Latest SW Fundraising Initiative Update

Courtesy Graham Burrell

As some of you may know, we have started a forum here on the Stacey West, in conjunction with the Fans Player Scheme, in place of the old comments section we had on the blog.

The full details can be found here, but for those who might be too young, a forum is a space for discussing all things Lincoln City without the other social media distractions. Vital Lincoln City has run very well for a number of years now and put money into the club, and we felt there might be scope for us to pick up some of our readers and fans who perhaps don’t use Vitals.

The scope is exciting; Vitals has put over £20k into the club in the last decade, a really impressive sum. All you have to do there is engage; comment, read, visit each day and it earns money. Vitals has adverts on the pages which is where their funding comes from, which as you know I do not on here. However, on my other site The Real EFL, we have adverts and therefore earning potential, so the forum is hosted there.

One thing I want to do is be very clear about the amount being raised as we go along, so you can feel we’re pulling towards a target. I’m posting most day on this thread our modest viewing figures, which at present probably equate to around three daily posts on Vitals. That’s not an issue, I stress we’re not here to take from them, but it does demonstrate growth potential for readers of this site who do not currently engage with a forum.

I wanted to add some financial stats to the visitor stats to give you an idea of what could be earned with the right sort of buy-in. The company which deals with our income are Snack Media, the same that provide the adverts for Vitals, which underlines the potential scope for earnings on here. Now, advert income can vary depending on a number of factors; time of year, campaigns running, how many are on your page, etc. Therefore, I wanted to share with you the income levels for The Real EFL over the last six months, to give a rough idea of what the forum may achieve. I just want to be 100% transparent and maybe give you a goal to push towards, if you are kind enough to get involved.

The table below shows you The Real EFL visitor stats between March and August. Obviously, the figures through the early months are affected by Covid, but the key numbers are the revenue streams at the bottom. For every 1000 page views the average is £1.11 commission to the site. For every 1000 unique visitors, the site earns on average £2.56.

Visitor Stats
Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Average
Page Views 52063 38607 42903 71320 179738 253989 106437
Unique Visitors 29633 11867 16065 39366 84007 96418 46226
Editors Commission £69.60 £37.95 £35.30 £80.06 £237.40 £249.75 £118.34
Revenue per 1000 page views £1.34 £0.98 £0.82 £1.12 £1.32 £0.98 £1.11
Revenue per 1000 unique views £2.35 £3.20 £2.20 £2.03 £2.83 £2.59 £2.56

At present, our viewing figures are low and remember, each month does fluctuate a little. As of this afternoon, we had seen visitor stats of 3930, which using the average metric will have seen us raise approximately £4.37. Bear in mind, this is just four days in and with very few people visiting and engaging. I do stress those revenue figures could fluctuate, but if the numbers continue in this vein over the next month, we could end up earning around £30 for the club. That is with no growth and just the same level of buy-in as the last four days. If the forum is supported by you, who knows?

Remember, some threads on the forum over at our friends at Vitals have seen as many as 11,000 views in just a couple of days, which highlights how they’re able to do the solid work they do in giving money to the club and to charity. Imagine, if our forum could find posters who are not engaging there but who are willing to be part of a forum, could we raise enough to do a little bit ourselves as well? The possibilities are there, without a doubt. For instance, if our forum did reach 100,000 views in a month, we’d be looking at around £111 going to the club. Some months that could be as high as £134 according to the stats above, or as ‘little’ as £82. However, they’re all decent sums which could add up over the course of a year.

So please, if you are a Lincoln fan and you like talking about the Imps, head here and sign up. There’s no cost, all you have to put in is a little bit of time to chat about City, in a controlled environment where abuse, bullying and spamming is not tolerated. We already have a good set of moderators too, so all we need now is you.