Thanks for the kind words
@Kneeblock. And I agree, the only thing we lack is traffic. How do we improve that? Below are some things that come to mind:
1) If you're a member that has Twitter, use it. Make it a point to get on there every other day, and tweet about how awesome this place is...about how you've experienced other MMA forums and none compare to The MMA Community. About how people should sign up and see what we're all about. I try to tweet as much as I possibly can, but I also work a full time job, go to school, etc. So to have our members promote us on Twitter, where I can retweet it, would be a huge help.
2) We have a pretty consistent average of 20-50 guests online at any time throughout the day. When I tweet articles out, that # can be 80-100. We need those people to sign up & participate in discussion. It takes 30 seconds. We have a very welcoming group of members. Guests/Lurkers dont get access to the incredible features we have here. It makes no sense to me, to not sign up. If they did, it would help us immensely.
3) We had 200 people sign up here in the first two weeks after we launched. The problem is, 80% of them gave up on us after a week and went back to the other site. You can see who they are and the last time they logged on, under the member list. Those folks likely have no idea how awesome this new software is, because they were long gone before we ever changed over to it.
4) Tell anyone and everyone you know about us, and tell them to sign up & participate in discussion. Word of mouth is big.
5) Participate in the Q&A's. I book these things with great people that are willing to take time out of their busy schedules, to spend a couple hours interacting on a forum that is only 4 months old...and a lot of people here won't even take 30 seconds to post one question for them. It's hard to promote that Q&A on Twitter (when it's done), when all of the questions are by the same 6-8-10 people. And it's hard to convince other fighters & MMA personalities to do one, when they see the lack of participation.
In reality, a lot of our growth depends on you...the members.
And I don't want anyone to take this the wrong way, because I'm not lecturing or whatever...but it seems like many here want a cool place to hang out w/out idiots, trolls, censorship. They want state of the art features. They want to tell us what we do wrong, and what we can do better. But they don't want to put any work into helping us grow. We haven't asked anyone for a dime here. All we've ever asked is - do your part in helping us grow. Participate in the Q&A's, tweet about us, tell your friends about us, buy a shirt if you want to rep us (and help us fund the place), etc.
I spend anywhere from 12-14 hrs a day on here. Splinty the same. We should be right? We own the place after all. But the fact of the matter is, we could spend 24/7/365 adding, tweaking, setting up Q&A's, trying to move discussions along, etc, etc...and none if it will matter if the members don't do their part. That's just me being as real and honest as I can be about the situation.
I hope everyone will not take offense, but instead, take action and help us make this place what it can be.