Will and I have been discussing with some members behind the scenes about collapsing our forums so that things are not so diluted. You will have fewer forums to monitor for new and updated topics.
Over the next few weeks we will collapse the image posting forums into just one or two forums. We will also collapse the business forums down to just a couple. In addition, we will merge the Announcements and Suggestion Box forums into the General Discussion forum.
As we make these changes, none of the messages will be deleted. They all will be moved to their new location. Our goal is to make it easier for you to keep up with the forums and not have them so diluted as to get little traffic.
Walter Rowe - Rowe Images
Professional Photographer
Columbia, Maryland - USA
sounds like a plan
sounds like a plan
Makes Sense
And you can always expand them again. I'm most surprised by how little activity there is here. This is a superb website with huge availability of information specific to the trade yet there seems to be very little participation. The copyright & DMCA material, the news, so much opportunity. Do things seem to be slow or are they actually growing and it's just hard to tell from outside?
Site Activity Levels
Good question Dwight.
I was coached just before the site launched (officially two months ago today) that we should expect lots of readers and few contributors. Based on that information, I would say we are seeing what I was told to expect. We average 40-50 unique visitors per day. When I post articles and announce them on other sites, we spike to more than 100 unique visitors per day, then plateau back off to the 40's again.
Because we syndicate our content through RSS, there are a lot of people who read the site using that mechanism. We do have nearly two thousand visitors per month according to our Google Analytics data. That doesn't capture everything. According to our site logs, we have had over 5000 RSS reads in the last four weeks alone. Based on all of the data together, I suspect we are seeing over 7000 visitors per month via one method or another.
That isn't too shabby, but we do need more contributors. Collapsing the forums consolidates the post activities into the remaining forums so they appear more active. That won't change the overall post amount. This site has lots of potential. We need the right mix of people who are willing to contribute on a regular basis.
Those who are more seasoned should post anecdotes from their daily goings on that would be helpful for others. Those who are less seasoned should not be shy to post questions and seek advice from others. That is a primary function of this site - to educate. I can't imagine that the articles we have cover all the areas of help that people need. It doesn't cover mine, which is why I continue to write articles and post blogs as I learn.
One problem is the culture of our niche industry. For a long time now, it has been a very secretive culture. If someone cultivates a relationship, they guard it closely and don't share information with others. Knowledge sharing is how we will improve the business for all of us. If I provided someone with contact information, it would be unprofessional of them to name drop my name to try to move in on my client unless I consented to it. It would not be unprofessional for them to use that contact information to try and cultivate their own relationship with that contact provided no other unprofessional tactics were used (like low ball pricing, slander, etc).
By the way, I just checked and we now have over 250 members.
Walter Rowe - Rowe Images
Professional Photographer
Columbia, Maryland - USA
We had 000's back over on
We had 000's back over on MySpace & still had the same 4-5 regular contributors... I like the idea of collapsing the forums, or maybe even incorporate an ALL FORUMS section where it will display the most active topics from all categories combined, I'd much rather look at one page rather than flicking through several
The site definitely has potential, good to see no advertising has come in to play as yet too :)
www.dbedford.com
Whatever works..
I figure you will know what would be best for the site. Hopefully you start to got more participation.
I must confess...
...that I pictured myself being more of a contributor when you first told me about the site. However, life has a way of changing our plans. Things have picked up quite a bit for me in my personal and business life, so I haven't had much time for MPN lately.
That doesn't mean that I am not still thrilled about being a member, and I pimp the site whenever I can, just that my contributions will be fewer and farther between.
Daniel Knighton
Pixel Perfect Images
(760)730-3224/(858)335-4540 cell
Carlsbad, CA
www.PixelPerfectImages.net
www.MySpace.com/PixelPerfectImages