So little but so much….

[ModelerSite]

When I think about all I’ve been going through during the last years with regard to modeling, it brings back to my memory 1986, when at a magazines store, I saw for the first time, a popular modeling magazine which had started to be issued in those days.

In its interior, I found short articles on ships, spaceships, sci-fi dioramas…etc, and though I was not really interested in those subjects at all, I read them eagerly. Most of them were just stories about why the modeler had decided to build the model in question, but I was fascinated by the variety of ideas coming from people like me, who around the world, had the same sight and concerns …so, I started to dream of seeing an article of mine published in one of those magazines.

Life circumstances sat me in front of a computer screen with the self-determination of having a personal web page, and it didn’t take me long to realize it could become in a dream I’ve never thought I would fulfil, to be a magazine editor of a humble virtual magazine, at least.

Eight years went by, perhaps not much but on the internet, it seems an eternity, we achieved our first goal, to survive and stay, without giving up our projects or illusions; the second and maybe the most relevant, to reach the soul of those modelers, who like me, from the loneliness and introspection, want to go far with their art and need support, encouragement and help.

Modelersite’s articles have soul, their main aim is to please model builders who search for reliable information, to recreate the process of making a kit parts look lifelike when one meet them for the first time… and share with others their talent and art, definitively, the human being’s desire from the most truly ancient cave paintings.

Modelersite is not a business in the strict sense of the word, though needing incomes to subsist, it’s an ideology, a way of seeing modeling and life, of giving and receiving, sort of a way to show someone that you are really thinking about them, ... of carrying out something that makes us feel proud in the end, even when we pass away, spreading seeds for future generations. So little but so much at the same time is Modelersite.

Internet provide you a wide variety of offers, we’re neither first nor last, but we feel satisfied and proud of our work, when we read at forums or mails we receive from modelers that have been aided, encouraged or won contests thanks to our humble modeling articles.

The message on this 8th anniversary is that we are extremely grateful to readers, friends and relatives who have supported putting their trust in our job, to our sponsors who think like us that there’s always something better to do.

Upcoming years will be the most difficult, we’ll have to fulfil the expectations of those who support us so that they continue doing so, and try to convince those who don’t or have doubt about our potential and the full commitment and value of our project. I just hope that people will understand what we’re speaking about.

[daniel_k]

so let's hope you survive another eight years...your site really got me into building detailed models. but I and many other modellers lost interst when you started to charge money for your articles. But this is a discussions that was made many times beofre. The only thing I can see that there is not much to see lately...
So maybe make it a free site and I bet you will get many more articles.

good luck

daniel
-germany-

[ModelerSite]

Originally Posted by daniel_k

so let's hope you survive another eight years...your site really got me into building detailed models. but I and many other modellers lost interst when you started to charge money for your articles. But this is a discussions that was made many times beofre. The only thing I can see that there is not much to see lately...
So maybe make it a free site and I bet you will get many more articles.
good luck
daniel
-germany-

Daniel, thanks very much for your opinion about our magazine, but of course I don't agree with you. Our 45000 readers show that all what we did was useful. We are focusing in large articles, and we are looking for quality instead of quantity as we have a pay-per-view system. However you still can find 500 for free online articles, just looking for them in our very friendly archive search, nowadays we still are publishing free articles.
If you took advantage of us in the past, then we fulfilled our goal, as we aim at showing articles devoted to newcomers. Perhaps you are in the stage to become a contributor of Modelersite, receiving payments, free kits or bigger discounts from our sponsor HobbyLink Japan, which support all our contributors, directly or indirectly.

In this stage we wouldn’t be able to offer for free our PDF although we would like to do it, just imagine 45000 people downloading 15Gb each or more. However we did a big investment creating a proprietary code at www.modelersite.net there people are free to upload what they want, there are not adverts and will not be and if you upload for free a large article then will be for free for others.

If you have a large website with a terrific traffic and 2 people working the full day and other part time, then is reasonable that you need incomes to keep working the project. You aren’t forced to spend money in Modelersite if you don’t like, I have been buying paper magazines during years and I couldn’t never do a preview of the articles because the subscription matter, then you can read the Modelersite main articles during one month and to decide if you will buy it or not, you don’t need to register to read our articles, so even those who make hard critics can do it, I call this FREEDOM. If you disagree with our policies still can take advantage of our work, because you are anonymous when you enter Modelersite.

We are working very hard in a new Modelersite, we hope to have a better way to share the talent of our contributors and still reward them, even more than now, they deserve our effort because have supported us since years ago. We hope to have a full FAQ working later this year, FOR free, but of course we need a financial support as most of the best modelers are working in this.

Probably you don’t have much to see lately, because you took advantage of all we offered, and it was a lot….. and I see you are still reading us. However new generations and new readers are grateful of our work.

[360spider]

I call it self-promotion.

[935k3]

I use too enjoy your sight but your obsession with charging for everything and making it difficult to copy pictures has driven me away. And why do you force people to use Internet Explorer? Thank God you are not the only site around!

[ModelerSite]

Originally Posted by 935k3

I use too enjoy your sight but your obsession with charging for everything and making it difficult to copy pictures has driven me away. And why do you force people to use Internet Explorer? Thank God you are not the only site around!

Just the same answer as above.
I didn't have the chance to know you, so you are an anonymous reader and perhaps if you had contributed in the time we offered all for free now we would have more free articles.
Really thanks god that modelling in internet is wide enough so you can make your choice, you aren't forced to read Modelersite, then why so aggressive?
Do you mean that all the paper modelling magazines and modelling vendors are obsessed for money? Do you get your Honda car or University career for free. We can't reduce the matter to so lower level in a world where the kits have increased their value 50% in just several years.
Did I force you to use Microsoft Internet Explorer? being Internet so wider.
How many kits did you receive for free in the last months from Vendors, because I guess that the kits are more expensive that our articles. A 1/12 Tamiya Caterham cost US$200-250 and an Ultimate article covering 4 or 5 Caterham models with 50 pages of text and 350 pictures step by step US$14 in any event Tamiya is obsessed for money too?.

In the last years we received some critics, none of them could answer any of that questions or giving valid argument instead aggression.
Good luck

[ModelerSite]

Originally Posted by 360spider

I call it self-promotion.

Again the same, I don't know you, probably you read most of our articles perhaps you didn't.
The first text in this thread, was the editorial we published this month in our magazine…. self-promotion????, why not, but really we were 8 years online working month after month.
Do you mean that there is something wrong or sinister letting people know that we are proud of our work?

If I find something wrong in a magazine, then I sent an email to the editor letting him know that the article they published the past issue had some wrong points, I did it sometimes, respectfully, and this is all I should focus in, always I could avoid to buy the magazine, but is not my right to make a destructive or offensive comment, that could cause a severe damage to people that’s working.
Good luck

[Big Kahuna]

Mario,
Why is the site not visible with Firefox?
I am using Vista and IE sucks with it. So I switched to Firefox and have never had a problem with Vista compatibility. Your site doesn't work with Firefox. Are you going to fix it?

Also, there doesn't seem to be much new content over the last few years compared to the early days. Do you have any idea why you don't have the volume that you used to have?

Thanks
Nenad

[gionc]

Originally Posted by ModelerSite

Again the same, I don't know you, probably you read most of our articles perhaps you didn't.

Yep Mario but I'm sure you know him and read most of his articles perhaps you didn't

TBH I'm not so critic with Modelersite's payment articles: you know in advance so no problem: at least you pay for a paper's magazine that has advertising inside. The problem is the quality you buy, I bought in past several Prini's+RobiJ articles (despite he's a friend and I'll find other ways to see his jobs) and I found the whole editorial project pretty good, worth the money. On the other side I don't want to publish my stuff at payment, and Mario know it, but is just a my own personal choice.

[ModelerSite]

Originally Posted by Big Kahuna

Mario,
Why is the site not visible with Firefox?
I am using Vista and IE sucks with it. So I switched to Firefox and have never had a problem with Vista compatibility. Your site doesn't work with Firefox. Are you going to fix it?
Also, there doesn't seem to be much new content over the last few years compared to the early days. Do you have any idea why you don't have the volume that you used to have?
Thanks
Nenad

Dear Nenad:
We intend to have the main articles for free during one month TO BE READ, then they will go to our archive, at least this is what we have been doing to date.
The articles we published in this way were rewarded, if you send us an article and you want it to be for free, then it will be published for free forever.
I HOPE to be able to reward articles in the close future and they still remain for free.

Now, there are not many ways to avoid an article is being downloaded if you use Firefox or others. We fixed this some time ago, you can see a preview with Firefox or switch to MIE and read the full article, even you can make questions by email and will be answered. If you feel the article is good enough then you can support our work buying it in PDF, most of the articles cost $1-3. If you have in mind that the articles are translated English-Spanish or Spanish-English and that a professional translator ask for US$20 an A4 page, then you are paying less than the translation cost.

Most of those articles you probably enjoyed a lot, have 20-30 pages and the translation was necessary in order that it can be read in English, or Spanish.

Anyway we have 323 free online articles, 510 galleries and 145 photo arrays of real subjects which can be seen with any browser and you can save them in your PC, so we are talking about 3 or 4 monthly articles that are under the Firefox matter.

Do you know any magazine that offers you for free all the backissues only for the cost of the new issue.

An average PDF weight 10Mb, the cost to offer 500 monthly PDF, is relatively high, and I’m not talking about money but all the matter around this. We have a customer service since 9AM to 12PM (-3gmt) to help people to download the files without problems. Please make you a fast estimate and you will realize we will not be rich with this, although all the service we offer in background is of first class. As I’m not involved with this, we need people in charge of.

In 2002 an issue of Modelersite had 5Mb, nowadays we are talking about 25-30 Mb. So we are talking about better articles not only galleries, larger pictures and lot of them, I have on the desk about 10 good articles to be published in the next months and more incoming, most of them are absolutely amazing and we need 15-20 hours to correct and translate them. We need a person building the HTML pages, and we are talking about 50-200 pictures, we have to make an comprehensive article…etc etc. It’s not as easy as uploading pictures to a forum, our readers AS WELL AS our sponsor expect we do the best.

We receive many articles or galleries, we offer the contributors to upload them for free to our Modelersite.net if they don’t qualify for our cover articles, just all.

There are many good forums like this AF and others that are showing good WIPs and finished models, why should we compete with them?, I mean if AF is good why I should make a monthly AF, we just offer a good online magazine, I try to get rare subjects or interesting articles. The Lexus we published last month was an interesting test we did, showing a building, picture by picture from one of the best Spanish modelers, author of several books related to car modeling. Some people said, hey! this is not a step by step, yes we wanted to show the whole in a short article to encourage people to go on with the kit, all the involved techniques are in our magazine or other websites. However we are working in a FAQ, so each time we show a technique we will refer to the FAQ, this will be for free, and as always not to be registered will be necessary to get something from Modelersie if it’s for free.

I fully understand that the PDF matter is irritating for some modelers, but believe me it was the only way we could reach 8 years working here. Perhaps if we had followed the free modality nowadays we wouldn’t be having this discussion because Modelersite would be offline.
Thanks for asking!

[Big Kahuna]

Originally Posted by ModelerSite

Dear Nenad:
Now, there are not many ways to avoid an article is being downloaded if you use Firefox or others. We fixed this some time ago, you can see a preview with Firefox or switch to MIE and read the full article, even you can make questions by email and will be answered.

Thanks for asking!

Hi Mario,
Thanks for the detailed response. It must be getting annoying for you by now with all the questions from people. It shows you care a lot about what you do, and have the patience to explain yourself.
I have just checked again and it seems that the Firefox compatibility issue has finally been addressed. This did irritate numerous people. Most websites are compatible with most browsers. This issue had been a lingering one for a long time.

I am not after free anything from the internet, however, personally, I don't see anything that I absolutely must have when it comes to buying articles (from your site or others). That's just my personal feeling. Don't get me wrong, I am not irritated by your payment for pdf's though unlike some others. Having said this, I am quite happy to talk to modellers on AF, F1M and GPMA. They are definitely world class, and the dialogue is real time. I learn a great deal from them as well.

Thanks again for your response.
Nenad

[klutz_100]

Mario, contrary to what you may think from a previous exchange we had, I don't object to you selling anything for any amount of money. I don't mind if you make one million dollars per month from the modeling market.

There is only one thing that irritates me; threads on forums which later become pdfs for sale by you seem to disappear from the forum where they first appeared (or at least the images)

Of course maybe this is just a coinsidence but I rather feel that this is part of the deal you do with the authors - please correct me if I am wrong.

If I am right, I find it rather sad that something that was originally shared in the public domain amongst enthusiasts and hobbyists is taken away and rather contradicts any claims of "our goal is to help modelers" etc. I have always believed that if you give someone something, you are not supposed to take it back later.

Articles that were never published on a forum are another matter. Here do as you wish and, as most other magazines do, commission the article, publish it and sell it - I'll buy it if I am interested. However, I rather have the impression that you trawl forums for interesting builds and then offer to publish them. Or maybe I am wrong...?

I fully respect the right of everyone involved to do as they wish - especially the authors. But at the same time, I don't have to like it or agree that it is a wonderful service to the hobby of modeling.

Mario, I am not attacking you or anyone else involved. I am just sharing my impressions and thoughts on the subject.

[godfather23]

I purchased some articles from you before. The most of them where very informative others rather disappointing. But I don´t understand the meaning of this thread. What have you ever actively added to this forum and I go into the same direction as 360spider. This thread seems to say: "Don´t forget about modelersite. Check it out again!" You could have used a banner on top of the screen for that. Just my opinion...containing nothing against your business.

Robert

[freakray]

Just to clarify something, as a vendor, Mario pays for the right to advertise on AF. So, whilst you may not see him as a contributor to AF in the sense of posting content all the time, he does contribute to the upkeep of AF and thus makes it possible for you to enjoy the site.

[robrex]

Originally Posted by klutz_100

There is only one thing that irritates me; threads on forums which later become pdfs for sale by you seem to disappear from the forum where they first appeared (or at least the images)

Of course maybe this is just a coinsidence but I rather feel that this is part of the deal you do with the authors - please correct me if I am wrong.

Yep. That's what concerns me as well!