One Week Deep!

Right, so... it had now been a full week since I launched FOTOR. Some things I have been working on are taking off, while other projects have been sidelined.

Let's start with the sidelined.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, let's face it: "www.forumsoftheoldrepublic.com" is simply a LONG domain name to remember, and without a bookmark in place, many of our users may forget how to find us. Not good, so I decided to go on a hunt for a shorter domain name, in particular: Fotor.com. Pretty simple to remember, right? Well, the domain was bought in 2004 by a company, who's sole purpose is to resell domain names. The quoted price for FOTOR.com was $5,892 USD. Hehe. I laughed at the guy, so he asked me what I had in mind, and I told him- he then laughed at me. I guess we both had a good chuckle.

Sometimes it really irks me, the internet business. Almost all sales are based on theorectical figures. Fotor.com is a parked page, with paid search results- it has no Page Rank in Google, and is in the bottom 15Mth most visited page on the internet, according to Alexa- basically, no worth, whatsoever. But, because it's a five-letter domain, it can *almost* demand an outrageous price.

On to issue number two- new members. We're a new forum, and the second-most important thing for the opening days is to grab new members, keeping the lifeblood flowing. I just laucnhed a new contest, to grab new people, and help spread the word about the site. The prize is decent enough- an encased, gold, mint 30th Anniversary EU Coin. Sadly, though, it seems to not be taking off as I hoped.

Now, on to what is going right!

It's taking longer than I wanted it to, but Google is eating up our content, left and right. Whenb I first started out with The Rogue Forums, I had no idea about search engine optimization, generating content- none of it. Now that I am fairly well versed in the subject, and am aware, I'm waiting like a little kid on Christmas day for my presents. It's only been a week, so I should not expect to see front-page results yet, and I don't.

In time, though >: )

The members we do have have been pretty awesome so far. One week into the game, we have done pretty well, I'd like to think. My end-game goal is to develop FOTOR to be one of, if not THE, forums to go to for all SWTOR players for all the information they need about the game. I want this site to be a beacon of light, in a dark void called the internet.

What's more... I think we're on our way. Not to put anyone else down, but I have no budget to speak of. All of my rankings are going to be pure organic. I don't have an entire team of advertisers. And even with all this combined, I am still going to take FOTOR to the top 5. Just think if I had some money to back me up ;)

1 week statistics:

Threads: 399
Posts: 1,482
Members: 38

The Beginning Days

Greetings potential fans.

My name is Ki, and through the course of this blog, I hope to take you through the adventure, and utter headache, of setting up and running a fan-site forum. Check it out: SWTOR Forum

To begin, I recently launched a new forum, called Forums of the Old Republic (surprise, huh?), dedicated to Star Wars: The Old Republic, an upcoming MMO from Bioware and Electronic Arts.

Our forum has been open for 11 days so far, and is steadily climbing in activity and traffic. Not off to a bad start, but not an instant success ;)

Well, readers, it's time for my break, so I must sign off for now. Until next time!

Current Forum Stats:
Threads: 191
Posts: 857
Members: 34