Support Forums Starting To Pick Up Nicely

[Omniscient]

SF after 8 months
Our members have made a total of 73,907 posts in 6,731 threads.
We currently have 2,812 members registered.


HF after 8 months
http://web.archive.org/web/2007122805422...orums.net/
Our members have made a total of 11,512 posts in 3,459 threads.
We currently have 1,281 members registered.

Hardly a comparison at all actually. SF is doing 7 times better for activity. And HF had 2000 posts from an RSS feed too inside Security and Alerts.

Things are going to be different for this site than that one. I'm not sure why you expect growth patterns to be exactly the same. But percentage wise SF has grown more than HF for the past 60 days.

There are continuing signs of growth here. You may not see it but statistically speaking these are facts. What you believe is slow is imho a growing evololution into a successful site. I'd rather have natural progression over time than anything else. It's why HF has done so well. Patience is key but knowing what to look for as indicators and how to manipulate traffic into success are key. It's not enough to just build the site and wait for members to be active. Things have to be encouraged. Changes need to be made. A process has to be in place for growth.

i thought yea its been about 3 months i will see it its another HF yet.

Wait 2-3 years. That's when I expect things will be obvious.

You underestimate how his attentive activity there has created a loyal userbase, who trust in his skill and will doubtless follow his lead to future forums. The social networking example he sets -- his "followers" -- is organic and more powerful than any automated or artificially inflated Twitter or FaceBook follower count.

I spend a little more time on SF every week. I have plans for changes and upgrades here that will not only make current members happy but give old and new members reasons to participate. One thing I do that I don't think other admins do is evolve a site. I'll add features and new things every so often. Yeah all at once I could bust out features but then members wouldn't be pleasantly surprised next time they come. Examples are how a new feature at HF have long threads about them. That's activity and involvement of members directly with the site. Same here with this thread. It's a nice 7 page discussion so far but eventually we could be 20 pages in.

I'm patient and knowledgable. SF long-term has a strong chance at being a site with a million posts.

HF hit a million posts after 20 months and now does 500k posts EVERY MONTH.
http://www.hackforums.net/showthread.php?tid=115919

I think SF will be at a million about the same range of 20-24 months.

Take a look at memberlist. We had about 20 registration yesterday. And I did nothing special this week to encourage new signups. About a month ago we were having 5 per day. Huge difference. What's important is that the numbers are starting to be more natural. Sure I can heavily promote at HF but long-term the goal has to be completely natural traffic. The way HF is now. I do nothing to promote the site. With SF I'll do a little bit and review the results, review natural traffic and then try changes and promotion again reviewing results. This wash, rinse, and repeat cycle is a great method but it takes patience and daily statistical analysis which I do. Every day I go over my stats for SF very carefully.

We'll get there and we are going in the right direction.

Here is some proof.






You can see picture one is a continuation from the first 4 months from picture 2 that's also on page 2 of this thread. You can see the spike in March/April and no real declines since. The past 3-4 weeks has been great for SE traffic and I'm getting SEO results.

An important note is that sites are not immediately indexed or ranked well by search engines. However once you begin to rank well and have a low bounce rate you'll see phenominal increases in search engine referral traffic. If you accept this process naturally long-term you will have a valid success.

I'm happy.