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Thread: SawMill Creek - Seventeen Years of Service

  1. #16
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Location
    Putney, Vermont
    Posts
    1,042
    How time flys! I came a little later, but found something special here at SMC.
    You have made alot of people very happy here Keith. Thankyou for you efforts.
    Lets hope the next 17 years are as good for everyone.

  2. #17
    Join Date
    Apr 2013
    Location
    Kansas City
    Posts
    2,652
    I didn't see this until now. Thanks for making a lot of us better woodworkers.

  3. #18
    Keith, thanks very much for all your hard work. You’ve built a fabulous site which obviously took a lot of time and hard work.

    When you first announced a $2 charge there was a lot of grumbling and complaining about it. Any idea how many members actually wound up paying instead of leaving?

  4. #19
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
    Location
    Hayes, Virginia
    Posts
    14,760
    I don't have the numbers just yet but I have been watching the changes to our income. Most of our Contributors who use PayPal are donating more then the 6 dollars annually so the number of people doesn't equal the income directly. We have seen a 50% increase in our income, but that is far from the losses we have experienced in advertising fees. We recently lost two more advertisers, they are still on the list but I will update it shortly.

    FWIW we are not in any financial danger, we are covering the bills but struggling to save the funds to replace our server which is getting pretty old now. The pen blanks I have listed in our Classifieds Forum were donated to help me raise funds for the server but only two or three people have ordered pen blanks so far.

    I am discussing the option of programming the Shop Tours module that I have wanted to add to The Creek for many years with my SIL. It will be quite expensive and a huge risk if its not successful so the decision is a tough one, but the Shop Tours area would unlike anything ever seen on the Internet because it would be interactive not just pictures and text. I am also working on the final phase of our Hall of Fame area, I'm working with a web designer to complete the list of projects so we can start promoting the Hall of Fame.

    The Internet is in a constant state of change so we have to do our best to keep up by being innovative in the future. It's definitely a difficult task without the financial backing of a big company.
    Last edited by Keith Outten; 03-09-2020 at 9:57 AM.

  5. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Keith Outten View Post
    I don't have the numbers just yet but I have been watching the changes to our income. Most of our Contributors who use PayPal are donating more then the 6 dollars annually so the number of people doesn't equal the income directly. We have seen a 50% increase in our income, but that is far from the losses we have experienced in advertising fees. We recently lost two more advertisers, they are still on the list but I will update it shortly.

    FWIW we are not in any financial danger, we are covering the bills but struggling to save the funds to replace our server which is getting pretty old now. The pen blanks I have listed in our Classifieds Forum were donated to help me raise funds for the server but only two or three people have ordered pen blanks so far.

    I am discussing the option of programming the Shop Tours module that I have wanted to add to The Creek for many years with my SIL. It will be quite expensive and a huge risk if its not successful so the decision is a tough one, but the Shop Tours area would unlike anything ever seen on the Internet because it would be interactive not just pictures and text. I am also working on the final phase of our Hall of Fame area, I'm working with a web designer to complete the list of projects so we can start promoting the Hall of Fame.

    The Internet is in a constant state of change so we have to do our best to keep up by being innovative in the future. It's definitely a difficult task without the financial backing of a big company.
    Wow- sounds like you have a lot on your plate. What is “shop tours”? I’m not familiar with that.

  6. #21
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
    Location
    Hayes, Virginia
    Posts
    14,760
    Most woodworkers enjoy seeing pictures of other peoples shops so people start threads on most forums called shop tours. What Aaron Koehl and I have been discussing for many years is an interactive shop tours module that is far more then a thread with just pictures and text. We envision a service that provides.....well I'm not going to give away how it would work as it would be better to wait and see what we have in mind. It would be custom software that links into our system so the cost to create such a program would most likely be a big investment given how complex the service would be. The question is whether the investment would attract advertisers, I know for a fact that woodworkers traffic would be unprecedented. If we build it you will come, the question is how will we pay for the investment and the cost to operate the service? Advertising blocking software has already taken its toll here so we already know that supporting the new service with banners is not going to work. That leaves us with only one option, a subscription based service, basically our Contributors.

  7. #22
    That sounds very interesting- hopefully it will come to fruition.

  8. #23
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
    Location
    Hayes, Virginia
    Posts
    14,760
    Mark,

    I am waiting on Aaron to give me a price for the programming.
    Imagine a place where you can search for detailed information on almost any machine and have direct contact to owners and a whole lot more. Register your shop and have permanent information for insurance purposes......make your information private or public.

  9. #24
    That sounds great. It would be very useful to connect to people who actually own machines to get their take on them, etc.
    Same with shop setup.

  10. #25
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Location
    West Lafayette, IN
    Posts
    6,529
    I just saw this too, congrats on the site birthday!

    Regarding shop tours, can you use the same software realtors use for house tours?

  11. #26
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
    Location
    Hayes, Virginia
    Posts
    14,760
    Thanks Matt,

    This morning we are hosting 2,861,235 posts. That is a lot of valuable information and it would be great to have better access to existing information here along with the new data generated by our shop tours.

    We can't use the realtor software because it won't provide the data fields we need or be capable of the level of search we would like to have. Our features list is very comprehensive, it took Aaron and I about three weeks to brain storm the list. Additionally we have given personal security the highest priority making sure that any information that people want to share cannot be connected to their username here unless they prefer to make it public. At the same time information you want to search for the results need to be accurate. Aaron wrote a search engine for The Creek several years ago that was amazing, unfortunately the vBulletin programmers kept changing the code here which made it impossible for Aaron to keep adjusting his code.

    I still cant promise anything at this point. Aaron has not provided me with a price for the programming work and the virus issues will keep him from being able to visit my shop to install. Our budget is a fraction of what it was two years ago so our only option at this point is to dip into our savings and that will produce some risk should be have unforeseen expenses.

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