Forum traffic

[sea monkey]

Wow, the forum has turned into a ghost town!

Plenty of guests visiting but no members contributing.

Use it or loose it, boys. You'll be sorry when it's gone.

[des]

Yes - I have to agree, although I have not made much contribution lately.  But I suspect that the situation is probably worse than is immediately apparent.

Look at the front page, and all those boards listed for various subjects - they all have the same four members listed as board moderators, yet we haven't heard from any of them, or from Tugmaster, for months.  Usually they contributed regularly, even if only to welcome new members to the Forum.

Unfortunately I wouldn't be totally surprised if the Forum simply dropped off the net when the host subscription next comes up for renewal.  Disappointed yes;  but surprised, no.

Des.

[Capt.Towline]

Yep, I’ve been away from the forum for some time and having scanned over several posts last night, realise it’s all gone a bit quiet here. That’s a shame. The reason I posted on here originally and came back to it was that out of all the model boat forums, this one was the most friendly and helpful with less bitching and more encouragement from all members. A fantastic resource for oldies and newbies alike I’d be really sorry to see it slip away.

So, whatever the problems are, I hope we can all contribute to keeping it going. Last time I corresponded with TugMaster he intimated that the site wasn’t completely supporting itself through advertising revenue and donations. Both of those can only be more lucrative with higher traffic numbers. He was thinking of creating nominal membership fees but I’m not sure that would encourage numbers. If the numbers continue to drop there is less incentive for TugMaster to maintain the site so I guess we have to find ways of increasing traffic. Existing members continuing to keep postings fresh will help passing browsers to stay longer but maybe we need to be more proactive in promoting the site to like minded hobbyists or anyone who is interested in tugs in general...there are Facebook groups for such!

[des]

CT, you touched on something else that I have noticed.

You see those advertisements on the sidebar of each page - I don't know if we all see the same ads or if they are targeted, but in any case of all of those that I see, at least three sites are dead.  So the Forum can't be making any money out of them.  Yet the ads still appear, taking up screen space that could otherwise be sold to new advertisers.

Des.