60,000 registered members

We now have over 60,000 registered members on this site, but only getting between 1500 and 1600 per day stopping in here.

Here's the stats as of this moment:
Threads: 93,975, Posts: 667,898, Members: 60,070
707 posts in the last 24 hours, 19,120 in the last 30 days.

Actually, not too shabby, all things considered, but with that many registered members, the post and thread count here should be a LOT higher than it is.

So how do I encourage more people to post and get those numbers up to what a site with this many members and being around for so long really should have under it's belt? More importantly, how do I do so without pissing off a bunch of people in the process, which I seem to have had a knack for in the past?

If every registered member made even just one post a day when they visited, well that 19,120 posts in 30 days would be more like 45,000 posts. Which, I believe would just snowball as more and more people found posts of interest to reply to and keep the ball rolling.

Yeah, we are making headway and growing at a pretty steady rate, but I honestly think this site could be bigger and better then it is, and really don't know why it isn't. Perhaps the harsh personalities of the past have had a detrimental effect that is longer lasting then I would hope. But I believe we are making headway there as well. I've pretty much thrown down the gauntlet to several people, some of which decided to take their chances on my resolve. Their lack of participation here will likely be considered a benefit to some, and a drawback to others, pretty much making it a toss up as to whether it was beneficial or not overall.

Classifieds are definitely increasing and I believe they will continue to grow, which will be a primary attraction for a lot of folks just from the exposure they can get from their free ads. Yeah, that took a BIG hit when I tried the paid members only filter on classified ads for a year, and honestly I really should have listened to my gut feeling about that. But after hearing people say time and time again that I was being just obstinate in not trying it, well, I guess I just caved. Much to my chagrin and the detriment of the growth of this site.

And of course the BOI is it's own draw, and honestly the call on whether it will live or die here is still not able to be made. Paid memberships have increased, but not as much as I had hoped, so I will either have to stick to my hoped for goals in membership as a sort of vote of confidence in keeping the BOI and close it down if it isn't met, or try to figure out some better method of reducing my liability and headaches so it can stay. Honestly, I want to keep it, but not really sure I can. Lacking a reasonable number of paid memberships, it will be difficult to not believe that most people don't really care either way. In which case, well why should I take the risk?

So do I just leave things be and let the steady but slow growth do what it does without trying to monkey around with it, or is there something that I am missing that would help with the participation here? And by asking this, this is in no way an invitation for people to point to any member or several members by name in order to bash them as being the cause of the brakes being applied on growth here. I've quite had my fill of the number of personal attacks here, and I will likely get quite harsh about anyone trying to derail this thread with that sort of crap again.

Yeah, got more time on my hands heading into retirement and maybe I'm just thinking too much. Get used to it. Without the animals, I'll have a whole lot more keyboard time under my hands.

Well, it seems the vast majority of people registered and active on message boards lurk. I lurked for months before I started posting. I think maybe the reason why is because I wanted to test the waters a little bit before jumping into things. Since I'm starting my own breeding business, I didn't want to immediately turn people off; I wanted to ease into it and see how it goes.

I know I haven't been here very long, but other than the BOI, I think most people here are pretty nice. There are other message boards that cater more directly to the reptiles I'm interested in, but the members tend to be a lot more...ah...headstrong. People seem to, for the most part, respect others here, and there is a low tolerance of personal attacks. I can't say the same for other reptile boards. And for that reason, I'm far more comfortable posting here, even on controversial topics.

The Catch-22 with getting people to post is that if more people post, more other people will post. For example, I know I'd post more in the general ball python forum if there were more overall activity. I think trying to dink with things to get more people to post could easily backfire, even if the method is a good one. Slow and steady is a good idea on many fronts, and this may very well be one of them.... I'd say, as long as the site is growing, you're/we're doing fine.

i personally like the idea of paid memberships being the only members able to post a 'for sale' ad. if i'm going to be able to post as many classifieds as i want, i don't see a problem in making a $25.00 yearly payment for membership considering even selling a normal bp i'll still make money off of one sale a year. too many people are cheap these days... and take advantage of it. kingsnake gets along by doing it. i'm not a paying member there, however i don't have a problem not being able to sell on there. not many places really allow you to sell for free... and it's not a bad thing. you definitely aren't going to keep a for sale pet ad on craigslist. pay... and get the priviledge of being able to make money... everybody wins. i don't think $25.00 is asking too much for the exposure you'll get. it may take a hit on the number of classifieds at first but, who cares? common sense should tell the people complaining it's not free anymore.. that you have to spend money to make money. one positive thing it could help with is getting rid of several scammers. they don't want to pay for anything... only take. it doesn't really matter to me whatever you decide to do, but it won't change the fact that i will always have a paid membership. the only thing i don't like on the current system is how i'm able to leave positive feedback for a transaction on an nonpaying member, however they're not able to leave me any in return. maybe if it was setup to allow the nonpaying member to return feedback to a paying member if and only if the paying member left them feedback first. i haven't personally sold anything, only bought... however i've traded a couple times and bought from nonpaying members and it isn't reflected on my feedback (trader rating). i just spent $600 on a snake 2 days ago and i won't be able to receive a positive rating because they don't pay for a membership. regardless of whether i know i'm not able to receive anything back... i always make it a point to give credit where credit is due.

Originally Posted by bradleymoore

i personally like the idea of paid memberships being the only members able to post a 'for sale' ad. if i'm going to be able to post as many classifieds as i want, i don't see a problem in making a $25.00 yearly payment for membership considering even selling a normal bp i'll still make money off of one sale a year. too many people are cheap these days... and take advantage of it. kingsnake gets along by doing it. i'm not a paying member there, however i don't have a problem not being able to sell on there. not many places really allow you to sell for free... and it's not a bad thing. you definitely aren't going to keep a for sale pet ad on craigslist. pay... and get the priviledge of being able to make money... everybody wins. i don't think $25.00 is asking too much for the exposure you'll get. it may take a hit on the number of classifieds at first but, who cares? common sense should tell the people complaining it's not free anymore.. that you have to spend money to make money. one positive thing it could help with is getting rid of several scammers. they don't want to pay for anything... only take. it doesn't really matter to me whatever you decide to do, but it won't change the fact that i will always have a paid membership. the only thing i don't like on the current system is how i'm able to leave positive feedback for a transaction on an nonpaying member, however they're not able to leave me any in return. maybe if it was setup to allow the nonpaying member to return feedback to a paying member if and only if the paying member left them feedback first. i haven't personally sold anything, only bought... however i've traded a couple times and bought from nonpaying members and it isn't reflected on my feedback (trader rating). i just spent $600 on a snake 2 days ago and i won't be able to receive a positive rating because they don't pay for a membership. regardless of whether i know i'm not able to receive anything back... i always make it a point to give credit where credit is due.

Sorry, but no, I'm not planning on going back to the paid member requirement for classifieds. It came pretty close to killing this site completely. I may try anything once, but I AM going to learn from what I do.

As for your suggestion concerning the feedback, well let's look at this from a different perspective. I am being asked to spend several hundred dollars for a software modification (which will be a recurring expense every time the base software here is upgraded) in order to save a few people from the burden of spending $25 in order to have the privilege (among others) of leaving feedback.

The paid member requirement explanation has been thoroughly beaten to death, so I see no reason to repeat it here. Furthermore, if it provides even a modest incentive for people to pay for a membership, why should I pay to gut that aspect of it with even more custom coding?

Sorry, but that was a compromise that needed to be made simply because the alternative would be much worse by allowing just anyone to apply trader ratings helter skelter.

Originally Posted by WebSlave

Sorry, but no, I'm not planning on going back to the paid member requirement for classifieds. It came pretty close to killing this site completely. I may try anything once, but I AM going to learn from what I do.

As for your suggestion concerning the feedback, well let's look at this from a different perspective. I am being asked to spend several hundred dollars for a software modification (which will be a recurring expense every time the base software here is upgraded) in order to save a few people from the burden of spending $25 in order to have the privilege (among others) of leaving feedback.

The paid member requirement explanation has been thoroughly beaten to death, so I see no reason to repeat it here. Furthermore, if it provides even a modest incentive for people to pay for a membership, why should I pay to gut that aspect of it with even more custom coding?

Sorry, but that was a compromise that needed to be made simply because the alternative would be much worse by allowing just anyone to apply trader ratings helter skelter.

i can understand the programming charge part. oh well, it would work in a perfect world. i just wanted to make a lengthy post considering i haven't really posted much. count that as my one, now two for today.

Originally Posted by bradleymoore

i can understand the programming charge part. oh well, it would work in a perfect world. i just wanted to make a lengthy post considering i haven't really posted much. count that as my one, now two for today.

Thanks for helping out....

Keep up the good work.