No heavy lifting required.
3 Oct 05

Now that we've gone through three quarters of the year, I figure it's time to check on the status of the site. Most of the metrics are pretty good. Ad revenue, though still quite small, is growing. The page views and unique visitors keep going up. Obviously, I keep pumping out the columns and news stories so the amount of content keep growing.

The big negative is in user interaction. I must be neglecting something since it has dropped way off. Non contest story submissions have fallen off (Thanks for keeping it from dropping to zero, Torolf). Forum posts are down as well. My emails from readers have dropped too. Even the flame emails have dropped off.

I'm not saying this place was ever a hot bed of activity. But the vision is to be growing in that area and not worrying about the others. From day one, I stated I want this place to be a community. I wanted people to think of this place first when something new, emergent or cool happened in one of their games. If you had a question about an obscure strategy game, someone here would have an answer. I also expected a small, but steady flow of stories coming in.

It looked like things were going that way, but I must have changed something or people just gave up on this place as a community. Right now we're a small, sometimes interesting, strategy and tactical gaming news, information and opinion site. I'll take that, but I'd rather be the Home of Game Strategies and Stories. I accept responsibility for letting this place get off track.

I could use your help in getting it back on track. I need to know what might get people more involved again. I like the participation in contest, but I don't have the budget yet to keep them going nonstop (or even close). Besides you can never buy a community. So what should I do to get Talk Strategy back on track? Please send me your thoughts.

I figure right now we're not too far off. I don't want it to get to that point. That's why I'm asking for help now. So what would it take to get you more involved here? I am curious.

Jason