portolet
10-12-2008, 12:07 PM
I will start by saying, though I am relatively new to Ebaum's World, I enjoy wasting time here, and can see flaws others my not. I have talked to dozens of people before forming this opinions of problems, and solutions to those problems. I would hope these have been explored before me saying but if they have not, I hope they do get explored. This place is dropping in traffic like a stone for lots of reasons, but I will hit the most important ones along with solutions. Sorry in advance for length this will be long.
This site is a business and should be run like one. I have no idea where, and how or why that changed, but it has. Is there no desire to keep it profitable or make it grow? I look and see endless profit and possibilities going to waste; the site is now more like greedy bastards milking the last little bit out of a dead cow. Then as traffic falls add more advertising to make up for less traffic is pretty much a death spiral that ends in failure. You have an extremely loyal base of users, do not exploit them till the very end make use of them and build. Here is how I would build on what you have.
First and foremost is the main page 5-7 features max per day is hardly enough to fill a workday or even a browsing day for an average person. The features are all done between 8 am and 8 pm eastern standard time, of course leaving no content being put up at night. The page design of the main page could easily provide for 2 columns of featured media making room for 14 features each day, leaving the same time for them to linger on the front page. This would give more users a shot at temporary fame, and more reasons to keep viewing each day. Do features around the clock find them, and put them on timers like you do for weekends problem solved. Those changes would of course result in positive web traffic and more video views.
Next up the content it ties into features, but is separate. Simply put you have users submitting the bulk of the content to the sitem, yet the features primarily go to Ebaum account that staff uses. The Ebaum features should be the last resort, and not the normal postings. Reward those that help make the site with the recognition of their finds. That of course ties into the eRep system I will cover later in the post. I will break this one up into subsections because it is long.
The media mostly in reference to videos is a nightmare. The system itself has hundreds upon thousands of duplicate media. That makes finding or comfortably watching things a disaster. Why is nothing being done to get rid of all the duplicates, and garbage that is flooding the system. This is a business servers cost money. The cost on removing duplicate and garbage media would be roughly 10-15k a month, for a crew of 5 making a decent wage. Those people could remove duplicates and send garbage to be judged by a panel, and removed if it is not creative, funny, or interesting. You save on server space, and enhance the viewers of the site's experience making them want to come back more raising traffic and profits.
The removing of media duplicates is really simple, find them check the time stamp, and remove all other copies, regardless of who posted them. The garbage dumping of media covered better. Have it sent, judged, and got rid of if it does not make a vote of 2 out of 5 for the people judging it. You could easily clear content 200 or so a week with that method, utilizing the crew removing duplicates. Remove music videos that were not fan made or produced. Things recorded off the artists website, or the television, and slapped up here have no place here. People shamelessly plugging other websites or services remove them. Simple things to enhance the experience here.
Revamp the way media is delivered to the consumers of your site. Make it so they consume more in a better fashion. The highest rated media display on the side of current videos you watch is being exploited. Make it into a related video scroll based on tags, anything rated over 2 stars playing. People rate down trash here, that increases the videos getting seen in the search, and leaves good videos. Instead of the current highest rated that can be manipulated, and has code bugs. Currently truly good things that should be seen get bumped in the name of greed. Those actions make crappy videos sit on the list driving people away.
Next the game and tournament area of the site. Some of the flash games are very fun, and the tournament system here has great possibilities to not only draw, but keep traffic on site. Make tournaments pay out big eRep randomly, or have prize tournaments weekly or monthly to generate a buzz, and keep people interested. Make larger bracketed tournaments that give titles or medals. Have those actually show on your pages that you won. The recognition alone for a monthly tournament win would keep people playing, or increase their play to be the best. Those of course generate more traffic for minimal cost.
Next but longest is the eRep system it was recently halved in value for view counts. That bothered some users but not a big deal to most users. You have one of the largest nearly free workforces on the internet, yet you keep taking away from them. Without the users this place would be dying 10 times as fast as it is now. Why keep taking away from them. Make features worth 10k points flat rate and give them view count points after 50,000 views. With the increased features I spoke of earlier along with the users actually getting the features instead of the Ebaum account, all users would be happy, and motivated to keep slaving.
That covers the feature aspect of the eRep system, true that my above stated things would account for larger amounts of payouts from the eRep, but the quality of the site, and the traffic it generates would far cover the extra prize cost. Rewarding your work force is the backbone of good business this all should be common sense. Those that abuse the system should of course be dispatched appropriately like the recent email scam.
The advertising, I touched on it above, but has someone lost their minds. Want ads put them on sides of videos with banners above them under them even on all 4 sides like a picture frame, but not in the middle of videos and blocking parts of them. That is insane to do something that just pisses people off. Sure you can charge more for them in the video, but if you must put them there make them damn short and disappear, not linger like cancer. I know the ads are in response to site traffic, but more of the spiral. Make the product better, increase its traffic, and charge more for less ads. Full page covering ads that are hard to close when entering the site wtf. Who thinks that stuff up? Do they really think that will make people want to come here or stay here. Make the product better, and place the ads better simple.
All the things above cost money now comes the interesting part how much. Everything I laid out I know the prices of, and will explain total costs. Five working members they could be hired from the community, or from postings since this is not a difficult job. The removing of duplicates and garbage 10-15k a month. Thousands of people would kill to surf the net for 500-650 dollars a week. Set up quotas for removals of duplicates, and set up weekly sessions for voting on garbage.
The increased prizes given out because of increased eRep laid out. The current structure values 150,000 eRep at 100 dollars. The increase would be roughly 1-2 million eRep a week based on increased features totals, and those given to users for a total of 6-8 thousand dollars a month in prizes. You also have to take into account the eRep leaving the system with deletion of duplicates, and trash that would offset that number. The duplicate and trash deleting, along with cleaning garbage would lower server costs increasing profits further.
The lowering of advertising would probably have to wait for traffic increases. No business would raise expenditures that much, and cut income at first. That could come faster with higher priced advertising in less quantity because of the site traffic increases. That should in turn make for better placement of the advertising, and removal of some of the more tasteless forms we endure here.
The total on the changes, I see in making a negative site traffic into a positive would be 16-23 thousand per month. If it even raised traffic here by 5% continued positive growth, and decreased server usage the revenue would far exceed the cost. That would make it a positive business venture, and if it failed which I highly doubt the most you could lose would be 50 thousand on a multi-million dollar business. The potential for profit should easily out weigh the risk.
I could be completely wrong, and just another stupid Ebaum's World user, but with all the smart people working for this company is there a reason these things are not in place? I do not really care to profit from observations anyone with an IQ over 100 could have made, or laid out given enough time. No I just hope that maybe some of these get put in place, and make somewhere I enjoy a little better, and more fun.
This is Portolet, and I shot my whole wad sorry it is long, but I had a lot on my mind.
This site is a business and should be run like one. I have no idea where, and how or why that changed, but it has. Is there no desire to keep it profitable or make it grow? I look and see endless profit and possibilities going to waste; the site is now more like greedy bastards milking the last little bit out of a dead cow. Then as traffic falls add more advertising to make up for less traffic is pretty much a death spiral that ends in failure. You have an extremely loyal base of users, do not exploit them till the very end make use of them and build. Here is how I would build on what you have.
First and foremost is the main page 5-7 features max per day is hardly enough to fill a workday or even a browsing day for an average person. The features are all done between 8 am and 8 pm eastern standard time, of course leaving no content being put up at night. The page design of the main page could easily provide for 2 columns of featured media making room for 14 features each day, leaving the same time for them to linger on the front page. This would give more users a shot at temporary fame, and more reasons to keep viewing each day. Do features around the clock find them, and put them on timers like you do for weekends problem solved. Those changes would of course result in positive web traffic and more video views.
Next up the content it ties into features, but is separate. Simply put you have users submitting the bulk of the content to the sitem, yet the features primarily go to Ebaum account that staff uses. The Ebaum features should be the last resort, and not the normal postings. Reward those that help make the site with the recognition of their finds. That of course ties into the eRep system I will cover later in the post. I will break this one up into subsections because it is long.
The media mostly in reference to videos is a nightmare. The system itself has hundreds upon thousands of duplicate media. That makes finding or comfortably watching things a disaster. Why is nothing being done to get rid of all the duplicates, and garbage that is flooding the system. This is a business servers cost money. The cost on removing duplicate and garbage media would be roughly 10-15k a month, for a crew of 5 making a decent wage. Those people could remove duplicates and send garbage to be judged by a panel, and removed if it is not creative, funny, or interesting. You save on server space, and enhance the viewers of the site's experience making them want to come back more raising traffic and profits.
The removing of media duplicates is really simple, find them check the time stamp, and remove all other copies, regardless of who posted them. The garbage dumping of media covered better. Have it sent, judged, and got rid of if it does not make a vote of 2 out of 5 for the people judging it. You could easily clear content 200 or so a week with that method, utilizing the crew removing duplicates. Remove music videos that were not fan made or produced. Things recorded off the artists website, or the television, and slapped up here have no place here. People shamelessly plugging other websites or services remove them. Simple things to enhance the experience here.
Revamp the way media is delivered to the consumers of your site. Make it so they consume more in a better fashion. The highest rated media display on the side of current videos you watch is being exploited. Make it into a related video scroll based on tags, anything rated over 2 stars playing. People rate down trash here, that increases the videos getting seen in the search, and leaves good videos. Instead of the current highest rated that can be manipulated, and has code bugs. Currently truly good things that should be seen get bumped in the name of greed. Those actions make crappy videos sit on the list driving people away.
Next the game and tournament area of the site. Some of the flash games are very fun, and the tournament system here has great possibilities to not only draw, but keep traffic on site. Make tournaments pay out big eRep randomly, or have prize tournaments weekly or monthly to generate a buzz, and keep people interested. Make larger bracketed tournaments that give titles or medals. Have those actually show on your pages that you won. The recognition alone for a monthly tournament win would keep people playing, or increase their play to be the best. Those of course generate more traffic for minimal cost.
Next but longest is the eRep system it was recently halved in value for view counts. That bothered some users but not a big deal to most users. You have one of the largest nearly free workforces on the internet, yet you keep taking away from them. Without the users this place would be dying 10 times as fast as it is now. Why keep taking away from them. Make features worth 10k points flat rate and give them view count points after 50,000 views. With the increased features I spoke of earlier along with the users actually getting the features instead of the Ebaum account, all users would be happy, and motivated to keep slaving.
That covers the feature aspect of the eRep system, true that my above stated things would account for larger amounts of payouts from the eRep, but the quality of the site, and the traffic it generates would far cover the extra prize cost. Rewarding your work force is the backbone of good business this all should be common sense. Those that abuse the system should of course be dispatched appropriately like the recent email scam.
The advertising, I touched on it above, but has someone lost their minds. Want ads put them on sides of videos with banners above them under them even on all 4 sides like a picture frame, but not in the middle of videos and blocking parts of them. That is insane to do something that just pisses people off. Sure you can charge more for them in the video, but if you must put them there make them damn short and disappear, not linger like cancer. I know the ads are in response to site traffic, but more of the spiral. Make the product better, increase its traffic, and charge more for less ads. Full page covering ads that are hard to close when entering the site wtf. Who thinks that stuff up? Do they really think that will make people want to come here or stay here. Make the product better, and place the ads better simple.
All the things above cost money now comes the interesting part how much. Everything I laid out I know the prices of, and will explain total costs. Five working members they could be hired from the community, or from postings since this is not a difficult job. The removing of duplicates and garbage 10-15k a month. Thousands of people would kill to surf the net for 500-650 dollars a week. Set up quotas for removals of duplicates, and set up weekly sessions for voting on garbage.
The increased prizes given out because of increased eRep laid out. The current structure values 150,000 eRep at 100 dollars. The increase would be roughly 1-2 million eRep a week based on increased features totals, and those given to users for a total of 6-8 thousand dollars a month in prizes. You also have to take into account the eRep leaving the system with deletion of duplicates, and trash that would offset that number. The duplicate and trash deleting, along with cleaning garbage would lower server costs increasing profits further.
The lowering of advertising would probably have to wait for traffic increases. No business would raise expenditures that much, and cut income at first. That could come faster with higher priced advertising in less quantity because of the site traffic increases. That should in turn make for better placement of the advertising, and removal of some of the more tasteless forms we endure here.
The total on the changes, I see in making a negative site traffic into a positive would be 16-23 thousand per month. If it even raised traffic here by 5% continued positive growth, and decreased server usage the revenue would far exceed the cost. That would make it a positive business venture, and if it failed which I highly doubt the most you could lose would be 50 thousand on a multi-million dollar business. The potential for profit should easily out weigh the risk.
I could be completely wrong, and just another stupid Ebaum's World user, but with all the smart people working for this company is there a reason these things are not in place? I do not really care to profit from observations anyone with an IQ over 100 could have made, or laid out given enough time. No I just hope that maybe some of these get put in place, and make somewhere I enjoy a little better, and more fun.
This is Portolet, and I shot my whole wad sorry it is long, but I had a lot on my mind.