Hey guys when was this site started? Because there are not many people on the site? I think we need to encourage people to join, like putting links up on other sites etc?

Hi there!
The site just turned 10 a few months ago. My aim for Bonsai Empire is not to be a massive website, I prefer things a bit more personal really! The forum is doing pretty well I think.

Please feel free to invite your friends/clubmembers etc to join our community, but for anything more substantial I'd appreciate it if you consult me first Linking etc is not something I want to spamm other websites with.

Regards
Oscar

Oh ok i see now, thats cool

Again, if you have any ideas to promote the site, let me/us know! A brainstorm would be interesting!

Hi Oscar,

I really like your vision for the Forum. I'm far from being a computer techie however, I just had a thought...and that is creating a *signature* following one's name that refers to the site which would appear at the end of emails sent out, facebook postings, etc.

I'll be honest...I didn't have a clue of what a *signature* was until being on this forum and I haven't a clue how to do it. So I would need some help with that, if possible and, if this suggestion is do-able.

Leslie

I think having links on other bonsai sites will be good because even i didnt know about the site until my friend told me about it

Hi joncoh101,

I found this site very easily simply be googling "Bonsai". Because of the name of the this site..."Bonsai Empire", it was in the top five listed out of many pages of other related sites available.

When I joined this site about three weeks ago there was very little action going on. Since then, the number of new members and the amount of activity has exploded! Word-of-mouth is one excellent source of "spreading the word" and I feel, others who are keenly interested in the art of Bonsai and, who have a computer, will find us.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

Leslie

joncoh101 wrote:

I think having links on other bonsai sites will be good because even i didnt know about the site until my friend told me about it

I agree in some ways. However, these need to be good quality links. Just adding them to allsortzs of free link farms is going to do more harm then good.

The site now has a pagerank of 5 out of 10 (www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php). This makes it a very well-repected site by google. It has 99 sites linking to itself: www.alexa.com/site/linksin/bonsaiempire.com

People come from:
% of Unique Visits Upstream Site
50.00% google.com
31.25% facebook.com
18.75% google.com.au

And go to:
% of Unique Visits Downstream Site
62.50% google.com
18.75% facebook.com
18.75% google.es

All in all, not bad at all.

I think there is no need to worry about site popularity. The main problem will be to get enough good-quality people on the forum to actually be able to help one another. MOst people on this forum seem to have been at bonsai for only a few months to years. not enought to really get a support system going, I am afraid. This could be salvaged by asking some of the better know names to contribute to the site, maybe even try and get some on board as moderators / professional assistents.

I agree Leatherback. Those stats are not very accurate though !
Bonsai Empire's #3 ranking on google.com wasn't achieved easily and involved lots of work. Please don't worry about the linking, Ill do that for you
There's a few initiatives in the pipeline, Ill update you all on this later.

What we can achieve together at this moment is to make this forum as attractive as possible, by:
- Answering questions swift, but most importantly answering questions correctly
- Make everyone feel welcome here
- Invite your friends over
- Invite your friends on Facebook to our Facebook page

I know; THe stats from Alexa are far from accurate, but give a reasonable indication of where the site stands. As for linking: The biggest risk is with people starting to spam fora; That can pretty much kill a site. Might however give it a mention on my dutch gardening website. And when I get to rebuilding my personal site, and adding a blog, will put a bonsaiempire footer on there. (My personal site has a pagerank of 3(10) so reasonably effective in raising this sites level).