IHC Subscription Service & Industry Support

[Huck]

IHC Community,

I have known Mr. Richard Graham for the past five (5) years while involved in the roller hockey industry. I have had the privilege (made the sacrifice) of rooming with him on numerous occasions at various industry events as well as even roughing it up with him on the rink (What slash?).

InlineHockeyCentral.com provides the powers-that-be and all of us rink rats with a central source of information. Without it, I would not have met the people nor had quite the experiences over the past few years that have made my life that much more enjoyable. Nor would I have such a tremendous sense of accomplishment or the sense of confidence that I will survive and succeed in the 'real world,' whenever I finally graduate in December.

As a volunteer with collegiate roller hockey, I can understand his frustrations. It is a shame, but it is inevitable that there are times where society works against you. When this happens, the support provided by friends and family supply the energy and perspective needed to make it through these rough times. Hence, one of the reasons behind this message.

I am a big supporter of the subscription-based business model. As we have come to learn with so many Dot-com deaths, the "give everything away for free and live off of advertisements" model isn't exactly a stable existence.

I propose that, someone, somehow, develops a database and infrastructure for subscriptions that allows members into certain restricted areas of IHC. While some portions of this website remain free to entice new readership, other areas with richer information are available only to subscribers. It has worked for NYTimes.com, and Napster is rewriting their business model to include subscription-based services.

I pledge a personal annual contribution of $30 and an organization annual contribution of $200 in support of the positive efforts put forth by IHC.

Best of luck to you, Mr. Graham.

Thanks for reading.

Huck

[poptart]

Huck...First I wanna say your the man....Youve done alot for college roller hockey yourself...so big ups to you.....As for your idea I think its great...along with what seems to be most everyone else on this board...So if you guys get this pay thing rolling let everyone know.....Im sure there are many more people like me who are down to pay to get all the great info we get from IHC.......I hope everthing gets worked out here....

[John_S_Osborne]

Huck's got this whole business thing down, doesn't he? Look at you, using the nice words like model and stuff. That's it, just give him the degree now

Anyway, this is a very interesting proposal to say the least. I don't think anyone here would hesitate investing $20/yr to get the best coverge of every aspect of roller hockey through IHC. But, with that sort of investment, I think the readers would expect more from the site, like weekly columns and articles about the latest news, from the tournaments, to high school and college leagues, and from the industry experts about equipment and such, as well as photo coverage of more events around the nation. For this level of reporting, you'd probably need to hire story writers, reporters, and photographers, as well as pay some development team or web designer to put all this stuff nicely on the web.

What I propose is that this subscription-based website could be somehow paired with a monthly or bi-monthly roller hockey oriented publication delivered to your doorstep, published and produced by IHC. Even though I'm out on the 'net alot, most times when I read the news, I don't like to be in front of the computer. I think the level of content necessary to produce a subscription-based website would be sufficient to also produce a high-quality magazine that we all could kick back and read.

As Huck knows, there's probably enough content to do this with just collegiate-based coverage, let alone the whole darn sport. So, if anyone's interested in doing this, I'd support it... hell, I'd even lend a hand in writing or doing web development for it.

How 'bout it, Rich?






---
John S. Osborne
Drexel University Roller Hockey Club

[newtron]

Please give us a BAM(bare ass minimum) amount to shoot for. We need a business plan to follow. What are the yearly total costs he needs? Rich mentioned $800 for incorporation. If there is a 1000 viewers then $1 per year would be more than adiquit to cover this cost plus the cost of staying in business. Take the number of real viewers and real contributers and divide the dollars needed by that number and you can arrive at a fair share contribution value. I'm sure the web master has the numbers. Some body set up a legal account with a legitimate bank that we can call and check on and allow the freinds of IHC to put up or shut up. Pay to play and or pay in advance advertizing wouldn't hurt. Rich, what is the game plan? I've not known of you or any good coach not to have a backup plan or adapting to the opposing team's attack. The best defense is still a better offense and keeping the puck. The freinds of IHC need to have direction to help. Coach us. Rich wouldn't give up on a kid.

[KenFas]

IHC users,

I just want to add that I would be all for a subscription service to support IHC. Your services are invaluable. Once someone comes up with a price let me Know. The rollerhockey community cannot afford to lose IHC. Anything you need from the state of Florida to help keep IHC going let me know and we will organize and help as much as we can. What are your advertising rates I may be able to help there as well. A small suggestion though would be to charge tournament organizations a small subscription rate annually for posting tourny info on your site since they profit when teams play at there tournaments. In return you could trade out complete coverage of tournament subscribers. Hopefully the IHC community would support IHC subscribing tournaments first. Just a thought?
Hang in there please the rollerhockey players,fans, coaches,and officials have counted on you,hopefully its time for you to count on us.

[tsunami]

What do you guys need ?

[RichardGraham]

Hi Huck,

Thanks for the support and the ideas, and thanks to all who added to this thread.

I will be posting information about Inline Hockey Central's new policies soon, but I have to put out some fires first.

I expect to have that information posted no later than Valentine's Day.

Sincerely,

Richard Graham
Editor
Inline Hockey Central