We need your HELP

maltingsaudio

We could invade Margate

maltingsaudio

Ps just posted the link http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/ it on half a dozen of my Fb pages which I subscribe to but the link shows the web address and a smiley with a monacle doesn't look guitar related

Jalapeno

ditto

Who's blogging - an article on the 0-60 of the creation of this place would be good and definitely Twitterable .....

TTony

I was going to do a case study on the creation - but that'd have more of a business/PM focus and probably wouldn't get read by a lot of guitary-types.

Sporky

It might well show up in "guitar forum" searches though. And get us links.

bertie

Phil_aka_Pip said:

strumjoughlamps said:

what you need is a jingle

That should be our next Fretboard task. 30 sec exactly, to contain the forum address either sung or as voiceover. I suggest @monquixote consider it

thats mrs berts area of expertise...................

frankus

I thought I'd totally decided that the forum intro should be:

Bee Guns for a Nose... (sung in 4 part harmony)
Followed by an intro reminiscent of Paperback Writer

Noone disagreed... are we changing that now?

Sporky

I am still strongly of the opinion that any forum "jingle" should be based on a DBAD motif.

Phil_aka_Pip

Sporky said:

I am still strongly of the opinion that any forum "jingle" should be based on a DBAD motif.

why?

I guess we could make it part of the spec for the task if that were agreeable

TTony

Phil_aka_Pip said:

why?

Rule 1

ourmaninthenorth

TTony said:

ourmaninthenorth said:

Why do we need credibility? and what revenue generation is dependant on said credibility? 

Numbers, in my experience, just make things empirically larger - very seldom more measurably resilient. 

Thus far, we've managed to build and run this place with no funding.  Through the generosity of those involved.  At some point we'll need funds though.

We want to avoid the intrusive banner-style ads that MR ran (and most of us blocked).

But we are thinking about options like promotions with retailers - perhaps some sort of forum-special deal of the week.  Or advance notice of special offers & sales to forum members.  And likewise perhaps with some of the smaller builders.  We might manage to sort out some very bulk deals on stuff.  There are a number of options that don't involve advertising, but which will work on the same principle - ie that numbers will matter.  The more members we have here, the more attractive those options will be to the retailers/builders/suppliers.  Also, many of those are low margin - we'll not be able to buy more server capacity by selling a couple of packs of strings - we'll need to sell a couple of thousand packs.

Numbers matter.

And I'm aware that we are very dependent on the continued involvement of some of our key and most active members.  For some, this forum seems to be their main activity and they're free of the commitment of work (Hi Emp_Fab & Chilli ), but others are contributing a lot here whilst also running businesses and/or holding down day jobs.  The more people we have, the more than burden can be shared, the more discussions will be generated, the more knowledge will be shared.

Accepted - that point is much less about the pure numbers, and more about the quality and contribution.  Hence we'll be targeting some specific individuals to join up.

ourmaninthenorth said:

I used to love spending time in quiet pubs, where I could hear myself think.

Me too.

I'd hope that, as we grow, there will still be plenty of quiet corners where smaller groups can meet and discuss quiet things, without having to listen to the metal widdling that's happening in a slightly noisier corner.  We want it to meet the whole range of needs and interests.  If you play something with a fretboard, there should be other people in here with whom you can have interesting conversations, share knowledge, tips & techniques, buy & sell stuff, play collaboratively (on or off line), etc.

Thanks for your response Tony. I'm beginning to understand better the ambitions of the creators to ensure the continued growth and sustainability of this forum.

But again I dissent somewhat from those very ambitions; and that is all it is, cautious dissent - not disruption or any other nefarious activity whatsoever. It is entirely possible that my seemingly minority views are not shared, or indeed they may be completely wrong. But I would consider that it would be amiss of me - I too enjoy this site and appreciate the graft behind it's conception, and want it to thrive and prosper - not to be candid in my view that rapid, commercially measured/dependant, expansion is as dangerous here to the very objectives and ambitions stated, as Monquixote's ideation that the core elements of this or any site aren't enough to sustain it's existence. I think it simply boils down to a disparity in personal vision of what sustainabilty and furtherance actually are in this instance, which in itself is to be celebrated rather than be argued over.

I extend my unconditional regards to all the Back Room team, and of course the members of this forum ( some of whom are firm and valued friends met in places just like this ) 

Cheers all.

Paul.

Phil_aka_Pip

TTony said:

Phil_aka_Pip said:

why?

Rule 1

Ah, I geddit (sorry I'm a bit slow)

holnrew

Add a tagline "The home of holnrew and pals."

kelvinburn

A lising on free sites like Gumtree, preloved etc

dindude

A dummy eBay add for a '59 Les Paul at a ridiculous price, then when they open the page there's nothing but a massive link to TheFretborad?

digitalscream

TTony said:

ourmaninthenorth said:

700 members and a million hits in a month suggests to me strongly that nothing needs to be done. You've built it and they have come, what it turns into is pretty much in the hands of us all. 

I think we're all more-than-pleased with those stats.  Certainly done better than I'd hoped.

But, for comparison;

• The UK Guitar Builders forum (so, quite niche really) has 6,759 members.
• The BKP forum has 5,654 members.
• The UK Guitar forum doesn't publish its membership stats, but had over 1000 people on-line when I checked (albeit only 43 of those were actual members).
• Basschat had nearly 2500 users on-line (168 members).

We're a long way short of any of those stats, although we've obviously only been around for a much shorter time.

It's not just about the numbers.  But numbers help establish our credibility and will make us a lot more attractive when we need to start generating revenue (NB; see comment above re advertising!).

Numbers also make the place more resilient.  Right now, we're really dependent on a fairly small number of members who are very active in starting and contributing to discussions.  A lot of those are OT right now, and I (for one) would like us to build up more content in the OnTopic sections.  But we need more people to contribute more knowledge to those sections.

I always think of a forum as being an on-line pub.

No-one likes to spend much time in a quiet pub, and quiet pubs don't tend to stay around for very long. 

Indeed...however, the numbers for those forums are really rather misleading (aside from Basschat, which is in a league of its own at the moment). 

For example...the UK Guitar Forum may have over 1000 people online (including 43 members), but the fact is that those 43 members have only posted in 9 threads today (yes, I went through their forums manually).

The UK Guitar Builders' Forum has only had one in the last several days, and that was by our very own WezV. Out of almost 7,000 members.

We've already established that the BKP forum is nowhere near as active as this place, I think.

If we want to do advertising, the value isn't in huge member counts (fnar) gathered over the last 7 or 8 years. It's in how active the place is - and, with 30k posts in a month, this is probably the most active guitarists' forum in the UK (save Basschat). Somebody seeing an advert once is worth almost nothing; that person seeing the advert a couple of hundred times in a month is worth a hell of a lot more, because they're more likely to eventually give in and click it.

On top of that, we're still picking up 10 people a day (roughly) - that's 300 a month, or nearly 8000 in a couple of years. That's still waaaaay ahead of any of the forums quoted above.

I honestly don't think there's an actual problem here, other than impatience

Emp_Fab

This isn't going to end well.... I can see it now.....

digitalscream

Just to clarify...I wasn't saying that we don't want more exposure. Only that the stats show we're actually doing better than most of the other forums already

TTony

I suppose my point was that there's clearly a large potential audience / membership out there, and we're currently only scratching the surface.  Unless we can tell people that we exist, then we'll only ever be scratching that surface.  This discussion was aimed at generating ideas for how we broadcast our existence ...

There will be reasons why UKGB has a lot of passive members - a lot of the posting is done by people who are really rather good at guitar building, and share their knowledge with the rest of the membership - who are really a "readership" rather than active, contributing members.  At least, that's how it works for me.

BKP has quite an international membership.  Not surprising given that it's a product-based discussion forum, and the products are marketed and sold worldwide.  

Both the above are niche forums and I'd expect us to appeal to a wider audience/membership.  Thus we should be aiming for a membership higher than either of the above.

digitalscream

Oh, I agree - I just don't think that making it a numbers and comparison game really helps, that's all. I actually think we've had more activity in our "Made in the UK" category than the UK builders' forum

I personally think that content beyond forum posts is key here, but I suspect that's a conversation which needs to happen in the admin forum first.