[Kyrasis6]

An example of some of these dynamics is my own forum/tech site. It started in 2002 on a free community builder type thing, then was moved to it's own domain, then I baught vBulletin and upgraded the whole site. My previous forum bombed when trying to transfer the database into vBulletin so vB only shows 1000 members and 35k posts, my last forum database had 3,000 members and 40k posts. A few years ago another forum website came around and in a matter of 2 or 3 years has 5 or 8 times as many posts. My website has an extensive Tech section, the other site doesn't. When checking my Google-Analytics stats they are any where from 50% to 300%+ better than the comparison sites. We only average a new member once every couple days but get over a hundred new unique visitors a day from search engines and a bounce rate that hovers between 13-28%. Every now and then I'll put up a page with a survey for people to fill out and email to me and I get flooded with responses from people who say they've been readers since 2002 and NEVER logged on or posted because they always find the information they need on the site.

Not all is as it seems.