Lake Robinson Topics: What Happened to the Forum??
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Name:
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Webmaster
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Subject:
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What Happened to the Forum??
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Date:
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7/31/2008 2:03:43 PM
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I think it is due to not having much to complain about right now. The lake level is not bad and the boat ban thing is not in the news for people to voice opinions. Some people check the forum by the hour, some every day or two and others not so much. I think the hourly checkers are having the content withdrawals.
I wish I had statistics on the forum itself, but when I put all this together I did not consider the forum to be much more than a playground. Forum data I'm looking to capture in 2009. Banner ad impressions are counted but it's not possible to separate the views by page (forum and non-forum). I do capture statistics on major pages like the front page, real estate, rentals, main navigational pages (top buttons) and some sideline pages.
As far as front page traffic for July 08 it is going to match July 07 very closely. I would normally expect an increase in year to year as I've never had a declining year. Last year there was more interest in the declining lake level and drought so that kept more people "tuned in". So last year's numbers were higher than they would have been with normal lake levels. However overall, LakeMartin.com is about to break 2007 traffic around the September timeframe. That's because the highest traffic month ever was March 2008 and that was because the lake level rose unexpectedly so fast...
Another interesting thing to note is that summer traffic on Saturday and Sunday is 60% of the weekday averages. I guess this is because many people use the Internet at work and are enjoying the lake on weekends.
Looking at months of the year there is always a gradual decline in traffic after July 4th. That's when the part-timers and vacationers decrease substantially and many except the hard core folks (people reading right now) loose interest in the lake. Also, It's just my opinion but I think when the water gets 3 feet down, it starts to affect many peoples usage of the lake. Some docks are not deep enough in water or it makes it difficult to utilize the boat at some docks. That's my personal situation at my cabin. December is extremely slow traffic because of the holidays. Things pick back up in January ever year.
If you want to know what I've seen substantial changes on it's been hotel bookings. Not necessarily from LakeMartin.com because rental homes rule here, but for several years I've had over 300 lake sites that focused on hotels when there were no vaction home ads. Through 2007 I made a small, but substantial sum of money from hotel bookings. Although site traffic on the hotel pages is 70% of last year's traffic, the actual booking of rooms is 30% of last year's bookings. I think that is directly due to people not travelling long distances because of gas prices. You see these news reports of "Staycations" and I'm seeing that must be true.
Lake map sales (printed maps) seem to be down too but not by as big factor as the hotel bookings... I just have not had time to analyze that. One of my map vendors (Fishing Hot Spots) contacted me and he said they are seeing big slumps in sales. They blame it on the economy. What else could it really be?
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