[Drewski2112]

I have created this topic to discuss ideas for FSZone. As you know these forums and site has been growing slowly, and FSX is right around the corner. So how do we get more members to join and how do we get ready for FSX? Post your ideas here.

My idea was to start a FSRadio, an idea originally thought up by Greeny, but have it here at FSZone. I have discussed it both with Fox and Greeny but where would we start? How would we find radio personalities? What program should we use?

Another idea is to get a hold of a developer who makes freeware planes (or other stuff) for FS2004 and have it an "Only on FSZone" or "Exclusively on FSZone" for 3 months or so.

Any thoughts or ideas of your own?

[Eric]

About the radio show, like I said. If you guys can produce, I can host it and provide the bandwidth. I might be able to recommend a few tools, are you looking for more of a live streaming show, and then having a downloadable version later on? I can recommen some programs, and even a few email addresses to some payware companies for interviews... I have quite a long list.

I like the devloper idea... But the trouble is finding someone who is willing to do that. When I released my scenery I made it only downloadable here for 1 week, and there was a slight increase in traffic. But scenery/aircraft take a long time to make.

Here is what I think:
We need to find ways to attract new users.. Not just convert users from a certain website that is unnamed. Remember all of the new members who came here after that? We were getting 100+ posts per day! Now we are getting anywhere from 20-30ish. Take a gander here:



Now, I am not sure if the spike during the summer was because of something we did... Or i it is just people out of school with more time to hangout/post.

IMO, we need to find a way to attract first timers to the flight sim world... I mean people who have not found other more popular sites out there. I think this can be done by improving our Google/Alexa rating. That goes for MSN, AOL, Y!, etc. also. I you think about it... We have pretty much as many features as another 'certain' site has, such as:

-Homepage w/ news (We have RSS, they don't)
-Forums (We have IPB 2.1.x with more features, they don't)
-Gallery (Ours has a bit more features, but only because it is a newer version)
-Video Gallery, we are the only ones who have this. I think we need to improve in this area, such as adding a Flash video player to eliminate plugin issues, and improving a few other areas.
-And not the online store. Which I am constantly improving day and night and looking for new products to add. (A few companies are coming very soon)

We do have a crude review system, but I think this could also be changed. Such as adding a third party review system, not just a forum. And offering an incentive to write reviews, maybe 75 cents-$1 per review?? I think this would work, we could pay higher for reviews on payware products, and then submit them to their respective companies. Surprisingly, a pretty good amount of our referring websites are payware companies who link to reviews on our site.

And we also have a multiple image uploader on the forums... They (still) do not.

Basicly all 'they' have over us is: Topsites, and downloads. We used to have a download system... But I decided to take it down. Why? Think about it... how many Flight Simulator download sites are there? Avsim, Simviation, Flightsim.com, FSPlanet, those are the 4 largest ones. So why cover an area already covered MUCH better?? (With more files & usually faster servers).

I've been thinking about topsites, it would be pretty simple make, there are tons of free compatable systems out there.

So, really, if you think about it we have all of the major feature plus more than a lot of the larger sites out there. All we need to do is attract first timers. Because when you first found a website, wether it be FS2002.com, FS2004.com. What did you do? Most users searched "FS2002" or "FS2004" on google, and got connected to the larger sites.

We have trouble with this because we don't have FS2002 or FS2004 in our domain name, they were simply all taken. This is why I am confident when FSX comes around, because we have a pretty good domain name. and now we have in my opinion pretty complete coverage of FSX. We have pretty up to date news, and we were the first website out there to offer audio coverage, and I was the first that Chief contacted to post his video. We got the screenshots up pretty quick considering we were not previously informed and given screenshots by Microsoft. We had them resized and uploaded in around 30 minutes no?

I am pretty confident that FSX will work wonders for us, fresh slate and a level playing ground considering that we got in somewhat late in the game for FS2004. I may even start designing the new website so it can:

1. Establish a name early with users
2. Establish a name with search engines
3. Offer news, shots, vids, etc all at one source.
And then once FSX DOES come out I will merge that site together with this site. Sound like plan?

[Drewski2112]

Fox, on Jan 17 2006, 06:14 PM, said:

Sound like plan?