Did you all catch Steve Berra’s video on Berrics United the other day? If not you can peep it here and this will all make more sense. While 99.99% of me wanted to believe that this was all about helping struggling skate stores… There was that 0.01% that was looking for the money angle… And here is it. The Berrics United is an advertising program – for between $1,440 to $5,280 per year you can be on the Unified program which comes with banner advertising, shop profiles, etc.
Now, here’s the thing… Being realistic and knowing the crazy costs associated with owning and running a site, especially one as big as The Berrics, it’s understandable that they’d want to earn a little something. And, this is the real point here, the advertising rates are so cheap (like, ridiculously cheap) for those stores, that it really is practically giving it away. I love the Berrics as it is – the last thing I want to see on there is Sheckler’s Milk ad or MoD banners… Part of my love for the site comes from the fact that they have stayed away from some of the more site-soul-destroying campaigns that, while being good money, is a little jarring.
If I were running a shop, knowing that The Berrics is receiving up to 20 million page views per month from a very interested audience, I’d call their offering fucking amazing value… I can’t see any of the other major American skate media outlets offering that kind of value. What the authors of the posts against Steve Berra don’t acknowledge is that running Unified costs The Berrics money in lost dollars from larger corporate campaigns that would die for that advertising space.
Having said all that, I would concede that the emotional speech Berra gave in the video might have ‘over sold’ their intentions and left them open to criticism when the inevitable business side of the project came to light. Still, at the end of the day, these are the people who brought you the epic battle below – They could egg my house, kick my dog and key my car and I’d still owe them for this amazingness. Enjoy!
(Via Boardistan)
