Support Forums Starting To Pick Up Nicely

[Omniscient]

Damink let's be honest. You haven't had a success in forums. I have had at least 5 hit over 100k posts. One was 500k and of course HF. Realize that each success I have is bigger than the last. That's just the truth. This is how I make my living. It's the majority of my income and has been for years.

You got HF kicking at the right time and it just worked. Lets face it there are loads of kids wanting to learn hacking.

That's just how you see it. HF was slower than SF it's first year. This site is far ahead of HF was in 5 months.

And HF largely become a place for young kids to just chill out at and post random crap.

Again you don't understand communities very well. That's what it's become but that's the effects of a successful community. Any large community has a massive off topic area.

And dick can run around and claim to be a hacker like 95% on HF do.

And how is SF niche any different. Any computer user which is every member here can claim to be knowledgable in some way. Plus we have topics outside of computing which actually might end up being the forte of this site. Support has a fairly open and broad meaning. It can related to many aspects of our daily lives.

Now the fact SF is structured a little different i feel it will grow but never to the levels of HF. Its just not possible i feel.

Before HF I am sure everyone thought a hacking forum could never be that big. Even I didn't really expect that. It's getting 15,000 posts per day now and is Alexa 9k and still growing. Right now I can see it hitting 7k no problem in 6-8 weeks. I just can't believe your attitude that a site with such broad potention you think has a cap. SF can be a top 10k Alexa site much easier than HF.

Most of the strength of SF if off the back of HF and others.

How do you think HF started? It was off the back of another of my sites. Not sure how this is a negative. You use traffic any way you can.

As for ups and downs. Well man your must not be attending enough.
I come here most every day. And just before christmas this place took a serious dive.

Stats show otherwise. Yes activity was down but nowhere near the levels you're inferring.



Let's see if I can show you a couple things with that image.
1. As you can see no significant drops in Dec. The biggest drop was actual posts. We had less posts and that's about it. It was Xmas though and people tend to be busy.
2. You can see bounce rate is really low.
3. You can see new visits is a reasonable 33%. IMHO when we are 40% or more we'll gain significant growth. HF by contrast has 50% new visits. Check your own stats to see how you compare if you'd like.
4. While by the chart it may appear we are in decline the actual stats reflect a strong steady pattern. Since the lull in activity in Dec I myself have been more active helping spark additional activity. Now we are hitting search results and that chart/stat looks great imho. We are finally in top 10 for my target keywords. Search traffic represents the new visits and will gain.
5. Our biggest weakness is search engine traffic which only represents 5% of our visits. Now we are in serps this will really kick us off.
6.


Forums are about long term steady growth. I'm in this for the long haul. My experience tells me this site has a strong chance. I am not always right but when I am right it's big. I am happy what's going on in here in under 5 months. Very happy.

I'm a stats whore. I analyze my main sites traffic daily. I'll make adjustments that you can't even imagine. Everything I do is to increase stats and activiy. I do stuff no one else does when it comes to forums. I am years ahead of most admins for experience with forums.

Traffic and activity wise we are in the same position we were in November which is really good considering I am doing less direct promotion and haven't started a new contest or done any HF promotions for SF. I do plan on more though and relatively soon.

Give it time. You'll see how it goes then you'll be like WTF how does he do it. If you read more of my posts as advice instead of skepticism it might help you.

I think it's ironic too since a couple times you have sworn this place off only to return and you're one of the most active members here. So why you're skeptical about it's success is a real wonder to me. You have more posts here than I do. Maybe you actually don't want me to succeed because then you'll know I'm right when I give you advice which you often ignore. Maybe in your head you just think I'm lucky. Luck is only a small factor in my success.

When HF is sold, which is very soon, SF will be my main site. Just wait and see how this plays out.