Well, here's another recent view (for the heck of it...):
Read
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.01/bronson_pr.html for some reasons why big siites fail. According to it my site should be long gone.
From:
http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/01/11/30/078228.shtml
A Catch-22: how to initially draw people to a community when the a community itself is the selling point and your being drowned in information sea that the web has become? Many people take the popularity of 'people concentrators' for granted. Whole communities are developing, as they have done for thousands of years, on web logs and news sites via reader feedback. Unfortunately, not all sites are well traveled. (Side note: a lot of reseach has apperantly gone into this.) For instance, the special interest publication Dragon Spirit Magazine is closing their doors due to a lack rather than surfiet of viewers. Belfy Comics lists an entire section of online-only comics which are (for lack of a better term) abandoned by both viewer and creator. Probably the most powerful force obliterating free communication is neither fundamentalist nor jack-booted: it's obscurity.
****************************
The Cove has been up so long because it is free and offers what I will call '
Truth'. People can say what they really want. And, of course, I have been willing to continue to fund it (admittedly I'm looking at ways to make it pay for its self, but that wasn't even an issue until about 1 year ago come February). The Cove has gained some popularity as it is really an 'alturnative' to the typical business sites where you're blasted with advertisements from every side, in pop-up-windows and other BS. Nor is there another consulting company (if you'll grant me that status) in the world where a forum is maintained for free and where people can speak the truth.
You may take this as a bit weird, but I think of the Cove site and Forums as a 1960's kind of outcast hangout. The dissenters speak here.
The bottom line is most people who come to the Cove forums do it because it's free information and - for the first 5 years - offered one heck of a lot of free files. And 99% of the visitors are not about to pay because - to a large degree - the internet is
supposed to be free.
How to 'get people to 'join'? I'm open to suggestions... I will admit I have some ideas up my sleeve - but have not decided anything definite. One may be to cut off all visitors from the forums and charge a US$15 (or US$20 - some low figure - like subscribing to a magazine) a year fee to access the Forums. That will cut down traffic, however, and there are other negative impacts I forsee.
As of right now, the Forums are funded until the end of March 2002. We'll see what happens between now and then. I can save over US$5000 a year if I just shut the whole site down (not to mention my time which has become somewhat a more serious issue). :thedeal:
