Is the RDP aging out, next generation coming up?

[DILLIGAF]

I wouldn’t expect anyone’s life too.. even my own?

But you made a choice for yourself and now rdp is dying? Interesting

You are taking what you want from it and missing the bigger picture.

What I stated is factual. It isnt about me Dave.

Dont ask me questions if you dont want to hear my answers.

 

[DILLIGAF]

Like I said everything has a lifespan. Did I say RDP was dying?

 

[DILLIGAF]

I have stats on participation, reach, location, time on site, conversions, page depth and a bunch of other stuff..

I also know who shows up to events and parties etc. That would be my only metric on age of participants.

Doesnt RDP in the profiles ask for birth date info? You cant pull that?If people answered it accurately you should be able to pull that and come up with an average?

 

[RiverDave]

Everything has a life span....yes, RDP is aging out. It has been for a while now and change is a certainty in life. Enjoy it while you can and its been a fun place for many years. Its had a good run for sure. I enjoy the banter and reading a lot of stuff posted on here but don't participate anywhere near what I did before.

It also seems some people take the mantra "go be poor somewhere else" to heart....lol That kind of mentality is a turn off for many. Thats some elitist shit right there regardless of if joking at this point or not.

Hopefully it continues forward for many years to come. Maybe illegal immigration will replace the older members....lol

I’m reading exactly what ya wrote.. it’s been a good run, it’s aging out.. that’s all downside of the mountain is it not?

 

[hallett21]

lol it’s amazing how we all have different interpretations of things. Idk where else you can go and get such in depth custom boating content. Let alone all of the other subjects and knowledge that’s shared here.

 

[RiverDave]

lol it’s amazing how we all have different interpretations of things. Idk where else you can go and get such in depth custom boating content. Let alone all of the other subjects and knowledge that’s shared here.

Well that’s kind of what we are discussing here. To some the place is past its prime and fading. To others there’s nothing like it on the web.

I haven’t offered my perspective yet but will shortly.

 

[DILLIGAF]

I’m reading exactly what ya wrote.. it’s been a good run, it’s aging out.. that’s all downside of the mountain is it not?

Stay in denial. Change and lifespans are 100% assured…one way or another.

Look at your threads over the years. I laughed about this years ago when myself and others were discussing knee surgeries, medicines, Retirements, etc. if that isnt aging out I dont know what it is.

I think you have heard enough from me.

Ask other members what they think as well.

 

[hallett21]

Well that’s kind of what we are discussing here. To some the place is past its prime and fading. To others there’s nothing like it on the web.

I haven’t offered my perspective yet but will shortly.

But they always come back

 

[Lunatic Fringe]

Interesting so what do you base the statements off of? We have seen a decrease in participation? Threads? Content? Have we seen a dip in what metrics?

I mean we are just hanging on for awhile here..

RD

Maybe you misunderstood my comment.

I'm acknowledging RDP is a growing entity but referencing what has changed.
You asked if RDP or the members were changing.

I also stated I feel the change has been largely in a good way.

Everything has a lifespan. RDP will too but it's not anything immenent.

 

[OCMerrill]

My opinion is to make a small fortune you have to do it yourself. No employees.
Amazon does create a path to sell products you don't even touch. I don't have time to even explore that scenario.

A big thorn in my side is employees.
They are becoming super expensive, especially here in CA, and the value of construction repairs has not really caught up.

 

[RiverDave]

Stay in denial. Change and lifespans are 100% assured…one way or another.

Look at your threads over the years. I laughed about this years ago when myself and others were discussing knee surgeries, medicines, Retirements, etc. if that isnt aging out I dont know what it is.

I think you have heard enough from me.

Ask other members what they think as well.

I'm not mad or anything.. I am actually a little fascinated by the different perspectives.

The thread title asked if "RDP" was aging out. You made mention (at least the way that I read it) that it's on the downslope. (I read that as RDP). So I asked how so.. and you made mention of thread titles and members getting older etc.

So are we talking about "RDP" the forum? RDP the business? The entire scope of it? The members only?

I kinda see all the angles there because I'm very proficient on what's going on with the forum, the business, the entire scope of it and I have my own perspective on it that we will get into shortly.

I'm not sure how asking questions put me into some kinda "denial" either?

RD

 

[DILLIGAF]

I'm not mad or anything.. I am actually a little fascinated by the different perspectives.

The thread title asked if "RDP" was aging out. You made mention (at least the way that I read it) that it's on the downslope. (I read that as RDP). So I asked how so.. and you made mention of thread titles and members getting older etc.

So are we talking about "RDP" the forum? RDP the business? The entire scope of it? The members only?

I kinda see all the angles there because I'm very proficient on what's going on with the forum, the business, the entire scope of it and I have my own perspective on it that we will get into shortly.

I'm not sure how asking questions put me into some kinda "denial" either?

RD

I have said enough.

 

[RiverDave]

I have said enough.

It isn’t an argument.. lol. I was just curious as to where and how this perspective was formed..

 

[DILLIGAF]

It isn’t an argument.. lol. I was just curious as to where and how this perspective was formed..

I think I explained my perspective. Take it for what its worth. I am just one guy on here.

 

[RiverDave]

I think I explained my perspective. Take it for what its worth. I am just one guy on here.

Well I'm going to share my perspective right after I address the immediate problem with this. You didn't share an opinion or a perspective, you made statements of what you consider facts.. When I even so much as asked a question about where they came from, you didn't offer any evidence or sources other than some thread titles from elderly members and then said I was in denial if I so much as even questioned the statements.

Which literally all I did was ask questions because I was curious and kinda fascinated by it.

I want to be clear I'm not attacking you or saying your wrong or right or anything in between. Just wondering where that perspective would even derive from, be it good or bad.. on the way up or down. Doesn't really matter to me because rdp is gonna do what it's gonna do regardless of what we say in this thread.

RD

 

[HTTP404]

I'm just here for the colonoscopy threads.

 

[DILLIGAF]

Well I'm going to share my perspective right after I address the immediate problem with this. You didn't share an opinion or a perspective, you made statements of what you consider facts.. When I even so much as asked a question about where they came from, you didn't offer any evidence or sources other than some thread titles from elderly members and then said I was in denial if I so much as even questioned the statements.

Which literally all I did was ask questions because I was curious and kinda fascinated by it.

I want to be clear I'm not attacking you or saying your wrong or right or anything in between. Just wondering where that perspective would even derive from, be it good or bad.. on the way up or down. Doesn't really matter to me because rdp is gonna do what it's gonna do regardless of what we say in this thread.

RD

Go banter with someone else. Lol

The fact is RDP IS aging out. Accept it or not

DILLIGAF

 

[cyclone]

Interesting so what do you base the statements off of? We have seen a decrease in participation? Threads? Content? Have we seen a dip in what metrics?

I mean we are just hanging on for awhile here..

RD

Perception=reality for many people.

 

[Willie B]

It isn’t an argument.. lol. I was just curious as to where and how this perspective was formed..

… Mr DILLIGAF… may have formed his perspective because he is pretty much out of the road and he’s not grounded to anything except his motorhome and his Harley so his perspective might be a bit different than those of people who are grounded to their stick homes… and lots of toys…

… I don’t see RDP dying. Certainly it will slow down as the members get older. The only time I can see RDP dying is if it were to get sold to a corporate entity as in what happened with hot boat???…

… I believe it’s going to be…the answers will still be here on RDP… It’s just the questions asked will br more so for those getting older

… at 78 I am sure that I am way older than most members…

 

[Orange Juice]

Perception=reality for many people.

Does RiverDave even own a hot boat?

Last I look….. he turned pontoon nerd

 

[Todd Mohr]

I do not think RDP is aging out, the few events I've attended most were younger than me (61). I'm a new old guy to this site, I moved to Az 7 years ago and this site is how I learned most of what I know about Havasu. A guy I was talking with in the channel 6 years ago told me about the site and the knowledge of the inmates. Now I'm on the site most days. This site has great SEO, most topics discussed in the lounge will come up in a google search with RDP pretty high on the list. I posted about almost getting swindled in a classic car purchase and now if you google the name of the fake dealer, my post on RDP is right near the top of the page. A non member joined the site to thank me for posting about the fraud as he was very close to wiring them some money. His wife found the link just in time.
I think there are more 30-40 year old inmates replacing the older dudes aging out from boating. The power of RDP is pretty strong. JMHO

 

[rivermobster]

I'm not mad or anything.. I am actually a little fascinated by the different perspectives.

The thread title asked if "RDP" was aging out. You made mention (at least the way that I read it) that it's on the downslope. (I read that as RDP). So I asked how so.. and you made mention of thread titles and members getting older etc.

So are we talking about "RDP" the forum? RDP the business? The entire scope of it? The members only?

I kinda see all the angles there because I'm very proficient on what's going on with the forum, the business, the entire scope of it and I have my own perspective on it that we will get into shortly.

I'm not sure how asking questions put me into some kinda "denial" either?

RD

There is absolutely no doubt about the membership...

Just look at all the "get off my lawn" threads if you have any doubts about that!

The forum community is golden though. It's an absolute wealth of info.

Point in fact...

An inmate contacted me this morning with a simple question about battery cables.

After talking for awhile...

I think we are going to do a Whole lot more than just the battery cables now! I'm gonna teach him how to make a wiring diagram, a parts list and where to go for the parts.

This same inmate also handles All of my insurance needs.

These kinds of relationships are going to be around Way longer than me.

Thanks for keeping these forums alive.

 

[DILLIGAF]

… Mr DILLIGAF… may have formed his perspective because he is pretty much out of the road and he’s not grounded to anything except his motorhome and his Harley so his perspective might be a bit different than those of people who are grounded to their stick homes… and lots of toys…

… I don’t see RDP dying. Certainly it will slow down as the members get older. The only time I can see RDP dying is if it were to get sold to a corporate entity as in what happened with hot boat???…

… I believe it’s going to be…the answers will still be here on RDP… It’s just the questions asked will br more so for those getting older

… at 78 I am sure that I am way older than most members…

Willie…your opinion is always appreciated

 

[calkid]

Maybe the feature ain't so bad now that I think about it

View attachment 1323356 View attachment 1323357 View attachment 1323358 View attachment 1323359

The first picture looks like Chewbacca is on board.

 

[Heylam]

I agree with an earlier poster that performance boating is phasing out and a different style of boating is taking over. Just look at how many custom boat manufacturers have folded and compare that to new start ups.

 

[RiverDave]

Is the RDP aging out, next generation coming up?​

here's the perspective from ole me..

There's several ways of interpreting the question, so there's going to be several answers to it, and while I will try to keep it as short as possible, it's gonna be a little lengthy.

----------------------
The Members

If by the question Whiteworks meant "Is the core group of posters of rdp aging out?"

Then the answer would be the majority of the posters of RDP certainly are not in their 20's, or even 30's right now.. The majority of the group of people that I know "personally" has in fact gotten older over the last 20'ish years.

That being said there is a little human condition going on here. We typically read and respond to the threads that interest us.. (Us meaning the individual user). So the users perception maybe more of an echo chamber to what they are interested in, because they certainly aren't clicking all the threads and reading things that wouldn't interest them.

For example, a thread about Instagram, Tik Tok, or snapchat the older members probably wouldn't even click on.. To put it into a different example, someone past the age of 55 likely wouldn't click on a thread about crypto or bitcoin either?

Inversely young people typically aren't clicking on threads about knee replacements and colonoscopies.

I try to click on a little of everything just to see what's going on. We have older people on here no doubt. Some of our members have had triple bypasses recently. We have middle aged people that have their two houses, and are either renting one and setting up there forever home, or hitting massively cool vacations.. some traveling full time etc. We have young people that are just getting started, maybe starting a family, buying their first home, buying or upgrading their first boats..

We have a little mix of everything on here with the exception of one thing. We don't have a lot of women on rdp.

So the question is, is rdp aging out? The answer is yes and no.. Yes some of our membership is getting older, yes we have lost some prolific members over the years.. RIP Campbell Carl, Get Real Performance and many others.. Yes we are aging out as hearing aids and colonoscopies are now actual topics in the lounge..

But no we aren't aging out as well.. We have new members that are coming online all the time of all age groups. Many are lurkers, some post all the time and you wouldn't know it. Viscious13 is now BHC Vic.. He's a great example of someone that started in here young, and is still a lot younger than myself and my fiends, but has been on here forever.. Hallett21 is much younger than you'd think etc..

The overall answer to the age is, yes people get older, yes some die off, yes some log off... but yes new members login, yes some are young, yes some are middle aged, and yes some are older? So long as the participation is up, the registrations are constant or up, and the numbers aren't going down, then I'd say from a forum standpoint we are good.

-----------------------

Forum

If we remove the perspectives, and just look at the data. We are actually doing extremely well. To the point that while RDP has been around forever, I'd say we haven't even hit the peak of the mountain yet, amazingly enough we just hit the summit of Everest and are on our way up. As we introduce new technology moving forward (sooner than you'd think) I feel that will only continue to climb as well. Where that peak is? I have no idea.. I also am not the kinda guy to think that there is actually a ceiling to it because we never know what the future holds.. This is one very large, very powerful, and very wealthy network of people as a whole, when I say that I mean it on a level that most wouldn't understand. Something could change tomorrow, and rdp maybe not just be a boating website.. maybe it's something else? Believe it or not the wealth and size of this group if put towards a task is in fact powerful enough to say... "Sway an election?" or ??

-----------------------------

From a community / platform / forum perspective

RDP isn't just a forum, it's a community. By that I mean when we put on or exhibit at events, the people that we talk too are from a variety of sources. When someone walks up and says "Hey RDP I follow you!" it's pretty obvious they aren't on here. If someone walks up and says "I'm Hallett400" it's pretty obvious they are on here.

My job is very different than what most would realize. To the uninformed they would think my sole purpose is to grow the #'s across the board on all platforms. The more eyeballs, the more the ads and exposure is worth. This is completely backwards to what it actually is, it's actually quite easy to grow the #'s.

if I want to jump my #'s 5-10K on FB it's as easy as putting up some controversial picture and letting it go viral and hitting "accept all" all day long. If I want to jump the #'s on rdp, I guarantee we could be one of the largest political forums on the web in two days with a couple properly placed thread titles, and just letting it turn into reddit or the Wild West.

My job is to grow the #'s while at the same time making sure the members are of a certain "genre." To describe that genre in a single sentence I'd hope for them to be; Quality people that share the same values and morals that the vast majority of our community embraces. Now don't get me wrong you gotta keep a few nimrods around to add "flavor" and "spice." But we aren't marketing too or opening with welcome arms those that directly oppose our way of life. As with anything there's a kind of balance with regard to that, but I think we do a pretty good job at it.

A second example of just unbridled growth.. I own a SpeedUTV. I could have very very easily just started up a speed section on rdp and used our SEO to grow the shit out of it extremely quickly. At first thought you'd think that'd be the smart move right? At a minimum I'd get my car fixed first, bunch of free aftermarket shit, we'd be basking in the glory of just capturing an entire market on the quick.

The reason why is when you have been doing this as long as I have.. Maybe you don't want everything and everything that comes with it. That particular subject is extremely volatile with a crazy amount of trolls and haters etc.. It isn't worth it to me to upset the apple cart to own the entirety of a small market share. The haters are generally broke dicks and have nots, or done nothings in their life and I don't want them infiltrating rdp as a whole, and there's not a good way to keep them corralled.

-----------------------

From a Business Perspective

From the website, honestly I haven't treated the forum and the website as a business since it's inception. Was that a mistake? Maybe.. I've given up 100's of thousands of dollars (per year) by not just accepting anyones money, or hell even going after dollars as a whole from an advertising standpoint. I don't moderate the forum as hard as most forum owners to keep things on topic or utopia'sh. I will freely admit that there's a ton I could do on both fronts to clean that up. However if I did do that. Would it still be rdp? That's part of what makes this place so great, is that it for the most part is a free exchange of ideas (which is what a forum is supposed to be right?).

Unfortunately yes, running this place like that does cost it a lot of $ from a website / forum perspective.

Inversely though I'd wager we sell more clothing than all of the forums I am on combined. We bring in some money via ads (which we are going to improve on in this 1/4), but honestly we bring in a lot more via SWAG.
To give you an idea of how much swag rdp is selling / shipping etc.. our hard costs last year was in excess of 60K. I am trying to bring in relevant / fashionable / trendy clothing for women and younger hotter chicks to capitalize on that market.

Lets go from checkers to chess here a little bit. A lot of the membership is aging out was the theme of this thread? A lot of members have sons and daughters etc.. If those members purchase relevant / trendy / cool clothing for the younger river rats.. If we cater towards the hot chicks at the river and market towards them with clothing, then it comes full circle. The younger dudes will become part of the "community." Whether that's on my IG / GB / or forum? Who knows.. but they come either way.

The biggest income for rdp is no doubt the Real Estate arm of the empire, which takes us full circle to the thread title.. Can you imagine a better thing for an RE company than to be front and center of a bunch of "boaters?" Let alone middle aged or aging out boaters that have already made their income and are enjoying life? They are our friends, they share our values, they share our lifestyle?

It's a great combination because we get to actually help people into the fun.. and I don't just mean houses. While that's the part that pays, we help them with everything surrounding it as well.

That's what affords us the opportunity to do things for and with the "rdp community" and the "river/lake/boating/motorsports community".

----------------------

Summation.

A long time ago we featured SVO540's boat. It was a Mach 26 with monster Ford power. RDP had been around a little but wasn't near what it is today.. He asked me what I thought it was worth, and I said I hadn't really thought about it because I had no intention of selling it. We get to talking and he says "It's gotta be a million?" then later on in the day he said "Ya know after thinking about it, it's gotta be a lot more than that?"

It really struck me at the time. I asked my friends "what do ya think it's worth?" and the answers came back usually a couple hundred grand. This was all 10+ years ago.

(If ya want to know the highest standing offer I have it's currently 750 as of two years ago)

Why the disparity between the #'s? And the answer is "perception." SVO540 didn't think about the advertising #'s, or the money it brings in or anything of the sort. He looked at it as a large network of individuals with at a minimum of dispensable income, and on the other side billionaires (yes there are several on here). To have that network is something that is next to impossible to attain, or have access too, which there in lies the value.

Quick examples : I happened to be at an event one time, and someone said "Half those guys couldn't afford the wheels on a DCB trailer." I happened to be standing next to Rob Blaire (RIP) and I looked over and said "Hey Rob, what do you do every morning?" His answer "Read RDP."(and he started laughing). Needless to say I didn't have to say anything else.

If ya post something shitty about Nordic, within 30 seconds (and I mean 30 seconds) my phone is gonna be ringing with Randy Davis on the other line asking "who is this dip shit."

We have members that post regularly, one of which who's yacht missed top 10 by I think it was 10'?


Anyhow to finish up with the disparity of the #'s.. The answer is "perception."

This is the perception of one of our older members..

Everything has a life span....yes, RDP is aging out. It has been for a while now and change is a certainty in life. Enjoy it while you can and its been a fun place for many years. Its had a good run for sure. I enjoy the banter and reading a lot of stuff posted on here but don't participate anywhere near what I did before.

It also seems some people take the mantra "go be poor somewhere else" to heart....lol That kind of mentality is a turn off for many. Thats some elitist shit right there regardless of if joking at this point or not.

Hopefully it continues forward for many years to come. Maybe illegal immigration will replace the older members....lol

This is the perception of one of our younger members.

lol it’s amazing how we all have different interpretations of things. Idk where else you can go and get such in depth custom boating content. Let alone all of the other subjects and knowledge that’s shared here.

They are both talking about the same website/forum.

From my perception, I think the best is yet to come, but I have no illusions about me doing this forever.. However I'm not vain enough to think that this thing hasn't grown beyond little ole me. Whomever we put in charge of the ship I have high hopes for navigating it into the future.

RD

 

[Sportin' Wood]

What say you? I like these kinds of topics and trying to wrap my head around trends. Help me digest this theory.

I found an interesting video last night about Mercruiser vs Volvo outdrives. I bring this up because the sales numbers for Mercruiser Outdrives were shockingly bad. I can't quote the exact numbers, but most of the Mercruiser IO sales were in the form of the Brunswich brands of runabouts.

It went from something like 72K unit sales at the height of modern performance boating before the Great Recession to around 11K unit sales these days. I believe it quoted 2020 sales numbers. They blamed the main reason for the EPA requirement of adding Catalytic Convertors to IO motor packages and a shift to OBs. The EPA requirements drove up the motor package costs significantly, with a loss in performance.

I always wondered why, post the Great Recession, we don't see many IO V-hull performance boats, and I chalked it up to a shift to pontoon boats and custom boat builders realizing more significant profits from building fewer larger, high-dollar Cats with outboard power. However, I wonder what role the EPA has played in this trend.

Factor in the difficulty in obtaining financing on older performance boats and little newer options for replacement, and you get a reduction in performance boating for the middle class. Without the refinancing bank of home equity, available funding sources, and a severe inventory shortage, the 21-27 foot IO v-hull boat becomes more complicated to obtain.

Now just for shits and giggles, I briefly looked at the repower and rigging costs of an older boat. Wow, what a surprise! The inflationary pressure makes that less attractive quickly.

Long story short, unless we see some new technology shift the cost to build performance boats, the 1990s-2000s era boats might become akin to the hotrod or exotic car culture. Restoration may be our only choice, save for some custom high-dollar offerings that require patience to take delivery and a significant outlay of cash. And then we gotta consider insurance.

You simply can't compare the 2005/2006 West Coast performance boat culture with the culture today. It was the wild west in so many ways. I'm grateful I got to live it; I bet some of you feel the same about the 70s and the 80s.

The only negative change I can see is that on any given Friday night, you would be on the hot boat with a half dozen women messing with the horney old men. Bring back @havaskank; her posts were epic.

 

[Big B Hova]

Is the RDP aging out, next generation coming up?​

here's the perspective from ole me..

There's several ways of interpreting the question, so there's going to be several answers to it, and while I will try to keep it as short as possible, it's gonna be a little lengthy.

----------------------
The Members

If by the question Whiteworks meant "Is the core group of posters of rdp aging out?"

Then the answer would be the majority of the posters of RDP certainly are not in their 20's, or even 30's right now.. The majority of the group of people that I know "personally" has in fact gotten older over the last 20'ish years.

That being said there is a little human condition going on here. We typically read and respond to the threads that interest us.. (Us meaning the individual user). So the users perception maybe more of an echo chamber to what they are interested in, because they certainly aren't clicking all the threads and reading things that wouldn't interest them.

For example, a thread about Instagram, Tik Tok, or snapchat the older members probably wouldn't even click on.. To put it into a different example, someone past the age of 55 likely wouldn't click on a thread about crypto or bitcoin either?

Inversely young people typically aren't clicking on threads about knee replacements and colonoscopies.

I try to click on a little of everything just to see what's going on. We have older people on here no doubt. Some of our members have had triple bypasses recently. We have middle aged people that have their two houses, and are either renting one and setting up there forever home, or hitting massively cool vacations.. some traveling full time etc. We have young people that are just getting started, maybe starting a family, buying their first home, buying or upgrading their first boats..

We have a little mix of everything on here with the exception of one thing. We don't have a lot of women on rdp.

So the question is, is rdp aging out? The answer is yes and no.. Yes some of our membership is getting older, yes we have lost some prolific members over the years.. RIP Campbell Carl, Get Real Performance and many others.. Yes we are aging out as hearing aids and colonoscopies are now actual topics in the lounge..

But no we aren't aging out as well.. We have new members that are coming online all the time of all age groups. Many are lurkers, some post all the time and you wouldn't know it. Viscious13 is now BHC Vic.. He's a great example of someone that started in here young, and is still a lot younger than myself and my fiends, but has been on here forever.. Hallett21 is much younger than you'd think etc..

The overall answer to the age is, yes people get older, yes some die off, yes some log off... but yes new members login, yes some are young, yes some are middle aged, and yes some are older? So long as the participation is up, the registrations are constant or up, and the numbers aren't going down, then I'd say from a forum standpoint we are good.

-----------------------

Forum

If we remove the perspectives, and just look at the data. We are actually doing extremely well. To the point that while RDP has been around forever, I'd say we haven't even hit the peak of the mountain yet, amazingly enough we just hit the summit of Everest and are on our way up. As we introduce new technology moving forward (sooner than you'd think) I feel that will only continue to climb as well. Where that peak is? I have no idea.. I also am not the kinda guy to think that there is actually a ceiling to it because we never know what the future holds.. This is one very large, very powerful, and very wealthy network of people as a whole, when I say that I mean it on a level that most wouldn't understand. Something could change tomorrow, and rdp maybe not just be a boating website.. maybe it's something else? Believe it or not the wealth and size of this group if put towards a task is in fact powerful enough to say... "Sway an election?" or ??

-----------------------------

From a community / platform / forum perspective

RDP isn't just a forum, it's a community. By that I mean when we put on or exhibit at events, the people that we talk too are from a variety of sources. When someone walks up and says "Hey RDP I follow you!" it's pretty obvious they aren't on here. If someone walks up and says "I'm Hallett400" it's pretty obvious they are on here.

My job is very different than what most would realize. To the uninformed they would think my sole purpose is to grow the #'s across the board on all platforms. The more eyeballs, the more the ads and exposure is worth. This is completely backwards to what it actually is, it's actually quite easy to grow the #'s.

if I want to jump my #'s 5-10K on FB it's as easy as putting up some controversial picture and letting it go viral and hitting "accept all" all day long. If I want to jump the #'s on rdp, I guarantee we could be one of the largest political forums on the web in two days with a couple properly placed thread titles, and just letting it turn into reddit or the Wild West.

My job is to grow the #'s while at the same time making sure the members are of a certain "genre." To describe that genre in a single sentence I'd hope for them to be; Quality people that share the same values and morals that the vast majority of our community embraces. Now don't get me wrong you gotta keep a few nimrods around to add "flavor" and "spice." But we aren't marketing too or opening with welcome arms those that directly oppose our way of life. As with anything there's a kind of balance with regard to that, but I think we do a pretty good job at it.

A second example of just unbridled growth.. I own a SpeedUTV. I could have very very easily just started up a speed section on rdp and used our SEO to grow the shit out of it extremely quickly. At first thought you'd think that'd be the smart move right? At a minimum I'd get my car fixed first, bunch of free aftermarket shit, we'd be basking in the glory of just capturing an entire market on the quick.

The reason why is when you have been doing this as long as I have.. Maybe you don't want everything and everything that comes with it. That particular subject is extremely volatile with a crazy amount of trolls and haters etc.. It isn't worth it to me to upset the apple cart to own the entirety of a small market share. The haters are generally broke dicks and have nots, or done nothings in their life and I don't want them infiltrating rdp as a whole, and there's not a good way to keep them corralled.

-----------------------

From a Business Perspective

From the website, honestly I haven't treated the forum and the website as a business since it's inception. Was that a mistake? Maybe.. I've given up 100's of thousands of dollars (per year) by not just accepting anyones money, or hell even going after dollars as a whole from an advertising standpoint. I don't moderate the forum as hard as most forum owners to keep things on topic or utopia'sh. I will freely admit that there's a ton I could do on both fronts to clean that up. However if I did do that. Would it still be rdp? That's part of what makes this place so great, is that it for the most part is a free exchange of ideas (which is what a forum is supposed to be right?).

Unfortunately yes, running this place like that does cost it a lot of $ from a website / forum perspective.

Inversely though I'd wager we sell more clothing than all of the forums I am on combined. We bring in some money via ads (which we are going to improve on in this 1/4), but honestly we bring in a lot more via SWAG.
To give you an idea of how much swag rdp is selling / shipping etc.. our hard costs last year was in excess of 60K. I am trying to bring in relevant / fashionable / trendy clothing for women and younger hotter chicks to capitalize on that market.

Lets go from checkers to chess here a little bit. A lot of the membership is aging out was the theme of this thread? A lot of members have sons and daughters etc.. If those members purchase relevant / trendy / cool clothing for the younger river rats.. If we cater towards the hot chicks at the river and market towards them with clothing, then it comes full circle. The younger dudes will become part of the "community." Whether that's on my IG / GB / or forum? Who knows.. but they come either way.

The biggest income for rdp is no doubt the Real Estate arm of the empire, which takes us full circle to the thread title.. Can you imagine a better thing for an RE company than to be front and center of a bunch of "boaters?" Let alone middle aged or aging out boaters that have already made their income and are enjoying life? They are our friends, they share our values, they share our lifestyle?

It's a great combination because we get to actually help people into the fun.. and I don't just mean houses. While that's the part that pays, we help them with everything surrounding it as well.

That's what affords us the opportunity to do things for and with the "rdp community" and the "river/lake/boating/motorsports community".

----------------------

Summation.

A long time ago we featured SVO540's boat. It was a Mach 26 with monster Ford power. RDP had been around a little but wasn't near what it is today.. He asked me what I thought it was worth, and I said I hadn't really thought about it because I had no intention of selling it. We get to talking and he says "It's gotta be a million?" then later on in the day he said "Ya know after thinking about it, it's gotta be a lot more than that?"

It really struck me at the time. I asked my friends "what do ya think it's worth?" and the answers came back usually a couple hundred grand. This was all 10+ years ago.

(If ya want to know the highest standing offer I have it's currently 750 as of two years ago)

Why the disparity between the #'s? And the answer is "perception." SVO540 didn't think about the advertising #'s, or the money it brings in or anything of the sort. He looked at it as a large network of individuals with at a minimum of dispensable income, and on the other side billionaires (yes there are several on here). To have that network is something that is next to impossible to attain, or have access too, which there in lies the value.

Quick examples : I happened to be at an event one time, and someone said "Half those guys couldn't afford the wheels on a DCB trailer." I happened to be standing next to Rob Blaire (RIP) and I looked over and said "Hey Rob, what do you do every morning?" His answer "Read RDP."(and he started laughing). Needless to say I didn't have to say anything else.

If ya post something shitty about Nordic, within 30 seconds (and I mean 30 seconds) my phone is gonna be ringing with Randy Davis on the other line asking "who is this dip shit."

We have members that post regularly, one of which who's yacht missed top 10 by I think it was 10'?


Anyhow to finish up with the disparity of the #'s.. The answer is "perception."

This is the perception of one of our older members..



This is the perception of one of our younger members.



They are both talking about the same website/forum.

From my perception, I think the best is yet to come, but I have no illusions about me doing this forever.. However I'm not vain enough to think that this thing hasn't grown beyond little ole me. Whomever we put in charge of the ship I have high hopes for navigating it into the future.

RD

I'm gonna need a cliff notes version here.

 

[RiverDave]

I'm gonna need a cliff notes version here.

Pop Warner football.. you spent a decade grooming these kids to win, you got the star quarterback.. you’re fucking killing it.

Quarter back moves away (ages out). Everyone says we r fucked..

Somehow someway there’s always another quarterback.

It only dies when the community says it dies. Otherwise there’s always another kid to fill the slot no matter how important that kid may seem.

RD

 

[RiverDave]

What say you? I like these kinds of topics and trying to wrap my head around trends. Help me digest this theory.

I found an interesting video last night about Mercruiser vs Volvo outdrives. I bring this up because the sales numbers for Mercruiser Outdrives were shockingly bad. I can't quote the exact numbers, but most of the Mercruiser IO sales were in the form of the Brunswich brands of runabouts.

It went from something like 72K unit sales at the height of modern performance boating before the Great Recession to around 11K unit sales these days. I believe it quoted 2020 sales numbers. They blamed the main reason for the EPA requirement of adding Catalytic Convertors to IO motor packages and a shift to OBs. The EPA requirements drove up the motor package costs significantly, with a loss in performance.

I always wondered why, post the Great Recession, we don't see many IO V-hull performance boats, and I chalked it up to a shift to pontoon boats and custom boat builders realizing more significant profits from building fewer larger, high-dollar Cats with outboard power. However, I wonder what role the EPA has played in this trend.

Factor in the difficulty in obtaining financing on older performance boats and little newer options for replacement, and you get a reduction in performance boating for the middle class. Without the refinancing bank of home equity, available funding sources, and a severe inventory shortage, the 21-27 foot IO v-hull boat becomes more complicated to obtain.

Now just for shits and giggles, I briefly looked at the repower and rigging costs of an older boat. Wow, what a surprise! The inflationary pressure makes that less attractive quickly.

Long story short, unless we see some new technology shift the cost to build performance boats, the 1990s-2000s era boats might become akin to the hotrod or exotic car culture. Restoration may be our only choice, save for some custom high-dollar offerings that require patience to take delivery and a significant outlay of cash. And then we gotta consider insurance.

You simply can't compare the 2005/2006 West Coast performance boat culture with the culture today. It was the wild west in so many ways. I'm grateful I got to live it; I bet some of you feel the same about the 70s and the 80s.

The only negative change I can see is that on any given Friday night, you would be on the hot boat with a half dozen women messing with the horney old men. Bring back @havaskank; her posts were epic.

We r getting side tracked but there are plenty of ways to repower an older IO cost effectively and with the price of new boats I’d expect to see that trend rise greatly.

Good idea for an article actually!

 

[OCMerrill]

Well I'm going to share my perspective right after I address the immediate problem with this. You didn't share an opinion or a perspective, you made statements of what you consider facts.. When I even so much as asked a question about where they came from, you didn't offer any evidence or sources other than some thread titles from elderly members and then said I was in denial if I so much as even questioned the statements.

Which literally all I did was ask questions because I was curious and kinda fascinated by it.

I want to be clear I'm not attacking you or saying your wrong or right or anything in between. Just wondering where that perspective would even derive from, be it good or bad.. on the way up or down. Doesn't really matter to me because rdp is gonna do what it's gonna do regardless of what we say in this thread.

RD

The same thing is happening to Facebook. The younger generations just don't use it much if at all. My son doesn't have an account and my Daughter just logs in once a year to say thanks for all the Birthday wishes on threads my wife starts.

That said...my wife and Mother are on fire in there. So FB has a solid 10-20yrs before even the Gen X'ers can't see the screen anymore.

 

[DILLIGAF]

Lol

Retirement what age did you pull the pin?

For me after 26 years with the state I was done. At 56 I decided to call it. Though not fully still have a great side hustle. Two weeks after a retirement a friend calls and made an offer I really couldn't refuse.

www.riverdavesplace.com

 

[Big B Hova]

Pop Warner football.. you spent a decade grooming these kids to win, you got the star quarterback.. you’re fucking killing it.

Quarter back moves away (ages out). Everyone says we r fucked..

Somehow someway there’s always another quarterback.

It only dies when the community says it dies. Otherwise there’s always another kid to fill the slot no matter how important that kid may seem.

RD

So your saying everyone's replaceable.....

Just messing with ya Dave.

Adaptation is the only way to survive. Keep it up!

And yes I wanna see hot chicks in RDP sexy swag like those Dixxon ads I see on Facebook

 

[RiverDave]

Lol

Retirement what age did you pull the pin?

For me after 26 years with the state I was done. At 56 I decided to call it. Though not fully still have a great side hustle. Two weeks after a retirement a friend calls and made an offer I really couldn't refuse.

www.riverdavesplace.com

Glad to see that you took the time to read my response.

 

[DILLIGAF]

Glad to see that you took the time to read my response.

Ohhh I did. Decided to just not give my “perception”. I did find it interesting you referred to me as an older member when you dont have that info. But whatever

 

[HOOTER SLED-]

Maaaaaannn...if Tom woulda just came to the realization and said that HE has aged out of RDP....this conversation would of ended a long time ago. Will everyone just get off his lawn already?

 

[DILLIGAF]

Maaaaaannn...if Tom woulda just came to the realization and said that HE has aged out of RDP....this conversation would of ended a long time ago. Will everyone just get off his lawn already?

Ok. Thats funny

My lawn is the entire USA

 

[Singleton]

The same thing is happening to Facebook. The younger generations just don't use it much if at all. My son doesn't have an account and my Daughter just logs in once a year to say thanks for all the Birthday wishes on threads my wife starts.

That said...my wife and Mother are on fire in there. So FB has a solid 10-20yrs before even the Gen X'ers can't see the screen anymore.

Speaking of Facebook. That is the #1 company folks believe will not be around in 15-20 years. Main reason; folks are not joining like they used it and the user population is getting older and aging out the younger generation. Younger folks don’t want to FB, newer things exist.

For RDP, I would say the 20-30yo crowd is not joining RDP at the same rate that age group did 15 years ago (that equals aging out). While membership numbers might be going up, the age range of those new members is going up. As the average membership age increases, the ability to attract younger members decreases. That is what aging out equals.

 

[DILLIGAF]

Speaking of Facebook. That is the #1 company folks believe will not be around in 15-20 years. Main reason; folks are not joining like they used it and the user population is getting older and aging out the younger generation. Younger folks don’t want to FB, newer things exist.

For RDP, I would say the 20-30yo crowd is not joining RDP at the same rate that age group did 15 years ago (that equals aging out). While membership numbers might be going up, the age range of those new members is going up. As the average membership age increases, the ability to attract younger members decreases. That is what aging out equals.

I like how you presented it much better than I did. Lol

 

[Heylam]

I aged out reading RD's post, lol.

 

[Lunatic Fringe]

Ok. Thats funny

My lawn is the entire USA

If that's the case, get off your butt and come mow the patch in front of my house.

It's getting a tad shaggy.

 

[DILLIGAF]

If that's the case, get off your butt and come mow the patch in front of my house.

It's getting a tad shaggy.

So….how much is the pay?

How do you cut it when nobody is allowed on it?

 

[Lunatic Fringe]

So….how much is the pay?

How do you cut it when nobody is allowed on it?

Considering you're age, it pays to AARP scale.

 

[DILLIGAF]

Considering you're age, it pays to AARP scale.

FFS

 

[Singleton]

Not saying it's aging out but there are a lot of mens tank tops for sale in the online store.

now we want sun shirts and sun hats

 

[Heylam]

All the gummy ads every morning will keep the forum alive forever.

 

[attitude]

I wonder if the mega yacht that has a 27 Speedster as a tender is the yacht owned by the member RD mentioned?

 

[Lunatic Fringe]

now we want sun shirts and sun hats

And sensible shoes.

 

[rivermobster]

And sensible shoes.

Agreed

 

[whiteworks]

You guys are nerds LOL

Go back and read the first post in this thread. It’s about the next generation of River people growing up doing the things we did or is this thing of ours (going to the river) dieing off or unattainable to the next generation. Hell for that matter are they even interested in beer, tittys, and fast boats?

I’m not gonna pretend that I’m not a fan of beer, tittys, and fast boats, you guys can cancel me if you want


I use less and less social media type stuff on the web these days, for me it’s all just sort of run it’s course. I like RDP as there is real value here when it comes to actual connection and sharing of information.

I’m not gonna tell dave how to run his site, he seems to have something figured out as the lights are still on