The NFED was started way back in 1999 in my spare time, but by 2009 the site had become so busy that I was struggling to manage everything & was seriously considering closing it down when I was given the opportunity to take voluntary redundancy.

Obviously giving up a real job to run my own small business was a huge risk, but after 22 years of working 12 hour shifts, it was a risk worth taking. I knew a small niche business was never going to make a fortune or even match my wages, but the quality of life, health benefits & the time it allowed me to spend with family & horses was definitely worth a go & I have never regretted this decision.

Now after 24 years of running the NFED I have further decisions to make as I have just qualified for my company pension.

I fully intend to keep the NFED running for as long as possible, but more as a hobby, so some changes will have to be made to improve flexibility & fit in with our future plans.

Don’t worry, you shouldn’t really notice anything different, most changes will occur in the back-end & administration, but I am looking into how the time spent running the site can be reduced.

Ads are normally approved very quickly & this will continue for most of the time, but we intend to spend more time out of the office so the delays will become more frequent.

We have already removed phone support as the majority of calls were a complete waste of time & not connected to the NFED in anyway. The FAQS do cover virtually all the queries we receive, please do read them before contacting us & if you have our personal numbers, please don’t call them for NFED business.

The NFED server costs run into four figures. To cover this, we have to charge for adverts, but I am looking at the payment options. We currently accept card payments via the payment gateway Opayo (Sagepay), PayPal & bank transfer.

Processing card payments is expensive, but only approximately 30% of payments are made by card so it may be worth removing this option. Card payments could still be made through PayPal & banking app payments are becoming more popular, so worth promoting. This would remove a lot of expenditure & administration, so well worth considering.

I will be looking into reducing the length of time that adverts are live. The current six months, does seem excessive with very few people looking at the ads over three months old.

The Services Directory may change to PayPal subscription only. The majority of listings are now on subscription, so this would remove the weekly task of sending out reminders to the few that are not.

To keep the Event Calendar viable, we do need more help from event organisers & venues. The events section is by far the most labour intensive part of the site, some of the submissions take a long time to sort out, even correcting simple mistakes & spelling takes time. I know there is a real need to have a single calendar where all events can be seen regardless of which entry system is used, but very few venues put anything back into the site. If it is going to continue, I will be looking into how this can be improved or it may simply not be worth it. This would be a great shame but I’ll see how it goes & if you are organising any events, please encourage the venue to take out a listing in the directory. Standard listings cost only £3.00 per month & a “Check Out the Venue” link would be added to all events at that venue.

Finally the newsletter. Again, compiling the newsletter each week is very time consuming, so this could be reduced. Options are to reduce the classifieds categories included, go fortnightly or even monthly.

These are all just ideas at the moment to keep the site online for a few more years as more of a hobby than a business.

If you have any thoughts, please let me know by email editor@nfed.co.uk, I just don't get time to check or reply to social media posts.

Steve