kin ell, get in quick Max, this heat must av got to the auld fellas baldy bit.

Quality signatures, whats all this about then. How come you all have nice pics of your cars then. Feeling very left out.

Front and rear bench seats are available Ginger Rogers, They need new rubbers but other than that are OK, you will need the centre fixing for the front one too.

I'll think of something for the exchange. Won't be dancing lessons though.

Off for a swim

P

give me the colours of your cars mr griff and ill hook you up.

Hello guys,

I'm really new to this place and hope you don't take me wrong by posting on this issue. I understand perfectly well the money problem you mention in order to maintain everything running smoothly around here.
I may comment what we do at our 2cv Club at Lisbon and with our website/Forum and that might inspire you (www.n2cvl.com). We have agreed to trade "stuff" with advertising. We negotiated with web hosting provider, companies prizes for meetings, etc., with banners advertising their names and linking to their webpages from our website.
This way we get some stuff for free or with considerable reduced price. Based on the visits statistics we get form Google Analytics we may present some reliable data to our sponsors and get something in return. Visit our site in order to check it.
This is just a penny of my thoughts about this issue, hope this may give some further ideas on how to avoid the permanent money ghost.

Best regards,

Thanks pacman, thats a great idea, not something we had thought of!

BTW, everybody is welcome to have input in suggesting ideas, regardless of how new they are, we try to treat everybody the same whether we have known them personally for years or whether they ahve just joined up here.

We don't really have a money issue, but it's started to become obvious that we will need a small but sustained income to keep the website going and for various promotional things, it's all been out of our own pockets at the moment, but we're planning to solve that....

Thnaks,

Russ.

Hi Russell,

I'm glad to help

Cheers,

Move it away from this crappy phpBB format and ill give you "one of your Eengish pounds"
Sean

Gents
Bloody good 2cv forum I reckon. I created Australia’s first 2cv forum some years ago and know how time consuming it is. One of the problems it suffers is lack of debate, mainly due to low numbers of 2cvs down under. This forum does have plenty of traffic considering that it is still a baby. Don’t like the irrelevant chatter too much but I guess it goes with the territory. My concern is that the forum could turn in to a British affair quickly if anything 2cv outside the UK is not pushed a bit. Have nothing against that as such but it is an international 2cv forum. To pull none English 2cv enthusiast in with limited language skills I’m sure is a big challenge. At the same time asking or not asking for a donation big or small I think is a further inhibitor for success. I am not here to suggest how to run this forum only raising a question about none English users.

Cheers
Viking bastard

Thanks for the input; I know what you mean about the 'irrelevant chatter' & as you appreciate it's hard to stop - We don't want to be moaning & locking threads, deleting posts etc. I don't think that would do any good at all. TBH i think it's quite good in the respect that the majority of the posts are at least 2cv related & there is the 'Off topic' thread in the general 2cv chat forum. I guess me, Max & Russ are as guilty as anyone when it comes to posting chatter. When we started this place it was partly because we had become disillusioned with the forum we used to frequent. It had become less & less about the cars & more about day to day life. This is always the danger as a forum gains more & more members, a little off topic chit chat quickly escalates & you end up trawling through loads of threads trying to locate information on why you are there in the first place... 2cv's! We are aware that it could become a problem on here & we will be keeping a close eye on things, hopefully making sure it stays pretty much on topic.

As for promoting it to our international friends, then all i can say is we are trying! John the aussie who runs http://2cvdirectory.com/ has linked us on his excellent site, there's a clickable link on the home page of www.2cv.nl - thanks to the dutch guys for that. We dished out 100 flyers at the Waggel meeting a couple of weeks ago & spoke to countless people about it. Geoff Archer has a link on his website too: http://www.rosalyn.me.uk/speedshop/about.htm we're aiming to promote it at the Czech world meeting & also if we can manage Spa in Belguim for the 24hr race later in the year. It's going to take time to reach these people & it's only natural that we start off with a strong contingent from the base country.

We have as you know big plans for the forum - a website to accompany it is in development. Max is working tirelessly desigining stickers, banners & t shirts, flyers etc - ringing around trying to get the best deals. These things are going to be instrumental in the promotion of the forum at this summers events. Mark (4x4superfinn) has been extremely helpful in turning the designs into actual stickers (cheers Mark). Russ has been off photographing cars & talking to owners of interesting A series for the deuche speciale's section. He's come up with some cracking ideas & we're just waiting to put these into practice. I had an interview with the bank manager yesterday & within the next 2 weeks we should have our account up & running. So when we finally get the planned merchandise sorted you will be able to purchase off here using paypal. We are grateful to all the people that have helped us - Chris (twocyli), Adrian for his immense knowledge of... well, most things really! Little Rich for his kind offers of help, Anna for the website development - the list goes on & on!
As has already been mentioned - we all have full time jobs & lives away from here. It's massively time consuming & we all live about as far away from one another as it's possible to get in the UK! This means countless text messages during the day to one another & late night meeting on MSN messenger.

We are already paying a monthly fee to keep the main board advert free, then you factor in phone bills (mine's gone up considerably since we started & i'm sure Max & Russell's have too), fuel costs to get to photograph the cars - both myself & Russ travelled the best part of 150 each way to photograph Little Rich's 4x4 & you'll see that it all adds up. Even with good rates on stickers & other merchandise it's a struggle to cover costs. We are not looking to make big profits, just need to cover our costs & make sure we are not out of pocket. It's having the funds in place for the initial production run on these items that we are finding difficult. I'm sure we'll get there - TBH we are pretty proud of how things have gone thus & you guys should be too! We're glad you like it. If it wasn't for you guys, then we wouldn't have a forum & we'd be getting a full & decent nights sleep!

With regards to the chatter - I'm a member of another forum on www.alykes.com see

http://www.zanteweb.gr/zante-forums/forumdisplay.php?f=4

What they did was create a sub forum within the main forum. The regulars forum is where all the chatter goes and the main section is where all the important topics go. It kept everyone together, whilst keeping all the off topic stuff separate.

As to cash you only have to ask......I dont advertise in any mag now, as it was very difficult to measure how sucessful any advert was. I much prefer electronic on line adverts as with one click and you are at my site and I can track where my customers come from and how well an advert is doing.

I would be very happy to pay for an advert on here and I'm sure other 2cv traders would be happy to do so as well - you only have to ask.

This then opens up a can of worms though over adverts - some love them some hate them. I feel that rather than having adverts all over the site a one page listing, (bit like the deuches bit) so all the traders are together would work best. Just list the name, service, contact details website etc and keep it simple. So if you are then looking for a trader on this site there is the traders section to go in. Otherwise if you use banner adverts etc all over the place then yes it could loose the look of the fine site. Also many people myself included have banner ad blocking software anyhow.

Just thinking out loud

Rich