Forums have been dying a death for some years now without exception. It started when Facebook came along and then Twitter, and I don't see it getting any better in years to come. Some forums I used 15 years ago had thousands of active members, now I would say 80% of them have gone, the rest are dead. I know some of you use thedvdforums, on 9/11 the thread about the attack had over 200 posts in about an hour, and that was with the server being down for around half that time. I remember looking at the stats at the time and there were over 1000 members online. Now they are lucky to have 50 members online, and seems to be about 50 posts a day (posts not threads). Another forum I used to advertise phones on was so busy you would post a thread at 9am and it would be on page 10 by dinnertime, I've just had a quick look now, and page 1 has posts on from 27th September. Phones are more popular now than 15 years ago, so the subject matter is more popular so you can only surmise people are going elsewhere, Twitter and Facebook.
Considering we have a relatively small member base compared to many forums that have gone over the years I don't actually think we do too badly. I do keep an eye on stats, and we usually have 50+ actual people showing online during the day, it will show 80+ but there tends to be 30 or so spiders and bots included in that figure. Other dedicated racing forums have also massively declined over the years and I don't know of any that are as popular now as they were, and again can think of quite a few that aren't here any more.
Presumably many people who joined in the past have changed too. Many will have joined when they were in their 20's or early 30's, with disposable income to have a bet with, but now, 10-15 years later, have a wife (or husband) and kids, don't get to go racing as often, don't get to have a bet every day as they just don't have the money to spare any more, and although there will be 20 somethings following racing, they will have been brought up with Facebook and Twitter so don't come onto forums.
Personally I don't get Twitter, and I use Facebook but not for stuff like this. I don't want 100's of random people I don't know being able to see my family pictures, whereas on a forum, you can have thousands of strangers all sharing their views, and no one will see your personal stuff.
I've seen posted quite often people don't post because there are others who are more clued up, and they don't know as much. To me thats no reason not to post. In fact thats all the more reason to post, as people can help you and surely thats how you learn. You like a horse in a race, post it, if it comes last no one will laugh at you, but before the race others are likely to say why they agree or disagree with your reasoning and surely you learn from that?
I've tried over the years to get more members, but it is hard. I sometimes change thread titles to something slightly better for SEO purposes. I made the bookmakers free bets section simply for SEO as that is a massive search term on google, I'm going to do a casino one at some point too, not because it generates an income (they don't!) but because someone interested in Casino gambling is likely to be interested in racing too, or might become interested. I've added facebook and twitter integration that no one uses, added tapatalk, that does get used and we have had a few new members from, and upgraded the software to allow blogging and suchlike, again that no one uses.
We get a lot of non members reading and I try to convert them to members, but again, its hard. I've littered the second post on all threads with adverts that only people not logged in see to try to get people to sign up, and we do get new members, but apparently most don't read the email or see the massive red writing saying email me to confirm the membership as hardly any do, I can't have it automatic due to spam.
For the first time in 16 years I looked at the figures properly in July when the hosting was due for renewal, but realised there are still a lot of people using the site, and when comparing with other racing forums, we are still quite busy, so kept it going, plus, I don't want it not to be here.
I do send an email out a couple of times a year, and useage goes up then for a while, but if I send too many I get accused of spamming, if I don't send enough it means the users drop, I can't win on that front lol.
Anyway this post is long enough now
but just thought I would pop my thoughts into the discussion. Hopefully people do start to use the forum more than they do now!
