I started cncpics.com almost five years ago.
Back then I wanted an easy URL that I could give to car show attendees and my friends and family ‘back home’ so that I could easily share images from this crazy car show, Cars and Coffee. In the first few months of existence I would get excited when a hundred people visited the site. That gave way to numbers in the thousands.
Nowadays I no longer look.
The site has been through four different hosting companies. The initial host was GoDaddy, then I switched to 1and1 briefly, then dreamhost and now the images are hosted at smugmug. Also it is a victim of its own success. Too much traffic and routers start to melt.
There are something over 85,000 photographs now in the gallery. We are utilizing 112GB of disk space on our host. The performance could be better at times. The next step may need to be a custom solution.
Some time ago I was joined by Chuck, Leo and Steve. Each of us have our own style and interests. I think that the four of us complement each other, even if from time to time I do feel like the weakest link. Leo has taken up the role of ‘socialite’, he posts the photographs in a small number of significant forums each week and keeps the facebook page up-to-date on a regular basis. Leo is also a major contributor of photographs from other events. We are all looking forwards to the latest installment of the Bell City ‘Lowe Riders and Things’ show this year.
The rest of us fulfill roles – Steve is the arty one, Chuck is the early bird that gets the majority of the arrival shots and me ? Well I guess I am the webmaster.
In the last thirty days the site served up over two million images. That is insane.
A part of me says that there must be a way that we can monetize that, just to cover the hosting costs perhaps. But then the other part of me points out that I block adverts on my phone, in my browser and I tend to record TV shows to void the adverts. I hate adverts, so why should I assume that the thousands of fans of the site would be OK with me subjecting them to advertizing ?
So we carry on.
I am proud to be a part of this site, it is not really ‘mine’ anymore, it belongs to all of us, not just the contributors, but to those that view our photos and comment on the various threads.
Today we are adding the ability to blog, hopefully we will post here occasionally and if anyone has something to add, well the comments threads will be open.
Thank you to everyone for making this as crazy as it is….
~Max~
As someone who lives just a bit too far to make Cars&Coffee any kind of regular thing I am extremely appreciative of the website and all of your efforts to build it and keep it running over these years. A tremendous thanks to the entire team for the content and especially for "Leo, the socialite" who does a great job promoting the site and keeping us informed when there is something new to see.
As I also kind of loathe advertising in general I can certainly see where you are coming from with your comments, but as long as the pages weren't littered with pointless ads I wouldn't be turned off by them. It's a fact of life that websites have costs that need to be covered and a banner ad at the bottom of the screen won't stop me coming to cncpics.com.
The idea you briefly mentioned in a FB post the other day about sponsorship is a decent one too. I'd look to find four sponsors and rotate them in exclusively once every 4 weeks as "Content presented by…" to spread out the costs and the coverage they would receive throughout the year.
Anyway – my simple thoughts based on my enthusiasm for the site and a desire to see it keep going. Keep up the great work!
>8^)
Erik
I attended a Cars and Coffee in Plano/Dallas a few years ago and loved it. I am going to admit that I felt a little out classed in the Mustang line up, with my moderately modded 05 GT, dirty from 8 hours of driving… I was impressed with the grass root feel to the event, and the ability to meet owners of such wonderfully diverse vehicles… I was invited to crawl in driver seats, and hoods were opened, and owners posed…. And then the "pureness" would be disrupted as some ass hole would peel out… lol
Thanks to each of you guys for sharing your Cars and Coffee experience… Something I always look forward to..
Hi i just wanted to say you guys at cnc pics are my inspiration. after seeing your pictures of when the scion frs was at cars and coffee and you took those beautiful pics i decided to attend one and after that i was hooked. since then i have attended every cars and coffee and even started trying my hand at photography. would love for you guys to check it out and let me know what you guys think. thank you for all your inspiration
I represent several magazines, car clubs, formal Concours events, rallies and 60 car-centric websites across the USA and around the world including Cars and Coffee Online (http://www.CarsAndCoffee.info). I have to say that yours are some of the most incredible images I've seen to date when it comes to capturing the true personality of Cars and Coffee Irvine and Cars and Coffee Dallas. I hope you can visit and snap Cars and Coffee Austin (Leander), TX sometime as well as Las Vegas and some of the others. There are many groups starting up around the country and overseas and you will see the on Cars and Coffee Online soon. I'd like to help you get exposure for your work so that more fans of beautiful automobiles can not only see your wonderful photographic work, but get the next best thing to a first-hand experience at these events. Congratulations on TWO MILLION, it is well deserved! Cindy-CAR PR USA.com