Wow 300% Forum Growth

[Forum Boss]

Guys,

This is kind of Amazing. Traffic on this Forum has really exploded over the last few months.

Overall, Forum pageviews increased OVER 300% in 2007,from December to December).

Yep, that's right, we are approaching TWO MILLION Forum Pageviews a Month!,This does NOT include the editorial side of the site).

I know this has had a big positive effect on the classifieds. Seems if something is listed at a decent price it sells right away.

Now the key thing is to convince the advertisers that they are reaching a good audience here. Whenever you communicate with our sponsors, in particular the "Anchor" sponsors Brownells, Cabelas, GRAFs, MidwayUSA, Midsouth, and SWFA, let them know you saw them here!

 

[chuckw2]

Mr. Moderator,

That's a huge increase, how much are our site donations up?
What is the amount of our average donation?
What percentage of our members are site contributors?

I have a question for you. If I buy something from Cabela's for instance. Does Cabela's know if I ordered on this site. Should I go to 6BR first to order stuff or does it make any difference?



Chuck

 

[Forum Boss]

how much are our site donations up?

There has been a large surge in donations in the last three weeks.

What is the amount of our average donation?

About $20.00 on average. But recently we've seen much larger and much smaller donations. After my Bulletin item ran, where I suggested giving a buck a month, we've see quite a few $12.00 donations.

What percentage of our members are site contributors?

About 150 guys have donated in the last 12 months. Quite a few of the contributors have donated multiple times. The 150 donors represent 3.66% of the registered Forum members and about 0.4% of our monthly site visitors.

I have a question for you. If I buy something from Cabela's for instance. Does Cabela's know if I ordered on this site. Should I go to 6BR first to order stuff or does it make any difference?
Chuck

We have a deal with Cabela's that they rebate about 4% of the purchase price. But, for that to work, you need to navigate out through the Cabela's ad on this page, the Bulletin, or home page. If you just go straight to Cabela's they can't track it.

Notably, we've had similar arrangements with some other companies. I'll say this--Cabela's is honest and does track. Some other vendors... well, they conveniently forget the source of the referral.

 

[M21SNIPER]

Moderator,

Logging into the sponsors that support this excellent web resource, thru this web page is very useful information. Do the sponsors/retailers provide $$$ for just accessing their websites,by noting the number of hits, etc.) via 6mmbr.com or is it strictly related to purchases made from those stores when dialing in from the 6mmbr.com web-page?

If we all just told one or two of our shooting friends to access Midway, Brownells, Midsouth, Cabela's, etc. for every day shooting supplies and related accessories that they are going to buy anyway, I think that would greatly benefit this noteworthy site.

I have already told many friends about this site: I will endeavor..... OK, I will demand that they shop from their normal retailers from this website from now on!

Keep up the amazing resource that is this website! The width and breadth of knowledgeable and professional expertise that is shared and given FREELY on this web site is second to none!

My hat is off to you sir!

Regards,

Matt

 

[Forum Boss]

Matt,

We had a program with Google Adsense in place for about 3 weeks. Under that program, if you clicked to an advertiser's site we received a small fee. Those "pay per click" revenues started off small but it looked like it was going to work for us.

Unfortunately, Google reversed themselves and black-balled our site in mid-December. This despite the fact that Google is allowing its ads to run on other firearms-related web sites such as ChuckHawks.com. Google yanked the ads because they say we "promote sales of firearms."

Some current sponsors pay a monthly fee to run their ads. Other sponsors deliver a percentage of sales. We are going away from the percentage of sales model because, other than Cabela's, most of the "affiliates" did not seem to be tracking sales legitimately. We were essentially giving them free advertising and getting nothing in return.