That's a fair point. But I did up a whole bunch of trip reports on Bivouac one boring December, and what I got out of it was $100 worth of free mapping software so that paid for a few years of my subscriptions!

On another tangent, related to paying for beta...

I recently chatted with both Bill Corbett and Allan Kane letting them know that I do NOT want their guide book sales to plummet just because of sites like mine. They assured me this wasn't the case.

I try to encourage people to pay for (good) guidebooks, because even detailed trip reports don't do justice to a mountain's history or all of its potential routes, etc. Someone like Bill put a lot of work into his book and I know that Allan also researches the **** outa his routes. Without these resources most of us would have no idea of the rich history of our back yards.

Bivouac really seems to attract haters, which I've never understood. Life is way too short to get so hot 'n bothered by such pithy IMHO.

I have to say that user paid sites are becoming the dinosaurs of the internet. The way to generate income is through Google Ads. Take camera review sites as another example. Many have tried and failed at a subscriber model and now there's only ReidReviews that is operating this way. Every other site is using ads to generate income.