Impressive

Joe, it's truly remarkable what you and the MRH staff have accomplished in a decade! 

The figures that strike me most are circulation and website audience. Clearly MR is still the leader in both categories. But MR also had years and decades in terms of a head start. That MRH is so hard on MR's heels in website audience particularly in so short a time is almost staggering to consider.

And how much of what MRH has done has prompted MR to make countermoves, such as Video Plus to compete with TMTV? 

Just goes to show that competition, even within a business revolving about a hobby, is a good thing.

Different purposes

I subscribe and read all 4 publications mentioned. I think each has a specific value and focuses on different things. I don't think it's an apples to apples comparison. I also think MR and RMC know this and that's why when you read their respective publications, you don't see comparisons to each other. You will not find an editorial in MR about how much better/more subscriptions/more clicks they have than RMC or MRH for that matter. It's never been that way. There was always room in the hobby for multiple magazines.

Web presence

If MRH did not have the strongest web presence then it would be in trouble, since that is exclusively what it is.  If you have graph of hardcopy editions, MRH would be at zero and the other publications would be ahead of it.

For example I have about 6 binders of prototype plans from MR and RMC pages.  I have zero of those from MRH.  If I want to build a model I can pull out an MR or RMC (a page saved from an MR or RMC), measure dimensions from the drawing and build it.  Not so much off my computer screen.

Youtube numbers and ScaleRails

I don't think the youtube number views per subscriber is valid as people can and do view the videos without subscribing so the total number of views includes subscribers and non-subscribers.

Also how about about throwing ScaleRails, the NMRA magazine into the comparison?

We agree ... we don't compete for modelers

We agree. This is a comparison for ad dollars, we don't see the various magazines mentioned as competing for readers.

If you are a hobby vendor, you WILL see material from MR especially talking about their superiority as a place to advertise. In fact, a while back MR sent out a direct comparison to hobby vendors of how they were superior in every way to MRH. They even took some our website stats and drew some totally bogus conclusions from the stats in an attempt to say nobody takes MRH seriously.

When it comes to ad dollars, I can tell you these four magazines do compete, very much so. We've talked to hobby vendors and they've told us they can't advertise with us because they're running ads in the other magazines and they can't afford more ads.

We simply post this information here as an FYI for readers. This is primarily a comparison for hobby vendors considering where to spend their ad dollars.

Scale Rails and the NMRA

"We simply post this

    A big positive for advertisers to the MRH business model is that anyone can read their MRH ads but only subscribers can read MRR ads, so no matter how much they spend on a MRR ad I along with uncountable numbers of other non subscribers are never going to see it. .......DaveB

This is a good report

I think too often those of us enjoying the hobby dont realize that this side of it is business. We get wrapped up in the free magazine, the free forum, the free Whats Neat and other youtube videos, etc.

But its not free, someone has to pay for it... Our hobby is your business, and the point to business is to make a profit, and keep going. Nothing wrong with that.

Ad dollar competition is a serious matter, because without them, no magazine will survive. Ad dollars may come in the form of selling spots published in a variety of ways, e-publications, videos, printed books and magazines...

A wise friend once told me, if you are good at something, get paid for it. Joe and his team clearly are good at what they do. The folks at Model Railroader, RMC, and others are good at what they do. And you dont have to be a jack of all trades, a master of none. As one poster already pointed out, each publication has a little something different to offer!

Steven

Every day in Recent Posts the

Every day in Recent Posts the information posted is the equivalent of all the articles in monthly train magazines that are published once a month disregarding the mix.  Once a model railroader realizes this, how he deals with it is based on their experience.

I took the economic approach.  I was paying ~ $75 a year for Model Railroader magazine and their videos which to me was worth 12 days of Recent Posts which costs me nothing.  I am in N scale so I switched to the N scale magazines.  I am almost to the point where the N scale mags are going to go.

Skill level, approach - My skill level and approach to how I do things in N scale has improved and changed.  Also interests have changed.  All based on Recent Posts.  Magazines cant keep up.

So, based on my experiences with your website and looking forward http://www.mrhmag.com will be the goto site for all model railroaders.

MR Competing With Others

We also saw one recent instance where the Model Railroader guys fired a warning shot, so to speak, toward other modelers offering how-to information online (which may have included MRH) for free.  For at least a year, if not longer, each issue of MR featured a large full-color advertising spread proclaiming the entire MR staff to be "The Experts".  From this, I implied that someone at Kalmbach realized the interest in MR Video Plus was not as strong as they would like, due to the proliferation of free online how-to videos, and felt they needed to fight back.  Personally, their assertion that MR and its staff are the only source for useful model railroad information turned me off.  This campaign was one of the reasons I dropped my MR subscription.

Tom

It's easy to misconstrue their meaning ...

It's too bad they feel the need to push this viewpoint. What are they doing with forums and taking article submissions from non-staff if this is the way they feel?

I've always felt our job as hobby publishers is to find the best and the brightest from among the hobby-at-large and to get them front and center. The publishing staff certainly are not newbies, but we also don't know everything either.

To me, Model Railroad HOBBYIST is about YOU ALL and promoting the greatest ideas and methods from among YOU, our fellow modelers. To insist WE THE STAFF are the know-it-alls is just not true. It's about the community at large and the modelers who have the great ideas. The notion that a hobby publishing staff has all the answers is naive at best and rather arrogant at worst.

I'll give MR the benefit of the doubt. They're very smart people, I know for a fact, having been on contract with them from 2005 - 2007. I assume they mean they have a higher concentration of "experts" than most other sources, which could be true. But the only or the best experts? Naw ...

Experts..

Just a thought... Way back in time in San Diego, my senior drill instructor made one of several comments that have stuck with me. Pretty much all have held true. He said to beware of anyone who claims to be an expert... all they really know is a lot about nothing.  That said, online forums have more real experts than any where else.  Just think, answers in near real time.. learning the way to do things, or learning from others mistakes. After reading posts for a while, it is easy to see who the talkers are and who the do-ers are. Here there is much info floating around, All for free. not a bad deal at all. And, no need for an advertisement to say how smart we are.

In summary, Thanks to Joe.. and everyone, for a great venue to share and learn on. It is after all, a part of the hobby. Keep on keeping on ya'll.

Semper Fi, Tony!

 "My skill level and approach

The beauty of the forum approach is we all learn as a group so solution to problems are developed along many different paths which ends up a much more diverse and rich data base. We all start as students and ideally evolve into teachers.....DaveB

Joe, do the vendors. . .

Do vendors want to advertise with MRH more now?

It depends, but for the most part, yes, they're getting it. Even the laggards are now getting it here eight years in to this venture.

That said, there are vendors who don't like the internet and they feel it's the bad guy thats responsible for "killing the hobby". Actually, that's a bit like saying horseless carriages killed ground transportation. When all you look at is how the carriage makers and blacksmiths are doing, then yes, they did kill the old way.

The internet is killing the old ways of doing the hobby of model railroading. I personally don't see that as good or bad, it just is the way it is. The decline of all the face-to-face interaction isn't so great, but in its place I can now interact with way more people from around the entire planet. I can also find information about prototype and model railroading with a few keystrokes. And finally, I can buy or sell products for the hobby, both used and new, super easy now.

To me hobbies flourish best when you connect with others, exchange ideas, easily find products you need to keep doing the hobby, and you share what you're doing to inspire the rest of us.

In the final analysis, I believe the internet is saving this hobby and many other niche hobbies, IMO.

For what it's worth

One nice thing about being an online magazine with a forum to back it up, one can get feedback to questions regarding the articles. I have also noticed the staff at MRH will take good information from the forum and include it in the magazine. With the printed magazines you pretty much get what you get, cut and dried. They also feature what they feel is useful, this may not be the case for all readers, perhaps they feel like the publishers are beating a dead horse.

 The topic of who is an expert and who is not, perhaps there are no experts and everyone just has a different skill set. Some may be more experienced in certain areas than others, but IMHO we all can stand to learn something new. I feel if one is an expert they know everything and have no need to learn anything new, therefore there are no experts.

Thanks to Joe and the MRH staff for a great magazine and a forum that I have learned much from, also thanks to those that have posted great blog topics. I have become more educated through all of this and greatly appreciate all the good things that have come from the mag and forum.

        sincerly, Jeff Whitney

Interesting metrics, I'd like

Interesting metrics, I'd like to see podcast information added to this list. As some of them are pretty entertaining.

And I had heard a number far greater than all those put together, from one podcaster. I'd like to see some legit numbers to prove it. I figure the discovery and distribution method of podcasts is an untapped and massive market, I wonder how big it actually is.

@ Paul

Back at you brother !  Semper Fi always and forever !  For those that don't know, Semper Fi means always faithful..

MRH readers will be around longer...

I'll bet the average age of an MRH reader is several years younger than the average MR reader. So advertisers will get a lot more return out of ads on MRH because the people seeing it have more years of buying left.  

Randy

Amazing. ...

That's amazing, Joe. I can't even imagine how a conversation with someone who thinks that way could progress. It would almost be like talking to a Flat-Earther or the like. You must come away just shaking your head in disbelief.

Well, I have noticed ads in Model Railroader for retirement communities. 

I dunno, maybe MR should next solicit the Purple Shield folks for ads. ...just thinking out loud.

I think part of the problem

I think part of the problem for MR is that they are stuck in the 20th century and using a 20th Century model. I wonder where MR would be if they published MR in an online format like MRH. 

Not sure it's a problem

It seems to be working, really. Yes, the magazine is thinner, under 90-100 pages usually, because vendors don't need big, multi-page ads just to point people to their website. But the business model that Model Railroader has adapted for these changing times seems to be profitable. 

And this is coming from someone who thought several years ago that things might not be so rosy for MR by this time. I mean, we were still cranking out 130-page issues 15 years ago. So I began to wonder a few years back if issues of less than 100 pages weren't the beginning of the end. It doesn't appear to be so.

Randy hit the nail on the

Randy hit the nail on the head. IMO