State of the BeerLeg 2023

It's just television, but even less useful from an intellectual standpoint

I understand what you're getting at, but people younger than Gen X aren't really interested in conversations, discussions, debate, or personal interaction.

If you have kids, or spend time talking to kids, they use TikTok the same way "legacy people" used Google, and it gets far more relevant results. It's quite amazing.

Google has been bastardized by SEO and their pursuit of ad revenue, and really doesn't work in the same way it used to in the beginning.

The way people use online platforms is much more important than the content, and that's how TikTok beat Google, and Reddit is better at returning relevant information for user queries than Google.

If we have to incorporate more "social media"-like content in addition to these forums, fine. But I would hope that the forums are kept at least somewhat separate from the social media aspects. Because if this forum content goes away, or social media bleeds over, I'm fairly certain that it will lose much of what makes it attractive to those who contribute here.

Agreed. Hence why I would want to keep the forums fully intact and the ability to use them without ever stepping foot into the other stuff.  

This seems like it would be a great discussion for a summer forum Meetup preferably somewhere where it's not super hot maybe say the Oregon coast or Salem if you know you want to go out by I-5 and stay away from the ocean crowds.

Come on over! It's still wet and colder than normal right now, so definitely no worries about heat yet. And there's no end in sight. We had the coldest March since 1984. Today's forecast: 49° high with rain, damn near freezing tonight.

Have you considered working with the state boards/societies to find out if this could be an additional platform to get out their quarterly or monthly or once a year because they don't have people that are capable willing to do so or even have the wherewithal to put together those types of things,  and this could be a platform so then maybe they could have more information being sent out locally regionally and this could be a form that could help them and it doesn't take a ton of buying for them because most of the people that support that stuff probably participate here at some level. 

Yes. I've spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out a good way to make that work in these forums. I think the best route would be better suited to a "group", much like Facebook but without all the stealing and selling of personal information. 😉

So yes, I could see doing something like that after the big pivot.  

just free associating while driving.....

I'll throw some more concrete ideas down and send it to you in an email.

I love and appreciate the fact that you are putting so much thought into this!

@michigan-left - totally off topic, but I noticed your icon is a left handed desk! Nice.

Seems you either have to sell ads or sell access. I would pay a subscription for access, especially if it includes access to all of the years and years of bickering/exchange of knowledge. A lot of the non-surveyor traffic to the site is definitely seeking knowledge. I would do a tiered system and try to use cost incentives to encourage posting. $5 gets you in, $10 gets you in the platinum survey wizard club, and onward up to a payment amount where you reach survey Valhalla or whatever. Run it like a go fund me and say you gotta get X subscribers or X dollars to keep it live or whatever. The kids are all on Discord if you can tie that in somehow.

If you're selling ads, you gotta have an ace sales staff and you may have to limit candid discussion of your advertiser's wares. 

@mike-berry

When the Leftorium finally went out of business in 2018, we were fortunate because we still had Left-Mart, and the Southpaw Superstore.

Dodged a bullet there...

Spent all day getting to, sitting through 8 hours of blah, blah, blah then getting back home to receive 6.5 PDHs towards my CE requirements.  Plus $220 registration.  I AB-SO-LUTE-LY GUAR-AN-TEE that I get far more useful information here in a week's worth of participation.  No doubt whatsoever.

Shoot fire, the people who work in the building I was in today are so dumb (HOW DUMB ARE THEY?) they have to put signs on the inside of the toilet stalls to remind everyone to only flush toilet paper.  No paper towels or sanitary wipes of any kind.  It goes on to state that the maintenance workers have had to unclog the pipes in that building TWICE in the past two weeks and they are TIRED OF IT.

They also think they are the supreme university in the nation when it comes to men's basketball, which they are not.

I will add that the lunch provided was excellent.  So, maybe Wendell needs to start shipping out free lunches to those who keep the home fires burning.

If there was a superthread where users could make product recommendations that could be purchased through some sort of click though to raise some revenue that might be interesting.

I bet the brain trust here has some good ideas on things I could spend some money on, probably even beyond survey stuff.

Not sure if that click though model has any juice, just a revenue idea I had.

I still have never gotten on the facebook or any associated sites, I always feel a little out of touch when the subject comes up. 

I love and appreciate the fact that you are putting so much thought into this!

Right back at-cha!

If there was a superthread where users could make product recommendations that could be purchased through some sort of click though to raise some revenue that might be interesting.

Hmmm... affiliate marketing. I wonder if any surveying product/service providers offer affiliate plans. Definitely worth looking! Thanks for the great idea. 🙂

I think the idea of a subscription shouldn't be off the table.  IMHO, times have changed and paying for info on an "a la carte" style is much more common than even a few years ago.   I pay for HULU, Disney, Netflix, Amazon and one podcast ....(probably a few more that I 've forgotten about) 

  Obviously I have no idea what kind of numbers you are crunching, but if you could get a small percentage of the regulars here to join in, I'd think it would take some pressure off at least.   

You already have limited access to visitors vs registered users, so maybe there is another tier of subscribers?   

Just a thought!   

I think the idea of a subscription shouldn't be off the table.  IMHO, times have changed and paying for info on an "a la carte" style is much more common than even a few years ago.   I pay for HULU, Disney, Netflix, Amazon and one podcast ....(probably a few more that I 've forgotten about) 

@andy-j How dare you come in here and make sense! LOL  

Seriously though, I had not really looked at it from this perspective. My biggest fear for a paywall is that it could seriously slow down the number of posts, thus stifling the search indexing that brings so much traffic (more about that below). Now that you've got my gears turning, I find myself wondering if the "free plan" could just limit the number of posts per month, with the lowest (i.e. super cheap) paid tier allowing unlimited posts. Or something to that effect.

I'm still not sure how I feel about a full-on paywall. We've seen what it has done to POB Magazine and other entities. It didn't end well for them. I realize that SC is entirely different, but still, that's some scary stuff right there and it needs to be seriously considered.

With all of this in mind, I've been watching the site's analytics pretty closely since day one in 2010, but lately I've spent more time analyzing them. It's a good way to help me fully understand where the site is today, how it got here, and where it needs to go in the future. The number one source of traffic is "direct", meaning that you came directly here without a link or other type of referral. The number two source is search engines. But here's the kicker: 84% of all traffic is direct and about 15% is from search engines. The tiny remainder is mostly social media links, which doesn't amount to enough for me to care (which is why I removed most social stuff from here several months ago). Still, 15% of the traffic coming from searches is still significant -- I mean, that's about 15,000 unique visitors per month, so it's nothing to sneeze at. One other thing to consider is that most of our new users are from search engines, so we have to protect that, since that's where the most growth comes from.

Between your post and other previous posts, you've got me rethinking things a little bit. I don't want to be too hasty, but sometimes you just need a little push to see some things, right? This is EXACTLY why I start these topics, because I NEED your input and I appreciate it SO MUCH. I'll sleep on this a bit and continue to review the possibilities as I continue developing a plan for the future. 🙂

So, thanks everyone for the suggestions and insights. I couldn't do all this without you.

In a pay as you go mode of thinking I offer the following thought.  The reward is obtained by the viewer.  The poster is what makes the value exist.

Have a basic fee to be "connected" and a "viewer fee" with a monthly billing for views each month over some set number.  This is for the strictly surveying categories only, of course.  The more you read, the more you learn, thus, the larger value received.  Finding a fair "viewer fee" and that maximum number of "free" views would be important.  Processing thousands of payments per month might outweigh the extra cost charged to viewers if not set properly.  People tend to understand user fees, so that part's easy.  Collecting the fee must be easy and practically automatic.  Perhaps it would be based on the number of times one accesses the site in a month's time, whether they stay on for five minutes or if they stay on for a few hours.

@wendell

This place is easily worth a dollar a day to me.

For me, that value comes from the wide-ranging contributions from a wide range of folks, so I'm all for keeping the door as wide open as possible.

I can easily and would gladly justify the cost out my annual CPD budget.

But, please make it easy to pay as a single lump sum, not as a subscription.

A recurring charge on my credit card is not personally acceptable as such charges can be way too hard to cancel.

You could provide a means to enter a variable amount as a donation to the Beer-Leggers club.

The current size of the sum involved means a lifetime membership is out of reach. 

While it is a million miles above my head and a million miles away from my realm, I'm also wondering what channels I can explore to influence where my employer chooses to place its advertising dollars.

Just my nzd$0.02

A recurring charge on my credit card is not personally acceptable as such charges can be way too hard to cancel.

It's super easy to manage your BeerLeggers Club subscription on your Dashboard. https://rpls.com/dashboard/ 🙂

You could provide a means to enter a variable amount as a donation to the Beer-Leggers club.

Great idea!

It's super easy to manage your BeerLeggers Club subscription on your Dashboard.

Perhaps,

But you have to know about it.

How would my 'executors, heirs and assigns' find that?

No, nope, No way - it aint going to happen (sorry)

Some of us have been here since the old (Mark Deal) rpls days and most of those are staring at retirement if not already done so.  I do not like a subscription as it may inhibit some of the newcomers.

Good ideas being tossed around and some should stick.  Hope something good comes out of this discussion. 

Don’t know if this would be a good idea or bad idea, but maybe a subscription based service for projects postings to connect Surveyors with developers, realtors, etc. I’d imagine it would need to be more company to company interfacing rather than specific projects, but just a thought if you are thinking of trying g to bring money in from outside the Surveying industry.

@jimcox   Jim,  I absolutely agree with all that you said.   I think Wendell should make the "Club" a bit more prominent and allow the user to determine the amount.   Just like PBS has a suggested donation but no real rules.  Let people chip in what and when they can.   Do that for a while and see how it pans out.    IMHO.

Something I've noticed over the past year or so is that a couple of Facebook groups have popped up that seem to be pulling a lot of traffic that might otherwise end up here.  I used to see tons of posts here asking business, software, and equipment questions; now most of that ends up on Life of a Surveyor or The Field Crew over on FB.  Not sure what triggered it but that's what I'm seeing.