically the road.cc team with different hats on. We’re not answerable to the man, or the SEO team, or the target. 

Now, I know that the editorial teams on rival sites value their editorial integrity too, and there are some very good people working on those sites. Ultimately though, they are working under a different commercial ethos – their bosses, or their bosses bosses, have a board, shareholders and investors to answer to, and at that rarefied level it’s only the bottom line that counts. We obviously pay close attention to that too, in fact doing so is my job – but it’s only one measure of success, the one that means we can keep going, but it’s not why we keep going.

I digress! We came here to talk money…. so if you’re sitting comfortably, then lean in a little closer, scroll down and I’ll tell you the secret of how our dough is made…

IT’S (STILL) THE ADS!

Well, what did you expect? As it was in the beginning, it still is now. The adverts are far and away the biggest source of revenue for road.cc and its sister sites off.road.cc and ebiketips also. They pay our wages and keep the lights – and more importantly, our computers and server – on. We have other ways of making money too which I’ll tell you about in a moment, but mostly it’s the ads, of which there are two types: bike industry ads (we call them direct ads), and programmatic ads (the rest).

But… what if ads on websites bring you out in a rash, but at the same time you don’t want to dash the hard-earned crust from the lips of team road.cc? Or you just like what we do and you’d like to make a contribution to helping us do it better?

We’ve got you covered…

Supporter subscriptions

For £19.99 a year or £1.99 a month, you can support road.cc (and our other websites) and get automatic ad-free access to all of them. If you subscribe already, and I’m guessing this is the sort of thing many subscribers will read, then a huge THANKS!

If you don’t subscribe, then why not consider it? As well as helping to support us in bringing you the latest cycling-related news that you probably won’t read on other cycling websites, plus our independent and unbiased tech news and reviews, you’ll also get a warm glow and BFF status with everyone at road.cc. If you spend a lot of time on road.cc then subscribing will probably save you some data over the year too. It might even pay for itself, maybe.

One of our projects for this year is to see what more we can do for subscribers. Pre-Covid, we had regular rideouts and we’d definitely like to get back to doing those. We’re also investigating what we can put together in the way of subscriber-only offers and deals. So, if you are a subscriber and you’ve got any suggestions we’d love to hear them, and the same goes if you aren’t. 

Right, back to the ads...

Direct ads are so-called because we sell them directly to the advertiser, whereas with programmatic we’re not involved in the sales process – it’s all done by computers, hence the ‘programmatic’. 

Direct ads

We’ll talk direct first, because it’s the one that I’m guessing you’re most interested in – particularly with regards to our relationship with the bike industry advertisers, and how it might influence us editorially… it doesn’t, by the way. You knew I’d say that, but I’ll say it anyway because it’s true!

Our direct ad revenue comes overwhelmingly from various parts of the bike industry, either brands, retailers or UK distributors. And, no, that doesn’t mean we’re in their pockets. Some of you won’t believe me when I say this, but that doesn’t stop it being true.

What matters to our advertisers – more than the number of you who come to the site every day – is road.cc’s reputation with you. That’s what they are buying into. That’s just one of the reasons why our standing with road.cc users is so important to us,  and why we’re not going to do anything to jeopardise our reputation – even if it causes complications with advertisers, which it occasionally does. 

Most advertisers wouldn’t expect otherwise, especially when it comes to reviews. They’ll take a bad review on the chin if people trust the good ones, which is also why we place such a premium on the quality and rigour of our reviewing process. 

So does advertising buy you anything when it comes to reviews? No. We would always try and review a product from an advertiser (if they wanted to send one in for review). Given the open-ended nature of publishing a news and reviews website there is no competition for review slots, so there’s never a question of ‘should we review product A from an advertiser or product B from a non-advertiser?’ We’d review both.

I should also say that we’d never turn down a product for review just because the brand/supplier doesn’t advertise with us. The vast majority of products reviewed on road.cc are from non-advertisers. But I digress (again)…

Programmatic ads

Back in the day (around 2014 I think) when I wrote the first version of this piece, I talked about us selling off our spare ad slots on the ad exchanges. Things have moved on a bit since then: the site has grown (a lot), online advertising has changed (a lot), how the bike industry like to spend their marketing budgets has changed (more on that later), and since 2016 the world is a less certain place for UK businesses. 

In the autumn of 2016, with an uncanny herd instinct, the bike industry paused its marketing spend as they all tried to figure out what Brexit meant (higher costs, more paperwork), and what to do (ignore it until it’s unignorable). That few weeks is the closest road.cc has come to a near-death experience, and the shock forced us to accelerate the process of diversifying our income streams. 

Luckily the growth in site traffic and the ever-evolving world of online advertising offered a solution – programmatic advertising. Every time you load a road.cc page onto your digital device, real-time auctions are taking place for every ad slot – the winner gets access to your eyeballs. So far, the British cyclist’s eyeballs have been a fairly stable unit of currency in uncertain times (we also sell to a fair few non-British eyeballs too). No surprise then that programmatic ads are the other big pillar of road.cc’s finances.

Programmatic ads get a bad rep, and certainly some sites overdo them, cramming them in all flashing and a-blinking, getting in the way and generally detracting from the user experience. We’ve tried to take a more balanced ‘less is more approach’ – quality over quantity, and by quality I mean the environment in which you see the ad, rather than necessarily the ad itself. It’s worth remembering that for the time being at least, the majority of programmatic ads you see are generated by Google’s algorithm and are based on your own previous browsing habits. 

We have no direct relationship with programmatic advertisers. They simply want the chance to advertise their wares to people like you, and ideally on a site you like and trust. So again, it’s in everybody’s interests that the programmatic ads that get served don’t annoy you. It’s a tricky balance to get right, but believe me we are always trying to get it right.

So that’s the advertising. What other ways do we have of making money?

Affiliate links

If you click on an affiliate link and buy something, we get a small percentage paid back to us (a very small percentage). Of course, when you’ve got thousands of reviews and hundreds of buyer’s guides on your site, those small amounts all add up. It’s a numbers game.

These days most sites affiliatise buying links, and certainly all our competitors do. For some, affiliate revenue is a much more prominent part of their business model than it is for us. We don’t make massive amounts of money from affiliate, but it’s a nice extra from something we’d do anyway.

Nearly all the links on road.cc to somewhere you can buy something are affiliate ones. The majority are automated, because the process for affiliatising them is part of the site code –  that includes any buying links you might add in a comment, or on the forum. The few buying links that aren’t affiliatised are like that because whoever is selling that product isn’t part of an affiliate network. As I said earlier, we’d put those links in anyway because it’s helpful to the person reading the review or buyer’s guide – if we get something back it’s a bonus. 

Our approach to the ones we put in ourselves is to find and link to the best-delivered price in the UK. It can be a slow process because the best advertised price is not always the best UK-delivered price. This became such a labour intensive process that a few years back we signed up to an automated system. Sovrn101 powers the price comparison widget in reviews, and some buyer’s guides, and it’s also plugged into the deals on our DealClincher site. The other buying links are still done the old fashioned way though.

The big advantage for us of the widget, apart from the money, is that it frees up time for our reviews production team. The big advantage for anyone reading the review is that that widget is constantly updating, so there should always be a choice of relevant deals for that product.

Any downsides? Well, the Sovrn widget can only pull data that is uploaded to the affiliate networks, so if a retailer is not part of a supported affiliate network it won’t pull in their price. That said, we reckon we’ve got the vast majority of online retailers covered.

Sponsored content

"Hey! Let’s do something cool with our ad budget that isn’t an ad, …but y’know deep down really is."

I’m not a fan of sponsored content (you probably guessed that) because for me it blurs the line between the part of the page that’s trying to sell you stuff and the part that’s trying to tell you stuff. But I have to admit that I’m in a minority on this one and that crucially, you the people who read and comment on road.cc tell us that so long as it’s relevant and informative, you don’t mind sponcon (as we call it on our side of the fence – it’s called native content on the marketing side of the fence). 

Bike industry marketing people also know this stuff only works if it’s relevant and interesting to you, and if it looks, feels and reads like any other road.cc article – that the best sponcon is something that you’d want to read anyway. And crucially we have editorial control, so if we don’t like it we won’t run it. 

These days the majority of sponsored content on road.cc is video, and what we call ‘social edits’ – video snippets that are posted on social media. So, it’s really made for those channels rather than the road.cc site itself. I also have to admit that even back in the old days, we never had a problem with a brand sponsoring parts of the site like #Mycyclingweekend or our Tour de France coverage. 

So, my attitude to sponcon has softened. People paying you money will do that, although I’m also keenly aware that usually this isn’t new money. It’s the bike industry reallocating money they’d otherwise have spent on advertising… er, cool stuff.

Interesting times…

Given I’ve been talking about how we make money, I should probably mention the challenging times we’re currently trying to make it in. As you’ll all know only too well it’s tough out there for people and businesses trying to earn a living. Very tough. That said, we’d like to think that road.cc is built on pretty solid foundations. Running a business at any time is a constant process of learning on the job so we’re not taking anything for granted, but with the support of our team, you our audience, and our advertisers – particularly the bike industry – we’re confident in the future of road.cc for the short, medium and long term. Hey! Don’t tell anyone, but we’ve even diversified so much we’re about to launch a car site… 

Anything else?

Well you can buy road.cc cycling gear and merchandise, or some Cyclists! Stay Awesome stickers… we’re always happy to sell you those! (Preferably in bulk).

road.cc's founder and first editor, nowadays to be found riding a spreadsheet. Tony's journey in cycling media started in 1997 as production editor and then deputy editor of Total Bike, acting editor of Total Mountain Bike and then seven years as editor of Cycling Plus. He launched his first cycling website - the Cycling Plus Forum at the turn of the century. In 2006 he left C+ to head up the launch team for Bike Radar which he edited until 2008, when he co-launched the multi-award winning road.cc - finally handing on the reins in 2021 to Jack Sexty. His favourite ride is his ‘commute’ - which he does most days inc weekends and he’s been cycle-commuting since 1994. His favourite bikes are titanium and have disc brakes, though he'd like to own a carbon bike one day.

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62 comments

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StillTrying | 10 months ago
3 likes

Re: Electric car website. Mmmm. Probably more honest just to say it's about the money and be done with it. From an ethical perspective - promoting electric cars? Really? The environmental damage, including high carbon emissions caused as a consequence of their manufacture is not insignificant. Battery raw resources -  lithium - are under stress*. Currently, extremely difficult to repair, replace or upgrade existing batteries, effectively making e-cars over 6-ish year's old worthless in the secondhand market. Emissions from the tailpipe are otherwise transferred to the generating powerstation (often fossil fuelled). Massively heavy, causing considerable damage to roads (four wheels carrying two-tonnes or more). And sheer bulk more likely to kill in collisions with vulnerable users.  Nasty particulates from brake pads and necessarily beefy tyres. Beyond that - of course it hardly needs stating - they do NOTHING to solve the congestion problem on our roads.  But yeah - other than that, great. Go for it, but try not to be too surprised at the backlash here.

*https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-world-enough-li...

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NotNigel | 10 months ago
5 likes

Can we have a Scooby Doo ending where fireman John, Nigel, Martin etc turns out to be Tony?

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quiff replied to NotNigel | 10 months ago
3 likes

I thought you meant Tony the warehouse worker from the Jeremy Vine story, then realised I was on the wrong thread.

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NotNigel replied to quiff | 10 months ago
0 likes

Who knows who is who these days... it could be the same person.  Creating some content for Jeremy and in turn road cc.

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perce replied to NotNigel | 10 months ago
5 likes

Well I don't know who I am if that's any help.

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Rendel Harris replied to perce | 10 months ago
9 likes

perce wrote:

Well I don't know who I am if that's any help.

Margaret Thatcher to elderly carehome resident: "Do you know who I am?"

ECHR: "I'm afraid I don't dear, but if you ask the matron I'm sure she can tell you."

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hawkinspeter replied to NotNigel | 10 months ago
5 likes

NotNigel wrote:

Can we have a Scooby Doo ending where fireman John, Nigel, Martin etc turns out to be Tony?

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peted76 | 10 months ago
3 likes

A little perspecive.. I've also been mildy involved in an event entitled 'Transport as a Service'.. EV's come in all shapes and sizes and seem to have come to market in one homogeneous lump as companies who make this widget or that widget compete in this new market place. My point being that in some ways launching a electric car website is not a big jump at all from an electric bike website... and while I wouldn't stand behind F-At if they employed some Jeremy Clarkson'esq reviewers and commentators, if they can bring a little balance in the reporting it 'could' be a good thing.. imagine if they cycled to review a car and that was part of the feature?

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BobGently | 10 months ago
1 like

I'm interested to know how the 'daily hate' tabloid approach to stories about cyclist/car driver wars benefits your advertising revenue. Is it simply about getting views on pages?

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Xenophon2 replied to BobGently | 10 months ago
2 likes

Of course it is.  Any click is a good click.

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peted76 replied to BobGently | 10 months ago
2 likes

BobGently wrote:

I'm interested to know how the 'daily hate' tabloid approach to stories about cyclist/car driver wars benefits your advertising revenue. Is it simply about getting views on pages?

Maybe it's more about giving us subscribers what we want to read about, or what's actually happening on our roads... I mean if we had no stories about the motons then we might miss getting 'agahst' on a daily basis. While I don't see a 'war' per se, it'd be jolly remiss not to report the goings on so we can all keep on lobbying against the apathy and entitlement of many car drivers. 

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Jetmans Dad replied to BobGently | 10 months ago
4 likes

I am no fan of outrage for the sake of outrage in any sense, and I don't think that is the goal here. 

The truth is the quality of driving around vulnerable road users in the UK is abysmal, and much of that seems to be (a) a lack of good driver education, and (b) an attitude from drivers that their journey is more important and mere bicycle riders should not be getting in the way. 

That (and the apathetic response of police forces around the country) is not going to change if we just keep quiet and let it happen. 

Yes, there needs to be a lot more co-ordinated campaigning for these changes, but publicising the incidents and attitudes at play is part of calling out the problem. 

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Tony Farrelly replied to Jetmans Dad | 10 months ago
5 likes

Yes, this is why we do NMoTd not the clicks. We could do other things that would get easily as much traffic - write something about disc brakes, and lots of advertisers hate that sort of coverage – at least one big player in the UK market won't advertise with us.

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Sredlums | 10 months ago
2 likes

Quote from the About Us page on the car site:
"For starters, we’re a passionate bunch of enthusiasts who eat, sleep and breathe car culture."

For the life of me, I can not fanthom how this even remotely fits in with the cycling loving company that you are. And no, that it is about electric cars does not change that.
Sorry to be so blunt, but starting a car site sound like a totall sellout.

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Rich_cb replied to Sredlums | 10 months ago
5 likes

The amusing thing is that one of those "enthusiasts" who apparently 'eats, sleeps and breathes car culture' has the following in their road.cc bio;

"Cycling became a part of his life just a couple of years ago out of his distaste for cars, and now he can't think of a single reason why anyone would drive if they could cycle."

Corporate sincerity at its best.

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Sredlums replied to Rich_cb | 10 months ago
1 like

Really? Wow…
That's somewhat amusing indeed, in a way, but it is also just really not okay. It's misleading, to put it mildly.

I like the transparency of articles like this, but I think this begs for some transparency too. Tony Farrelly, care to comment?

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Tony Farrelly replied to Rich_cb | 10 months ago
1 like

Adwitiya is part of our news team - he doesn't need to own a car, or drive a car to write car-related news. He needs to be good at writing news - which he is.
As it happens non-cyclists have been part of the road.cc news team in the past too.

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Rich_cb replied to Tony Farrelly | 10 months ago
7 likes

He either has a "distaste for cars" or he's a 'car enthusiast'.

Both of those statements can't be true.

Maybe it was a mistake or maybe it was just corporate cynicism at its best.

Either way the answer is not to go on the attack in the comments.

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chrisonabike replied to Rich_cb | 10 months ago
3 likes

I agree - it does look a bit like a case of cycling with the hares and driving with the hounds.

Not wanting to roast everyone though - I could cope with them adding a car site because "journalism" but I think they've got caught here.  Can't be both A "distaste for cars" and B "cars are great" and people might look with a more jaded eye in future.  Even if it's just folks projecting their own beliefs onto the road.cc team...

I'm sure they'll bear the infamy though!

* Thanks to PodRide here for saving us from something from the velomobile archives.

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Sredlums replied to Tony Farrelly | 10 months ago
2 likes

This is it, really?
After two days of silence, this is the reaction? Wow.

That's weak. Sorry, it really is.
It means the slogan that the car site's contributers all 'live and breath car culture' is a flat out lie. It also means that everything he writes on this site is to be taken with a big grain of salt (I'm trying to be nice here).

In Dutch we have a saying wich roughly translates to 'Trust comes on foot, but leaves on a horse.'
Trust is lost easier than it is won, and this is - regrettably - a good example of that. It's sad.

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Rendel Harris replied to Sredlums | 10 months ago
5 likes

Sredlums wrote:

Quote from the About Us page on the car site:
"For starters, we’re a passionate bunch of enthusiasts who eat, sleep and breathe car culture."

For the life of me, I can not fanthom how this even remotely fits in with the cycling loving company that you are. And no, that it is about electric cars does not change that.
Sorry to be so blunt, but starting a car site sound like a totall sellout.

Can't disagree with any of that, what the actual fuck is this all about, guys? If you were "owned by a massive media conglomerate, venture capitalists or a private equity fund" who also owned a car website that might be understandable, but that you voluntarily are starting a car website, really? As Rich_cb says (and you know things are becoming pretty apocalyptic if I agree with him), what is a journalist on here who says he can't understand why anyone would use a car doing writing on a site that is apparently created by "a passionate bunch of enthusiasts who eat, sleep and breathe car culture"? I really think some explanation (above and beyond "it’s tough out there for people and businesses trying to earn a living") of this move should be provided to people who have invested in this site both emotionally and financially as one that supports cycling and active travel over car use would be welcome.

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Sredlums replied to Rendel Harris | 10 months ago
2 likes

Exactly that.
Road.cc is one of only three websites that I visit daily. Apart from the bike news and reviews, I especially like how this site takes a strong stand against car culture. How on earth things like the Near Miss Of The Day series jibe with 'living and breathing car culture' is totally beyond me.
Adding a car site to the portfolio (as a self proclaimed independant company, mind you) is bewildering in itself, but if it's true that the same person writes for both sites with such contradicting bio's (of which at least one is untrue), then that is simply inexcusable.

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mark1a replied to Sredlums | 10 months ago
1 like

Just to play devil's advocate, and putting aside the conflicting bio profiles... and without wishing to second-guess F-At's business decisions... Perhaps it makes sense, the company has a mature stable online publishing platform, with experience in content production, SEO and monetisation processes, so why not diversify outside of cycling and three(?) existing cycling sites? Cars are still a big part of travel in the UK, and like them or not, EVs are going to be the short-term future for a lot of people. Even before the 2030 cutoff for new ICE sales, a number of manufacturers are not going to bother with Euro7 (too expensive, too complex for a short sales life). So EVs are a huge growth market and maybe a good fit for a new dedicated site from a commercial perspective. Nobody has to use the site or buy an EV if they don't want to. If it helps keep the lights on at road.cc, surely it's OK. It's a similar situation (in terms of a perceived conflict of interest) with a friend of mine - he's a deeply principled revolutionary Marxist, yet owns and runs a successful business (social enterprise, reinvests most of the profits). The justification for him is while we live in a capitalist society, the social enterprise will use the tools and levers at its disposal in order to fulfil its purpose. 

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Sredlums replied to mark1a | 10 months ago
1 like

You are playing the devil's advocate, by saying 'yes it's bad what they do, but let's just put that aside, because it makes them money, so that makes it okay'.

Well, it's not okay in my book. The lights at road.cc should not be kept op at all costs.

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Xenophon2 replied to Sredlums | 10 months ago
1 like

Don't be naive.  It's a business, they'll do whatever it takes to make money. You're not their customer, you're inventory that's being peddled to their customers. Forget all the small-scale not owned by a media conglomerate drivel.  

I read the articles but always keep in mind that they're really adverts.  And I gleefully keep my adblockers activated.  Nobody owes them s**t, you've already paid by clicking.

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Tony Farrelly replied to Xenophon2 | 10 months ago
0 likes

Out of interest What's Near Miss of The Day an advert for?

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Hirsute replied to Tony Farrelly | 10 months ago
6 likes

PPE ?

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hawkinspeter replied to Hirsute | 10 months ago
5 likes

Hirsute wrote:

PPE ?

Here we go...

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peted76 replied to hawkinspeter | 10 months ago
3 likes

hawkinspeter wrote:

Hirsute wrote:

PPE ?

Here we go...

Sarcasm surely.. 

.

OR

.... HELL-MET-DE-BATE !! Ooff we've not had a good old helmet pile on for ages.. the recent spate of trolls seemed to take all the fun out of it.  I always wear a helmet unless I don't wear one, then I'm fine with that. I don't own anything high vis yellow but I do have a dull yellow gillet.. does that count? 

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Hirsute replied to peted76 | 10 months ago
1 like

Just being facetious.

Although you should wear a helmet when walking your dog

https://knowridge.com/2023/04/walking-a-leashed-dog-linked-to-traumatic-...

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