It's time to catch everyone up on the state of the T-Bucket Forums.
Growth of the forums has exceeded our wildest dreams. When we opened the doors to this site, we figured it was going to be a pretty small-change site and if we ever reached 250 members, we were going to be really lucky.
We're currently at 718 members, 90 of those arriving in just the last 30 days.
We saw forum activity sag a bit in late July and August, which was right in line with the trend we anticipated seeing. Now that we're into September, people are starting to spend more time at home and forum traffic is beginning to climb back up. Our daily unique visitor average is running at an all-time high and is up 65% over last month. After just 6 days, the monthly count is already at 31% of last month's number.
The vBSEO script is quietly plugging away and generating very good numbers. The percentage of visitors arriving from the search engines has gone up 5% in the last 30 days.
The number of keywords being used in those searches has gone up 43% in the last 30 days.
The number of pages on Google has gone up 76% in the last 30 days.
We've gained some 1850+ new posts in that same time period.
Simply put, the forums are growing very well, even through the late summer months. Every single one of those numbers is positive.
In spite of all those positive numbers, the forums are very close to their own end times. And, I'm sorry to say, it might happen sooner, rather than later.
When the site was established, it took a chunk of change to get it going, but it was established as little more than a hobby site and it's ongoing, monthly expenses were rather insignificant.
As the site grew, it became necessary to improve the server the site resides on. And that was going to increase the operating budget to more than we were going to be able to afford. It was the story of the rock and the hard place. We needed more resources to keep growing, but we couldn't afford the resources.
Fortunately, several members demonstrated their generosity, by digging into their own wallets to help keep the forums alive. As the donations came in, we established a separate account for this money. Some manufacturers saw how we were attracting their primary audience and spent some of their own profits to advertise on this site. I hope everyone recognizes the companies and individuals that got behind this site with their own hard-earned dollars.
We soon were able to afford a much better hosting environment. And the forums kept growing, to the point where we needed to upgrade the server's memory. Not a problem, we had the money in the bank. And the forums kept growing, so we invested some of the donated funds in an Articles script, to display your technical write-ups. As we continued to grow, we invested some of those funds on the vBSEO script, which has really fanned the flames of this site's growth.
And then, a thread appeared on the forum, stating that we needed to have t-shirts to promote and show support for the site. My initial reaction on it was to ignore the demand for shirts, because there was simply not enough money to purchase shirts and not enough time in the day to process and ship orders.
More and more people weighed in, wanting t-shirts. So, against my better judgment, we started looking into getting shirts made up. We felt that we might be able to make a few dollars on each shirt and then it wouldn't come down to people making donations to the site and not having anything to show for it. This way, they could add to their own t-shirt collections and the site's war chest could keep growing.
We got a design made up for the shirts and then sat down to look at the price quotes on the shirts. And we posted a poll to the site, trying to gauge demand for the shirts. The poll showed we had need for about 4 dozen shirts, which was a pretty big investment. Frankly, a bigger investment than the site's bank account could cover.
The price on this quantity of shirts was going to result in a $20 price tag for the shirts and we felt this was too high. So, after some haggling and compromise, we worked out a deal that would allow us to sell the shirts for as little as $15. However, it was going to require an order of 7 dozen shirts, rather than just 4 dozen.
And this is where a fool and his money parted. We emptied the site's bank account and then I went into my own pocket to cover the difference.
Remember what I said about my initial reaction to the entire t-shirt idea? Somebody give me a few swift kicks for not sticking to my instincts.
We've sold exactly 14 shirts. The gross sales figure comes nowhere close to recovering the nearly $400 of my own invested money, not to mention getting money back into the bank to cover the site's operating expenses.
So, on Monday morning, I went back into my own pocket to cover the monthly operating expenses for this site. Remember what I said about the site expenses rising to a point that we could no longer afford to cover? I was right, I really couldn't afford to spend the money, but my only other option was to pull the plug on the site.
And now, the site's continued growth has us to a point where we're going to have to look at upgrading the size of the storage space on the server. Which means more even more expense. And the site's bank account can't afford to pay attention, much less pay for a disk upgrade.
Now I hate to come off sounding like some tele-evangelist telling you how we need money or we're going to have to shut down. So let me try to say it this way - we need money, or we're going to have to shut down. I simply cannot afford to fund the site out of pocket.
The bottom line is this site went from a feeble candle to a bright light and then became a shining star. And the star has gone supernova and is melting itself down.
Here's the plan we've come up with -
I'm going to remove the donations modules from the site. I am not comfortable with receiving free will donations for a site that is within a few weeks of going away.
I'm going to close the photo gallery to any new additions, as we need to conserve disk space.
I am setting aside enough of my own funds to refund the site sponsors for the money they have sent for advertising. If we have to shut things down, I give the site sponsors my word you will each be refunded for any unused months.
If we can realize enough money from t-shirt sales over these next 2-3 weeks, we'll still be here on 1 October. If we can build the site's account back up, then we'll get back to business as usual. If we can't, then we're going to become just one more failed Web site and I'm going to have a closet full of T-Bucket Forums-branded polishing rags.
I am truly sorry it has come to this point. I wish I had simply deleted the posts about forum t-shirts and kept on keeping on, because we were healthy and getting better with each passing day. And now, here we are.
Here is the link for the forum store, one more time -
T-Bucket Forums Store (Powered by CubeCart)
