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.
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.
