[Rich Z]

I whacked some forums that just were not being used. No sense having them take up screen real estate if they weren't pulling any discussions into them. When I see any other forums falling by the wayside, they will get the axe as well.

I checked my account with Overture to see what my bill was going to be this month. Gulp! If that is what it is going to take to get traffic to this site, then I will have to pass, fellas. My pockets aren't that deep.

This is either going to sink or swim under it's own steam now.

To be honest, I don't have very high hopes it will reach critical mass. Even most of the advisors have not been stopping in, so I will likely just disband that user category altogether. Can't see anything further to be advised about now.

Oh well.... Seemed like a good idea at the time....

 

[Clint Boyer]

Can't say as I blame you.........

This internet is a funny thing. The more I'm on it, the worse I feel, I really should be out doing other stuff!

No matter if it sinks or swims, I believe it was worth a try. You have a knack for this programming stuff, it would be a terrible thing to waste!

 

[Rich Z]

Well, I'm not shutting this site down, by any means, just going to stop throwing money into getting traffic to it. It cost me at least 10 cents per click to bring someone to this site. Last 30 days I got at least 7,000 clicks to come here. There just is not enough here to get many people to stay, I guess. Which I can understand. There are a fair number of other message boards out there, so what does this site have to offer that is different from the rest of them? Apparently nothing.

I will still use it for my own enjoyment, posting questions, and hopefully answering some from others, but I'm not concerned one way or the other about it and where it goes from here. Since I have my own servers, it really doesn't cost anything beyond the domain registration fee to have this site up. I just happen to like talking and listening about gun stuff, so maybe other people will join in sooner or later.

In the meantime I have other things I should be doing with my time. This site is just playtime for me.

 

[.45 COLT]

It looks like you only been going about 5 or 6 weeks. It takes a lot longer than that to build a viable board. One way (free) you might attract traffic is visit other boards and post. In your signature line, put your website in. Some will visit out of curiosity and a few will possibly stick around.

This is probably the worst time of the year to try to build a board - folks are busy hunting and getting ready for winter to set in.

DC

 

[Rich Z]

Yeah, you're right, of course. I've been looking around at other gun related sites and there seems to be quite a mixture out there. Some are doing very well, and others are barely on life support. I can't figure out what factors made some attractive to people and others that didn't seem to make the grade.

GlockTalk has a huge following, whereas e-gun is apparently dying. TheFiringLine had a HUGE user base and they just closed the doors for some reason.

It appears the gun people are just a different sort than the reptile crowd I am used to working with. Over there, I just set up a topsites program and then got out of the way as people started filling it up with their links. Over here, I sent out a BUNCH of invitations to other sites and it was just about completely ignored.

Granted over there in the reptile market, setting up a new message board would be a tough sell now as well.

I'm not sure what to think about that Overture advertising I was paying for. It did bring a lot of people over here, but few stuck around. I did the same thing for my FaunaClassifieds site, and it did bring a bunch of people to my site, but again, few new registrations among them.

Heck, with the money I spent on that advertising, I could have bought a couple of more guns for myself! Or at least a Nightforce scope....

Anyway, I've been posting a bit on the usenet groups and putting this site in my tag line. I do post on a few other sites as well, but I don't want to be a pain in the butt about it.

I guess I'll just wait and see what happens here. If it looks like there is enough of a core group here and the message count reaches a reasonable number, maybe I'll try the advertising links again for a spell and see what happens.

In the meantime, I will likely be playing in here a bit. I've been wanting to experiment with forum sub-structure with something I have in mind trying, so while there aren't too many people here to get mad at me for over complicating things, I may give it a try just to see how it looks.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback.

 

[CAV]

We need more "meaty" posts. I could see the Overture $ being better spent once there substance to keep people coming back. I post a few today.

 

[Rich Z]

Dang! I was away most of the afternoon and it looked like the Marines had landed here.

Yeah, I agree. This site needs more content to get the people to decide they want to stay and spend some time here. That will take time, I know.

I do appreciate the help from you all. I need to grab my camera and do some show and tell with some of my goodies. That new Colt Python I got really blew me away. Absolutely gorgeous hunk of metal!

 

[dthomas]

Dang! I was away most of the afternoon and it looked like the Marines had landed here.

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