What does “Hell For Leather” mean?

It was a term coined by Rudyard Kipling to mean, “traveling as fast as possible.” Sounds like a much better analogy for riding a motorcycle than any number of inane, inoffensive, bland titles, doesn’t it?

What kind of motorcycle publication are you, dirt, street, track or cruiser?

We don’t like to think of the motorcycle world as a fractured mess, we see our job as making motorcycles as a whole exciting and interesting to the rest of the world.

What’s that thing in your logo?

It’s a sheep’s skull. With our style of design, color palette and photography we’re trying to re-appropriate traditional motorcycle iconography in order to give modern motorcycling a classic sense of adventure. The rise of motorcycles and motorcycle culture post-war was visually influenced by World War II and the Old West. The sheep’s skull is a traditional symbol of death, danger and people living on the fringes of society. As motorcyclist’s we must embrace danger, we’ve likely seen death and we’re marginalized by society, so like our name, the skull is another good analogy for what we do.

How’s the subscription process work?

It’s easy, just like purchasing something from eBay or any online store. Visit the subscription page, select which payment option works best for you then fill out the form. Payments are processed through PayPal, but you don’t need too have or create a PayPal account. Once you’ve done that, you’ll receive an email with your log in name and password. You’re ready to go.

If that automatically-generated email with your password in it gets caught in your email spam filter or you have any other problems or questions, just contact us and we’ll sort you out.

How can I change my personal information?

Just click on the “profile” link that shows up just the to right of your username and the link to “log out.”

How do I change or add the website linked to in my username?

We’ll add this to the profile tab at the top of every page shortly. But, until then, just follow this link.

How can I follow conversations and know when someone’s replied to me?

We have a dedicated RSS feed for comments and you can grab a specific RSS feed for the thread under and article by throwing a “/feed” on the end of any URL. So, for example, “http://hellforleathermagazine.com/2011/02/the-mcqueenhasselhoff-conundrum/feed” will alert you when there’s any new comments on that article.

Why should I pay to read HFL when I saw that one story somewhere else?

The product we’re pushing isn’t a single story, it’s a comprehensive motorcycle publication. We publish hundreds of stories, thousands of photographs and tens of thousands of original words every month, far more than any other motorcycle publication. Spreading that $1.99 payment across a month, you’re paying six cents a day for the most informative, most entertaining, most prolific motorcycle publication on the planet.

While we pride ourselves on publishing the best feature content, the way you consume media in 2011 dictates that we also need to include breaking news and analysis of it in our editorial mix. If you see a similar story somewhere else, you probably saw it after our story was published or without our informed analysis and it was probably copied from us anyways.

Why did you put comments behind the subscription wall?

We wanted to create the kind of safe, friendly environment in which people like David Edwards, Michael Uhlarik and all the other people that write for us or that we write about could feel free to openly converse with readers. It’s worked.

What’s your commenting policy?

Well, now that comments are open to subscribers only, we have much higher-quality reader interactions, which was one of our goals all along. But, in general, contribute something of value, something relevant, something useful and something polite. We will edit or remove comments that we don’t feel meet those standards, we do that to give you a better experience. For more, please refer to HFL’s Terms of Use.

I work at a motorcycle company, give me a free subscription.

No. We comp subscriptions to HFL contributors only. Just because you work “in the industry” does not constitute a contribution, neither does refusing access to products for review.

Can’t you guys sell ads?

We can and we have to brands like BMW, Yamaha and Aprilia. But, we feel that traditional online advertising is fundamentally and universally broken in three ways:

One: online banner advertising is not effective. We got our backs slapped for sending .15 percent of our readers to an advertiser’s website. That’s simply pathetic, indicating to us that online advertising, in its current form, is no longer viable.

Two: advertising is corrupted and corrupting. The current advertiser/publisher relationship in the US motorcycle industry is one that makes the publications subservient to the people writing them checks. If advertisers withdraw or refuse business, a publication cannot survive, regardless of readership or content. Such a relationship places the publication and all of its content completely at the mercy of an advertiser’s whim. Bad for the publication but even worse for you, the reader.

Three: advertising does not represent an adequate return on investment for publishers. The number of hoops HFL has had to jump through in order to foster repeat or growing business would seriously jeopardize our ability to produce outstanding original content. That, plus the amount of grief we’ve had to go through just simply communicating with the lazy, arrogant, moronic farm-league agencies that control motorcycle advertising is unbelievable. There’s full time jobs accounted for both Grant and I right there, utterly removing us from editorial. We want to spend our time making cool motorcycle stories, not selling ads.

So, does the subscription model mean you won’t have advertising?

Yes and no. No, we won’t have traditional advertising, but we will still work with outside companies on creative projects or to offer our readers unique value, so we’re reluctant to pitch this whole thing on “No ads.”

One example of how we plan to work with third party companies without compromising our relationship with our readers is our Lagniappe program, in which we negotiate exclusive deals only available to HFL subscribers. Another example would be a project like Stop/Action in which we worked with Aprilia, Alpinestars and LeoVince to bring a small part of HFL to life in the real world.

How will Hell For Leather continue to grow its audience and remain relevant to the outside world now that you’ve gone subscription?

We use a time-based preview system for every article published. During the 12 hour preview time, anyone can read the article, although our photo galleries and comments section will remain available to subscribers only.

Readership patterns indicate that this will enable our content to remain relevant to the world at large. One of the fundamental ideas that makes the blog platform so powerful is that our content does the marketing for us. Just as they always have, new readers will find us through our stories, sticking around once they discover the unique value we offer.

Why do you guys have such an adversarial relationship with motorcycle manufacturers?

The answer to that is, “We don’t know.” When we set out to make the first motorcycle publication that would reach an under-49 audience three years ago, it was our assumption that the manufacturers would welcome such an attempt and because we’re such nice, professional, hard-working guys, we figured they would cautiously support us. The only conclusions we can draw are that the manufacturers are either uninterested in reaching you, our unique demographic, or they refuse to work with media whose editorial they can’t fully dictate or all of the above.

Setting out to reach that under-49 crowd isn’t just about existing in the space that they read, you have to embrace them as an audience, creating the type of editorial they want to read in the voice they want to read it in. All those under-49 kids grew up in a more media-savvy world, meaning you can’t bullshit them with marketing-speak dressed up as editorial. Sorry, but if we just regurgitated press releases, we’d be as irrelevant as all those mags that keep going out of business.

Aren’t you guys in the pocket of [Insert Motorcycle Manufacturer Here]?

We make Hell For Leather for you, the reader, not in order to curry favor with any bike maker. If we express a positive or negative opinion of a manufacturer or product, it’s because we genuinely believe what we’re saying.

Why do you hate Harley so much?

Believe it or not, we don’t. As patriotic Americans, we’re excited about this country’s potential, not its past. That future needs a large motorcycle company that would help make a strong argument for motorcycling’s future instead of presenting the strongest argument against it. Part of achieving a company that puts long-term growth over short-term profit, that can convince new audiences to take up riding, that can increase the number of Americans it employs and serves, is an honest and open discussion, not one clouded by corporate greed. We’ll be the first people to praise Harley when it does something positive. In fact, we have.

Why don’t you guys like cruisers?

Wes believes that cruisers are a conspiracy perpetrated on the American people by manufacturers eager to sell high-margin motorcycles while indoctrinating their customers into making purchasing decisions based on branding, not utility. Grant simply doesn’t care about poor-handling, plastic-covered motorcycles with forward controls and knows that, “It’s really good for a cruiser,” is code for, “Handles like over-priced crap.”

Rabble, rabble, rabble.

We don’t believe in conventional wisdom, but we do believe in dry humor.