HL Needs your Help

[Hitman]

Originally Posted by yellowhello

I tried putting the little HL banner in a few other forums but all of them deleted them from my sig within a week.

This is bad forum practice, and could result not only in getting you banned from that forum but also make HL look bad. It makes you and HL look like a spammers. A better Idea would be to PM your buddies at other forums and tell them about HL.

[Capper]

yeah, don't do stuff like that....as much as we post everyones news, and recommend other sites.....most sites don't believe in sharing the love....it goes back to the cut throat aspect of the business....

Stick with recommending us to people who ask, recommending us at not competing forums or sites, and Digg, etc.

I can't stress how serious this is. Every day I look for ways to make HL stand out in the crowd. I look around the web, and our reviews seem to be so much better written than most, accurate, fair, etc...I look at all the things we do for the community, the benefits we offer..... and I honestly don't understand.

[Dr. V]

"Unique page views"...I don't understand that...

In any case, there's gotta be a way to get HL more out there. Sure word of mouth advertising is great, but it doesn't seem to be helping any. Maybe some of these other sites that we're posting news for should post more of our news/reviews and would it cill anyone to have a HL banner up anywhere?

It just pisses me off when people take as much as they can and give as little as they can. It is, unfortunately, common business practice - but it doesn't mean everyone has to do it just because it's common.

It's just very annoying and a significant piss-off.

As that mini-rant is now over, I have let some people know with no luck, and I will keep letting people know as much as I can. We can't let HL die! AND WE WON'T!

I know I can speak for a plethora of our members when I say at least some part of us feels like it needs HL for some reason or another. Not only that, we couldn't do that to you, Rich, who has worked so hard and so long (not to mention funding) to make it what it now is, and it's amazing. Why put that all to waste?

The V.I.P. members idea was great, but unfortunately that comes around once a year. And according to how many V.I.P. members we have right now and that it's about $12 per person...that may help to pay...2-3 months of server costs, maybe? Of course it's great and we will keep donating, but bottom line is that it isn't enough. Adding more members doesn't seem necessary for any reason but to increase traffic which, yes, is important, but if there are ways the existing community can help, let's do that before counting on anything else. Let more members come as they please, but I don't think it's necessary.

Any ideas? This could be a real informative and idea-full thread.

[Panda Man]

One thing is that we really only use Digg. I use stumbleupon a lot more than Digg. It's got a lot of advantages over Digg. In fact it's only disadvantage is that only FF can use it. But most web devs like stumbleupon over digg, once and article on digg has left the front pages, it's pretty much gone for good. Stumbleupon can keep the page booked and send people to the page years from the time it was posted =D I tested the 2 one my RAMDisk guide and stumbelupon generated a lot more views than Digg.

StumbleUpon » Welcome to StumbleUpon

Why StumbleUpon Sends More Traffic Than Digg

Stumbleupon vs Digg - Voyeurs vs Sheep « The Venture Skills Blog


EDIT - Oh, and Digg's articles usually have the same the diggers, us. But SU on the other hand:

StumbleUpon » HardwareLogic

Who are those guys? =D

[Capper]

True, I actually use StumbleUpon far more often than DIGG

[caveman-jim]

Capper, if you'll email me when you post a review, I'll put it on Rage3D's front page.

[Capper]

Thanks Jim, its greatly appreciated

[Sumgai]

It's amazing to me that more people don't come here. I think many of us here can attest to the fact there are a LOT of military members into PC gaming, modding, etc. It actually really surprised me to find out how many people in my shop played BF, COD, and WoW; and even more so, how many of those same people built their own systems from newegg. So the pool of people to become a fanbase for HL is most definitely out there. Heck, they're fans already! They just need to be steered over this way and made aware. I get plenty of people asking me advice about what to buy for their future rig and what works well. I always point them to this site. They think I'm knowledgeable, but a huge amount of what I've learned came from all of you guys here. The situation HL is in is just kind of a shock to me because a few of people on the HL staff write independently for MaximumPC and I don't know how on earth to get more exposure than that. There was even an issue a few months back on tweaking Firefox that Paul wrote and I couldn't help but notice the HL thumbnail in a couple of his screenshots. I know there's a ton of people out there who know about HL and it just baffles me why more people don't come here. We have more to offer than almost any other hardware site on the web, and I'll keep doing my best to make the people I'm around aware of us.-Brandon

[caveman-jim]

I posted a couple of your reviews @ Rage3D, so keep an eye on your hits this weekend and see if makes any difference.:rock:

Also, it's hard to claim to be the 'best' of anything on the web these days - there is so much diversity and depth, as well as established sites. Competing with HardOCP, Beyond3D, AnandTech et al is tough going - but I think you guys are heading in the right direction.

You just need some more Folder!

[Capper]

What really hurts us is that some of the bigger sites simply refuse to link to us or post our news...in this kind of community that can be a killer......we're just not part of the "clique" (If you have gone to any events, like LANS or CES, Computex, etc...you'll see what I mean....all the "cool" kids hang together. Now, granted, I'm not a social butterfly. i don't go to many events, and don't like going to the parties or clubs, but I'm not exactly a leper either.

Things like the Wikipedia page, which is beyond me, and sites not posting our news (I'll use *HARDOCP as an example) just kills us. I look at the quality and quantity of our reviews, then I look around the web.......and I can definitely say our reviews are as good as most anyones.

I'm not trying to be Negative Nancy here, but at some point I need to figure out what I'm going to do, I don't want to make money, but the site needs to try and pay for itself. I don't sell any hardware, and really don't want ads plastered everywhere (In fact, if you've noticed, almost all the ads have disappeared).

* As to the HARDOCP thing....thats 8 articles linked in two years.....8 total, and we send them our news every time we post an article....so thats 8 out of just over 300 articles. I'm not singling out HARD, just using them as an example.