April 2nd is the 16th year for MyStarCollectorCar and here’s the most important lesson.
It’s still fun.
There’s nothing better than the warm and fuzzy world of the car hobby because it’s such a great escape pod from the real world.
Jerry Sutherland
The technology was simpler back in 2009, but it was still like a Star Trek holograph to me because 16 years ago, I was barely literate in cyberworld. I could figure out things like Facebook and Google search in ’09, but the back end of a website was like the polar region of Mars to me.
Fortunately, I did learn, so I’m at the point where I can solve many problems on my own.
Many—but not all problems, because the MyStarCollectorCar website is massive now after sixteen years of publishing every day. There are so many files on the site it takes a team of techs to update it now—there was only one tech back in 2009.
MyStar was designed to be an online magazine—or e-zine from Day 1. Some people call it a blog, but it’s much more than that. The term blog implies something a high school kid would pump out of his parent’s basement but MyStarCollectorCar.com is a professional daily magazine.
Jim and I have both written articles for some major newspapers over the years, so you’re looking at high-level, professional journalism every time you read a MyStar article.
Anyone can write–just like anyone can throw a football–but there’s a big difference between how Tom Brady played compared to a beer league quarterback. Read any social media source and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
The other thing is presentation. The website platform has been updated many times over the last 16 years, but the biggest upgrade came in 2015 when the old platform was dumped in favor of a new, media-friendly format.
That new format forced me to become better with photo editing for a simple reason—the photos are bigger. You can’t get perfect photos in the harsh environment of a car show, but you can enhance them to look better, so I’ve picked up some editing programs over the years to bring out the best in an average photo.
This website is a daily challenge, but like I said earlier—it’s still incredibly fun.
But MyStarCollectorCar is also a business because that was the plan from Day 1.
Advertisers have provided most of the revenue, along with some syndication rights to articles. We had some major advertisers in the States, but every one of them disappeared over the 2020-21 period because of the economic uncertainty over those years.
The game plan to set up a paywall started in 2015 when many publishers began to introduce them. MyStar didn’t introduce a paywall until April 2024 because we wanted to make sure the time was right to set it up.
We took on the extra costs associated with a massive website even though these costs are 1000 times more than they were in 2009. We dumped a substandard webhost last year because we knew they couldn’t provide the reliability required for a paywall site.
The new webhosts cost a lot more–but they’ve never missed a day, so we’re happy our paid subscribers have never missed a day either.
The choice to be a paywall site was balanced against another option. MyStar gets nearly 1.5 million unique visitors per year so we’re prime-time for advertising space.
I get at least ten emails a day from people wanting to put paid articles on the site, but the quality of the site would change dramatically. We want MyStar to keep its uncluttered look and not expose our readers to trashy, intrusive ads. Our current advertisers will remain, but you won’t see obnoxious pop-up ads on MyStar pages.
In other words, we want our readers to be part of a high-quality club experience—not a circus. We’ve kept the price very reasonable, and we’ll always have a few paywall options going forward.
Thank you to the subscribers who got onboard right away and to all those who have signed up over the last year—your support is appreciated.
We look forward to the next year and the new subscribers who become part of the MyStar club in 2025.
Jerry Sutherland
By: Jerry Sutherland
Jerry Sutherland is a veteran automotive writer with a primary focus on the collector car hobby. His work has been published in many outlets and publications, including the National Post, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Saskatoon StarPhoenix, Regina Leader-Post, Vancouver Sun and The Truth About Cars. He is also a regular contributor to Auto Roundup Publications.
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