Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Traffic

In the summer, Dan Scifo and Shane Carnes decided they wanted to start their own new fed to sort of satisfy some of the rumblings for a second fed amongst the A1 community. I advised Shane that he should have taken Dan West on his offer and taken up the MBE name and keep the fed on A1. They decided to pass on both options. Now naming the fed something new isn't a bad idea. Ultimate Championship Wrestling is a fine name for their fed. However, they decided that they were going to locate the fed at Brian Jenkins' E-fed News Network. I like the ENN site, and I like its purpose. I wouldn't post there if I didn't. But I also don't think it's a suitable site for a startup fed to be located on right now.

The EUWC up until this year was situated on the FW.com boards. Then, at some point, there was no activity on their forums. I wondered where they went. Then last night, I found out that they moved to their own message boards, boards that might only get traffic from their own roster instead of the MASS volume of traffic that FW.com gets.

It makes me wonder, why do people eschew forums with large traffic for smaller ones of their own?

I can see why UCW would want to be at ENN. Perhaps part of it is establishing the fed with its own identity. Perhaps part of it is to help get some more exposure for Jenkins' site. In fact, I love the concept behind ENN... a place to discuss e-fedding.

But logistically, if they had gone to A1 or even FW, they could have still established their own identity outside of the MONSTROUS shadow that A1E casts at A1 and among the amalgamated yet related community of feds at FW. It might have taken a little work to do, but it still would have been worth the traffic and the amount of eyes that get exposed to UCW on a regular basis. The fact is, UCW would have gotten more exposure at A1 or FW than the exposure they're bringing to ENN by hosting the fed there. It's the same with EUWC, unless Matt Pickstock is good enough at recruiting and can keep an influx of exposure to his fed without being at FW.

The only feds that I think can survive off of not being affiliated with A1, FW or other interfed sites like PTC are probably PRIME, fWo (which does) and maybe CSWA, NFW and maybe, just maybe, A1E. ANy other startup would be wise to latch onto a vibrant community and try to carve a niche, granting that there is a niche to carve there.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

NFW actually first started on Yahoo Groups, but made the switch to FWC when Yahoo started putting advertisements in any posts, therefore making them look horrible. Chad did invite us to FWC from the onset, but we felt that the idea of being on Yahoo Groups really lent to the concept of us starting as a small-time indy fed.

Point being, it doesn't matter where you start as long as you can recruit and keep your first wave of members happy. I think UCW actually made the right move as ENN's new site design is very cool, trendy and limitless in possibilities if the site admins work hard with what they've got. A1E's website hasn't been updated in years. From the efed standpoint (obviously if you visit) to the actual whole site.

Also, you have to consider that if UCW started on A1E -- alot of naive folks there would've just looked at it as the second coming of MBE. So kudos to the brains of the operation on making a choice that presents them in their own light...and not the fed assuaging the rumbles of a second A1 fed not being around.

--should die

Anonymous said...

On the note of EUWC, you should also be aware of a couple of things.

First, that their forums and fed are under a family of feds called WWC. The EUWC is linked on the main WWC site and so on.

Secondly, the only reason they came off of the FW.com forums in the first place is because Matt was having some board issues that were crippling his fed somewhat, and it all happened while Chad was out of town. Things like that happen.

I actually had a long conversation with Matt whereby he indicated he'd like the fed to be back on fw.com once the issues were resolved, which with my help connecting them, Matt and Chad are working on resolving.

As for UCW, I too like the idea of establishing their own identity. They may have to work harder to recruit, but they've seemed to manage to get a good variety from across various forums to join.

Unknown said...

>A1E's website hasn't been updated in years.

I'm a few links behind on the match results, but all the bios are up to date, and the main page gets updated after every show - as does the Champions list.

Yeah, I'm a little slow, but saying it hasn't been updated in years is a little harsh.

Anonymous said...

My bad handler of Beast. I should've been more specific in what I meant.

The DESIGN hasn't been updated for the efed or main website in years, and if you look at this site http://www.a1e.ca/ in Firefox, it's actually got some browser issues.

--REALLY should die

Unknown said...

Um, the design was just done last year.

And Firefox isn't a real browser. Too many plugins and options to set to make a site look right.

Unknown said...

I meant to add a devil face on the end of that post, too.

I'm actually planning on redoing the site again in the new year.

Anonymous said...

*nods* Shows what I know. ;)

The efed site looks way better than the portal site. The portal site could really get huge with a nifty design, I bet. Not that it isn't huge right now.

What about the forums for the efeds? I'm not particularly fond of how the threading works in them. I found them to be a pain in the butt when I was in the MBE tournament.

Not that FWC is the greatest cause sometimes new posts don't show up. Chad does update the skins almost every year tho, and that keeps things fresh visually. And I find the VBulletin interfaces to be quite dynamic these days.

ENN's forums, while confusing at first cause of how they were integrated into the site -- now are as easy as FWC's to me.

So, I still stand by my opinion that I'd rather start a fed on ENN than A1E -- just didn't have all my facts straight obviously. I didn't mean to offend any A1E peeps as usual, but I probably did. :P

As for Firefox...For some reason, when I'm web-designing I get more issues with IE than Firefox. I just think it sucks that there isn't a harder push for them all to have uniformed coding.

*shrugs*

Matter of preference in the end, cause I hated Netscape more than IE before Mozilla made me smile.