Why can't we give away free copies of the Fouling Shot?

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  • Last Post 26 October 2014
John Alexander posted this 20 October 2014

For a year and a half I have been offering to send a digital copy of the CBA's journal The Fouling Shot to anybody that asks.  Other than just being naturally generous and publicly spirited folks, our motive is that once you have seen how interesting The Fouling Shot is to a cast bullet shooter you will consider joining the CBA and receiving the magazine.

In the year and a half the offer for free copies of the Fouling Shot has been on the forum it has been opened about 2,000 times.  That must be at least 1,000 shooters because not many would open it twice if it didn't interest them the first time.

About fifty have asked for the free copies and it has apparently gotten us some new members.

I would take the offer out of curiosity even if the magazine was devoted only to black rifles and high capacity pistols neither of which I am too interested.  My question is why haven't more than maybe 5% who saw the offer taken us up on it? Why would a cast bullet shooter turn down a chance to look over copies of a magazine devoted to cast bullet shooting.  I am mystified and would appreciate your opinions about why the offer isn't more attractive.  Any suggestions will be welcome.

John

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bandmiller2 posted this 21 October 2014

John, first I've herd of this how do I go about trying the free copy.?? Frank C.

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JeffinNZ posted this 21 October 2014

Possibly because the CBA is perceived as a competition shooting organisation only? For the garden variety of cast bullet shooter it's possible the CBA is not viewed as a medium for the general masses. Rightly or wrongly it is possible. From my point of view, given I don't shoot competitively due to global location, I guess my membership is a rarity.

Cheers from New Zealand

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Duane Mellenbruch posted this 21 October 2014

I will be happy to send any forum members a free copy of a recent issue of the Fouling Shot so they can see what they are missing and make their own judgment.

If you would like to have a free copy, send me an email to - [email protected] and I will email you a recent issue.

PLEASE use the address above instead of using the PM feature of this forum. I would like to keep things in one place.

Just so paying members of the CBA who are now getting hardcopy Fouling Shots don't feel left out. The same offer is open to you if you would like to take a look at a digital copy.

John, when you say that you will email a copy to anyone that asks, you are not entirely correct. You did say “forum members” so that does not include any visitors who might be interested, but not so interested that they want to join yet another forum.

So perhaps a less intrusive way would be to just post a link to a back issue and leave it up for public access for several weeks with an invitation to join and get a digital subscription.    Perhaps that might get more exposure to the general public.

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Longone posted this 21 October 2014

I think Duane has a good idea, give people a taste of what they would be getting. Also, I just picked up 3 Lee black powder molds and was surprised to see an offer in one of the mold boxes to join the CBA. That is a great Idea but I was wondering why only one box contained a CBA offer. How long have these cards been in Lee mold boxes? Do other mold makers include CBA membership info?

Longone

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John Alexander posted this 21 October 2014

bandmiller2 wrote: John, first I've herd of this how do I go about trying the free copy.?? Frank C. Frank,

The offer has been the top of the page topic topic and message when the forum opens up and before you hit “recent” for 74 out of the last 75 weeks.

If interested, send me your email address.

We do not pass on email addresses to anybody else.

We don't send spam asking for money like the NRA and lots of others.

John

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John Alexander posted this 21 October 2014

Duane and Longone,

Good idea to put an issue on the website.  I will pick out a recent copy and ask Mike to post.

As far as getting a free taste of what they would get -- that's exactly what i thought i was doing by offering to send copies free and no strings attached.  I expected lots of takers, based on how I would have reacted to such an offer, and only got a few. 

I think I may have underestimated how worried folks are about keeping their email address private and about spam but maybe there are other reasons.

About keeping our email addresses private. We can stop worrying about that.  That ship has sailed. Google, Amazon, and Facebook have already sold it to everybody that wants it.

I hope the suggestions will keep coming.

John

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Chargar posted this 21 October 2014

I will give you my opinion and take it for what is it worth, which is maybe nothing.

We are living in times when folks don't want to read anything be it print or digital. They want to ask a quick question online and get a quick reply. The notion of learning something that they may not need right now is not palatable. Learning for the sake of learning is passe and reading for enjoyment is long gone.

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Ken Campbell Iowa posted this 21 October 2014

welcome to marketing 101, john ... bet you thought being a nice guy carried a big weight in marketing, right ?

heh heh.

why do people pay $16 a gallon for bottled water ? because somebody told them it comes from a magic cold-water spring from the farmost, highest hidden valley in tibet ...

my question .. do we really want quantity over quality ? do we want to win the viewer war with cast-boolets ?

how about ooching up just a civilized notch, and send a copy to each ” member ” who posts here ..

i belong to about twenty facebook groups, and the tightly monitored ones have value .. naughty words and hateful comments are cause for immediate drop.

how about starting a cba-facebook group... we could post weekly informal targets on the honor system, no $$$ rewards, just interesting results ... kinda the same attraction as the Iffy matches here ... an advantage of facebook is that there is about 100,000 times more exposure ... not all good ... but if we really want to expand the tails of our bell curve, there is that trade-off.

again... do we really want to grow a population so large that we run out of food ? and identification ...are we techie based, with good answers, ...or a family you never had ? a tree so large it runs out of water ? a liberal government ? oops, sorry, strike that last ..

just some thoughts ... oh, did someone ask ? ( g ) .

ken

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Tom Acheson posted this 21 October 2014

Interesting....on the relationship between “regular” CBA members and those who participate in the bench rest competitive shooting programs.

We've been hosting a CBA table at the largest gun show in the Twin Cities (Minnesota) each March. In the early years we focused on the matches, primarily because those of us manning the tables were all competitive shooters AND we wanted to try to recruit new match shooters. But we soon discovered the typical gun show attendee didn't care at all about competitive shooting. So we switched our theme to appeal  to “regular” folks and the table visitations went up. We've always promoted the CBA membership opportunities.

Most visitors want to talk alloys, casting techniques, mould quality and sources, high volume handgun bullet production, etc. MAYBE 5% ask about the matches that are offered.

So if you are a CBA member and think the competitive mind set rules the organization...don't go down that path. Organized match shooting interest is a lot less than some of us lead ourselves to believe, despite what the comments on the forum seem to indicate!

FWIW

Tom

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RicinYakima posted this 21 October 2014

Charger,

I am sorry to say to that you are 100% correct; ask question, give me answer, solve problem without thought.

Tom,

I spend about 40 days a year at our shooting range. Only once this year I was asked about making cast bullets: what will it cost me to make 250 .223 Remington rounds a week to shoot through my M-4? How long will it take? I can do that many jacketed bullets in 35 minutes on my Dillon. I told him the lead pot doesn't even heat up in 35 minutes.

FWIW, Ric

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admiral posted this 22 October 2014

as the the OP's question, the general shooting public isn't interested. Look what happened to the other cast forum since the ammo/component shortages of the last 4 years. Membership exploded because people wanted to find a way to make their guns go bang. Look at the questions asked, very basic stuff that could be gleaned with a little research. And even better are the answers given. I mean how much can be asked about 9mm & 40 SW, $20 Lee molds, and 300 Blackout? Those subjects are retread daily. Having said that there's nothing wrong with the high volume/make it go bang crowd getting into casting it's just their goals are entirely different. Chargar & Ken Campbell comments are true.

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John Alexander posted this 22 October 2014

JeffinNZ wrote: Possibly because the CBA is perceived as a competition shooting organisation only? For the garden variety of cast bullet shooter it's possible the CBA is not viewed as a medium for the general masses. Rightly or wrongly it is possible. From my point of view, given I don't shoot competitively due to global location, I guess my membership is a rarity. Jeff, You may be right but I don't understand it.  It seems like we have heard the charge that CBA means competition FOREVER usually along with the words elitist, or other words with negative connotation. Where does this idea come from?    I just looked over the 30 most recent threads on this forum.  None of them are directly about competition.  If you count anything that discusses accuracy there is still only less than half a dozen but even non competing shooters are interested in accuracy -- probably most of them at one level or another.

Ninety percent of the articles in the Fouling Shot are on topics other than competitive shooting.

Out of 1,600 members only about 300 shoot in our competitions.

Where does this goofy idea that the CBA is only for competitors come from?

John

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admiral posted this 22 October 2014

John Alexander wrote: JeffinNZ wrote: Possibly because the CBA is perceived as a competition shooting organisation only? For the garden variety of cast bullet shooter it's possible the CBA is not viewed as a medium for the general masses. Rightly or wrongly it is possible. From my point of view, given I don't shoot competitively due to global location, I guess my membership is a rarity. Jeff, You may be right but I don't understand it.  It seems like we have heard the charge that CBA means competition FOREVER usually along with the words elitist, or other words with negative connotation. Where does this idea come from?    I just looked over the 30 most recent threads on this forum.  None of them are directly about competition.  If you count anything that discusses accuracy there is still only less than half a dozen but even non competing shooters are interested in accuracy -- probably most of them at one level or another.

Ninety percent of the articles in the Fouling Shot are on topics other than competitive shooting.

Out of 1,600 members only about 300 shoot in our competitions.

Where does this goofy idea that the CBA is only for competitors come from?

JohnIf I had to venture a guess about the “goofy idea that CBA is only for competitors” I would say because of the page after page of published shooting match results in the Fouling Shot magazine. The Sept.-Oct. 2014 issue has 19 out of 39 pages of competition results and a couple more of upcoming match schedules. So over half the pages are something about competition.

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Tom Acheson posted this 22 October 2014

I'll add a short detail to John's above posting.

Checking with the CBA Membership Director, the % of members who participate in the BR match program ranges between 12.5 and 14.75%. Even lower than John's estimate. So the assumption that the CBA is interested only in competitive shooting is just that, an assumption.

One thing that is often overlooked regarding the aspects of organized matches...the social value. True, shooting takes place, but there is as much if not more time of load and gun discussions, recent family activities, general BS, etc. In other words...they are FUN!

Tom

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John Alexander posted this 22 October 2014 

   Admiral wrote:

"If I had to venture a guess about the “goofy idea that CBA is only for competitors” I would say because of the page after page of published shooting match results in the Fouling Shot magazine. The Sept.-Oct. 2014 issue has 19 out of 39 pages of competition results and a couple more of upcoming match schedules. So over half the pages are something about competition."  

Good point, and I should have mentioned that. One of the Associations four “purposes” is to maintain a competitive shooting program and publishing the schedules and results is a necessary part of making that work. However, we would be glad to add more pages of articles to the Fouling but the fact is that we just don't get enough articles from our members. Another several pages of articles would be welcome and I wish more members would spend the time and effort to do it.  This is something many members could do that would change that balance of pages.     However, it IS a goofy idea that the CBA is only for competitors.  It is obviously for both competitors and non-competitors and the CBA couldn't exist without both types of cast bullet shooters making their contributions.     I should say that member dues do not subsidize any of our matches.  In fact we make a small profit on our competitive programs.     We need all kinds of members in the CBA.  Members not interested in competition provide almost all the articles for the Fouling Shot and work on other special projects.  Competitors do almost all the day-to-day work in keeping the CBA going. All the officers and almost all of the board of directors are competitors at any one time.  We would like to have non-competitors as officers or as other board members.   But with rare exceptions, when vacancies on the board are announced in the Fouling Shot it is usually only competitors who apply. Some of our board members would welcome someone else doing their job.     It is true that it may be appropriate that competitors do most of the day-to-day work since a lot of the work is managing our matches.  However, there is a heck of a lot of other work necessary to keep the Association on the rails.  For instance, more than half of my work has nothing to do with the competition part of CBA and that is true for several other directors.     John

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Chargar posted this 22 October 2014

We have no CBA matches anywhere near where I live. They did have some in Corpus Christi, Texas but those have fallen by the wayside.

I guess I need to be involved in the Postal Matches. But, at 72 my eyesight has passed it prime and the eagle eye shooting of my youth is gone. Do you have a geezer class?

The sad thing about Postal Matches, is the folks can't see me and say; “Poor old thing, but he still keep trying!". :(

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John Alexander posted this 22 October 2014

Sorry.  We can't have a geezer class.  There wouldn't be enough shooters for the non-geezer class.

See my PM.

John

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mike44 posted this 22 October 2014

Awhile back I requested a copy and for whatever reason never received it. I think a copy posted on this site is a good idea also. I read alot about this and all aspects of the gun and shooting hobby but several years ago I stopped reading all periodical's. I learn more by reading other peoples questions than by reading articles about random subjects. But,,,I do have a open mind.

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mrbill2 posted this 22 October 2014

Could it be that CBA is more for the rifle shooters. I think more cast bullet shooters are in to shooting pistol. I know that more people show up at my local club shooting pistol with cast. Out side of my buddy and I have never run into any cast bullet rifle shooters. I do enjoy shooting smaller groups than those shooting jacketed rifle bullets from time to time. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy!

mrbill2

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Brodie posted this 22 October 2014

John:  You say that between 12 and 15% of the membership competes in the matches; But, 50% of the Fouling Shot is devoted to posting results.  There is one of your problems.  I have enjoyed reading the F. S. but for what it provides  to the average shooter it isn't worth the postage.  Also, the majority of Posting are concerned with non- competition matters, but sit down and read the postings.  Just imagine a prospective member coming across one of Joe B's long rambling boring rants on statistics or “The number of groups you need to shoot to be a significant factor in choosing the right load for a cast bullet in the --whatever."  The post may not be about competition but it is sure related.  In fact it is probably so related that nobody not competing would have any interest in it.  Thinking about us this way you might just wonder why we have anything but the reputation that we do.

Personally I love the rants you guys have about the “New Shooters” .  Why don't they want to do what we want to do?  Face it John;  You and many of the most vociferous of the membership have set yourself up to be just what the public sees us to be :  Elitist, Obscure, anti fun Old Farts who don't give a care about anything but themselves and their own personal little fifes. Brodie

B.E.Brickey

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