What Have I learned?

This post is more about my blog/website itself, and not just my car. Although there are some photo’s I have messed around with at the end (with a quick vote for fun), which I quite liked messing around with.

I’m asking for a little feedback to see to see if what I experienced was the ‘norm’ or not. Did I almost sell out? Did anybody notice?

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by a marketing company about my site, they wanted to advertise on my pages. That company was “Infolinks”.

Now don’t get me wrong, they first sent me a nice email, where they asked if they could could book some time in with me to discuss a potentially good money making offer. All very professional and above board. I had to check for scams; were they legit, will it cost me anything?

I did my homework on them, all was good from what I could see. Promising start.

I responded back to agree to a meeting which was arranged via google calendar. Bang on time the next day I was called and we started to have a nice chat. He liked my site (I guessed that was standard patter), and saw a good potential to get me some extra money. They had even set a ‘budget aside ready for me’. With the average daily hits I was getting I was told that the advertising would get me $15 to $20 a day. That is a good amount to me for a niche audience like mine to be fair. That type of (proposed) money would come in handy to pay for my hosting, domain mapping and WordPress plan etc. I agreed to their proposals and within hours I was sent login details and everything I needed to get me going.

Setting it up was all straight forward enough, plugins and some little behind the scenes config and it was ready to rock. I decided I would try it for couple weeks straight and run their ads to see what the revenue would be like; in that time over 5,500 were ‘served’ on my unsuspecting readers and followers. After those two weeks I earnt a massive $3.21, that’s somewhat short of the $$ per day I was going to be getting. 🙁

I currently use WordPress ads and that pays for most of the hosting etc. I did check on my pages from a different IP Addresses to see what was going on. I didn’t like the intrusive load of ads from the start and thought it would settle down. It didn’t So I stopped it over the weekend.

My question to my fellow bloggers; did I get greedy or was I just naive and sold a story?

I learned that my readers and first time visitors experience of my pages is more important than a few cents. If I have to be a little out of pocket each year – then so be it. I’m Sorry if my temporary ads made my little ol’ blog unpleasant for you.

My Car Pictures:

OK, back to what I do know, my car. From the last show Culford I took a few pictures at the front of the building. I decided to have a little play around with some effects. It took me a while, but I learned just how easy it is to really mess up a good picture.

Here are my attempts at something arty, see what you think.

The original

Sepia

Artwork

Faded

Sepia with coloured Car

I decided to have a little poll to make it easier as I haven’t had a good ol’ vote for a while.

I have some amazing photo’s coming soon which I can’t wait to share with you, watch this space, hopefully at the weekend for a post. Although I have a car show Saturday + Sunday so not sure when I will get time to do it. This time last year I was scratching around for something to post about.

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Culford Car Show 2021 (part 2)

This is the second part of the Culford Car Show from 18^th July this year. As I left the show I managed to take this picture without any photobombing of other cars or people wandering into shot as a lot of the cars had already left for home and I found a little open space.

But, my best efforts are not as good as some. I mentioned at the end of the last post that I met an interesting guy and we had a quick chat. It turns out that Steve Armon is a photographer who wants to take some pictures of my car for his ever growing portfolio. He has posted three pictures of my car along with some others on his Instagram account ‘trigpointpictures’. Stop by and say I sent you. Here are those pics he kindly sent to me and I just love them. Thanks Steve for the permission to use them.

Back to the show where I was wandering around still, and a reminder of the beautiful location first;

The cars, again in no particular order;

There was a hot rod section that i spent a little time hanging around for some obvious reasons. That Plymouth Super Bee was something else!

There was a Ferrari club there with some rather unusual examples there.

The award to the biggest set of rear wheels goes to;

At the front of the school;

Back up the other side of the grounds on my way back to the car.

Then I spotted this little animal, these rare MG Metro 6R4’s were in the Group B rally class. They were banned as they and cars like them at the time were often classed as ‘to fast to race’ in the 1980’s.

It was really hot to say the least and to eventually sit back under the trees and chat to the guys next to me was a very welcome relief along with the litre of water that I downed almost in one! The trip home had the manual air conditioning on full. The windows wound right down! Another wonderful trip through the country side with nothing but a v8 for company and have it barking at me when I occasionally pressed the loud pedal!

I hope you liked the pics as much as I liked the show itself.

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Culford Car Show 2021 (part 1)

A couple of years ago there was a great car show inside a walled garden at Elevedon. Due to the Covid pandemic it was cancelled last year. The show got some great feedback and demand for places was high. It was clear this year it would need to be moved to a new venue; Culford School in Suffolk. Culford is a private school and quite exclusive for those with plenty of money. This year’s event was held in collaboration with the ‘Teenage Cancer Trust’. This show has jumped pretty near the top for my favourite car shows, with the much larger and beautiful grounds of Culford. I took over one hundred and eighty pictures on the day so I will split this show’s coverage into two halves.

The weather was due to be hot all weekend and I woke up Sunday morning with a huge smile as the sun was out. It was going to be the hottest day of the year so far peaking at 30 deg cel. This poses other issues to classic car owners – will it over heat and other such terrifying questions.

I packed lots of of drinks and and the wife told me to also pack a dog bowl and some water for the dogs at the show if they are out for the day in the heat. Initially I thought she was mad, but thinking about it, the dogs do get dragged around in the heat with their tongues hanging out. So I thought why not (we are massive dog lovers with two little guys of our own), we don’t want to see any dog to overheat.

The drive there was calm and collected, easy to get after a thirty minute drive. Pulling into the school gate the were speed humps. Not ideal as I know that my exhaust headers sit quite low. The first hump caught my attention with the scrap of metal even though I was going slow.

The rest were taken at snails pace to allow the car to gently go over them. Funny enough on the way out I scrapped the same hump, so that one must have been a tiny bit higher. The grounds of the event are beautifully kept, almost film set quality.

As you can see from the queue of cars waiting to get in there was indeed a few cars that had broken down.

Halfway along the drive there was a little church for the school.

Pulling into the main area of the school where some had already parked up, I believe these were allocated spots.

I showed my pass to the organisers for ‘Area A’ and was told to follow the Jag XKR to a parking location. We had to drive across a field and we were all pointed to some trees. I wasn’t best impressed thinking about the tree sap and potential bird stuff landing on the car. In fact a few cars parked up behind us and were asked to move forward a bit. They tried but wouldn’t start up again, a TVR and a VW Beetle with a Porsche engine bolted in the back having the worst of the trouble and were pushed forward a few feet. The heat

I got out and spoke to the Jag guys who turned out to be great company all day. We had a quick chat about the trees, the impending hot weather, they pointed out that at least we are in the shade. Point taken and and all was good with me again. Sap and stuff would have to be tolerated, for now. The car that also followed me parked up and everybody got busy with dusting over their cars to make them look good.

Looking forwards I could see the expanse of the fields and car that were going to be there.

I now honestly think that our spaces were the best there.

Not forgetting what the wife told me, once I had finished cleaning my car the dog bowl was out.

As it turned out I topped up the bowl twice and I was pleased to see that there weren’t that many dogs there, hopefully being kept cool at home.

After the exhausting work of quick detailing the car in the rising temperatures I got my chair out and had a little rest, it was then that I decided that my car really does have a nice rear end. Biased comment to say I know, a little biased here (OK a lot), but in the shade with a little sunlight glinting of it, I think it looked pretty good.

I’m gonna jump the sequence of the day a little bit for a very good reason. After I got back from my wander round I had two little guys take an interest in my car with their parents. They were well behaved and very polite and credit to their parents.

So let me introduce you to ‘Christopher’ and ‘Ollie’. (I think that I spelt the name right, I did try to find them again later on to check, but I couldn’t see them.)

So guys if I have spelt your name wrong, please let me know and I will update it for you straight away.

They little guys wanted to sit in the car so I agreed and they took turns in the drivers seat. I didn’t manage grab a pic at that time. But, they also asked to sit in the back. Now as that was a real first for me – I thought – why not? In you get again boys. Now you’re famous. 😀

As with all these little things, it made my day. I hope to see you little guys again.

Back to the sequence of the day; After a little sit down and a rest I decided to go for a walk and have a look round for some pictures. There was some pretty average cars there and on the other hand some great cars, on neither hand, quite a few I had seen and posted on my little ol’ blog before.

A little gathering of some UK fords right near my parking zone. Note the flaked out dog by the Granada in the shade.

As I worked my way nearer to the centre and the school there is this wonderful view.

The day was just getting hotter and hotter, and everybody was in great spirits. I suspect that they were glad to get out for some sunshine therapy. I met a very interesting guy there and I will explain in the next post.

‘Part Two’ coming in a couple of days, watch this space…..