My rodbuilder's tutorial website at www.rodbuildingtutorials.com has been up for about 6yrs now and until recently I really didn't think it was lacking much except for maybe some newer material. I have not added anything new for quite some time now as I have not received any new files to upload.

At one time the site averaged 100+ unique visitors per day with an average time sent per visitor being about 10min to 30min or longer and 100's of file downloads daily. The site numbers are not even close to that now with less than half unique visitors and most spending only a couple of minutes or less on the site.

Frankly, the site is NOT up to sell anything or an attempt to get "click thru link" income from advertisements so, from that standpoint I could care less about visitor traffic numbers. I do however, wonder that if with todays use of social media sites like F.B. and Ytube my library has lost it's usefulness.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Raymond Adams
Eventually, all things merge, and a river runs through it..

No, it will never lose its usefulness, but like anything else regarding static information the first year you're going to get the bulk of the traffic as everyone out there checks it out. After awhile, it's just the new people coming in that visit. The same thing happens with new rod building products. The instant something is introduced, it's new to everybody. A year out of the gate, it's only new to those who have just come into the craft.

...................

G'Day Raymond

Your site is a wealth of information for new builders it was a great help to me when I got back into rod building after my retirement after 20 years of work .It allowed me to catch up on everything & the facility certainly is worth hanging onto between your site & Tom's forum & I guess Billy's FB page newcomers have never had it so good .To me it was worth it's weight in gold maybe I'm old fashioned but I like to have my instructions in my hand & they can be referred to at will

Thanks for the site I for 1 still use it from time to time

Regards Baz

Bundeena
NSW Australia

Wow, Raymond, that is a great collection of information. Unfortunately, it's the first time i have seen it. Googling "rod building tutorial," your site comes up first. I don't consider Facebook to be taking away from the traffic. Youtube videos perhaps.

To your question, I don't think its lost its usefulness at all. How have you pushed out the word? If you haven't yet, or even if you did, continued posts to rod building portions of online forums would help spread the word. in my world, i always cruise the rod building sections of 5-7 forums i have bookmarked. the unusual aspect of a forum is it is constantly being visited, with an active community in contrast to a site with links to information. if you could combine those two valuable aspects, you'd have golder gold :)

If you want to see traffic continue, it seems you'd have to market it, keep the site out there in people's minds and encourage regular submissions and let people know of any new developments. People are getting into rod wrapping all of the time, particularly as the off-season approaches each year. If you wanted to keep up with social media, you'd have to do more than create a site and let it sit there. That would take some more effort on your part. I imagine you'd continue this for simply sharing the information. try Twitter or a blog, build a following, re-release links to the individual topics on a regular basis, say once a month or every two weeks. Not sure how effective it would be to the portion of the community who does not embrace such social networking aspects but new people, younger people, yes. Video helps too. But that really opens a time commitment.

You could build a relationship with others too, specifically rod building suppliers at their web sites (I think i noticed a link to rod crafters somewhere...), have them host a link or feature aspects of the tutorials on a regular basis. and not just have a link at the bottom, but feature aspects at times.

I like the subdued look. The book design is a bit cliche but it works, as does the color palette. The font size is too small for my liking but i can easily bump it up in my browser. It seems the default should be bigger though. Perhaps it's different on other platforms. i'm on a mac using firefox. Not sure about the inverted clam shell design for the background. It takes up almost half of the page when i first viewed the site. And some pages are plain white, no background design. That's getting into details, but details are important. this is addressing more than you asked.

Nice job overall though. Thank you for the work! I hope you continue with it.

eric
fresno, ca.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/26/2015 08:07PM by eric zamora.

Hello Raymond.

I have enjoyed your site for many years now and still check it out every once in a while, I have copied most of the tutorials there and keep them handy so I do not need to visit as much as I used to do, but the site is invaluable to the newbies and occasionally I stop in to see if there is anything new.

Your work and time is much appreciated.

Tight Wraps & Keep Up The Good Work.

Thanks Again.

Bob,

New Bern, NC.

Thanks for the replies guys.
I suppose "losing it's usefulness" was a poor choice of words and I should not be surprised with the lack of time most visitors spend as many are just returning to see if anything new to check out and bouncing out when they find new content.

Eric,
When I first launched the site I did make the effort to get the word spread and sort of market the site. After that, I just rely on word of mouth. Again, I never had any interest in making any $ what so ever and I also feared that if folks thought otherwise they would not be willing to submit content for me to post or might ask to be paid for their submission. At one time, after I was unemployed for awhile I did have a few sponsors which enabled me to keep the site up but as soon as I got back on my feet and I gave the sponsors the time they paid for, that process was discontinued. Also, I used to post links to
Thanks for the comments about the format and layout. I'm not web savvy so I was jazzed when I discovered that book layout on the "site builder". After all, the idea was to have a site that was as close to an on-line public library as I could make. No library card required though. hehehehe

Glad to hear folks still find it helpful and enjoy going there. I was inspired to create the site by my late friend Mike Barkley and have no plans to cancel it. I do however hope that I can come up with some new content.

Thanks again guys!

Raymond Adams
Eventually, all things merge, and a river runs through it..

If you need some help with new content I am up for that. I am sure others would be too. Let me know if you have some idea's as things you might want to share. I can take the time to do youtube videos or picture step by steps if needed.

Thanks Jimmy!

There are lots of U-tube videos and or channels I could link to but I try and stay away from to much re-directing to other sites. My site was created at a time before personal media sites became popular for sharing tutorials and videos. The only way we had to share our tutorial files was to let folks know and then email them to any who requested them and of course that usually required tons of emails. My site fixed that problem and made it easy for creator and user.

Anyone who wishes to share anything about rod building can make a tutorial ( PDF, Word, Excell, video, MP3 ) and I will post it in the Library giving credit to the maker.

Part of the problem I have now with getting new content for my Library site is folks would rather use their own Utube, FB, or other social media page to post their tutorials instead of submitting them to my Library. Just sign of the times.

Raymond Adams
Eventually, all things merge, and a river runs through it..

Ray,
I've both used and referred your site to others and have been appreciative of the info it contains.
Perhaps if your website was more interactive, it would garner more interest.
One site that has gone away was the site for guide and component weights.
Another possibility is an interactive guide placement. There are several others.
I've several spreadsheets I utilize for my own builds I could submit.
Most will need tweaking to increase user friendliness since they were written for my own use.

If I can be any assistance let me know.

Gene Moore

Ray
You got a great site there
Maybe if you just come here once in a while and ask or just tell that it is there people will think of it more
Once a month should do it --- Got to advertise

Bill - willierods.com

Raymond,

That is the cool part actually. They can put it on your site. Increase the amout of times people watch thier video and still increase the amount of return visits to your site at the same time. If you can edit your site so you can embed youtube videos, people can watch them from your site and never be redirected.

Downloadable PDFs are great, but these days, video is what people are used to using and seeing. And video really helps in relaying the how-to information. Once a source passes your criteria in quality and with permission of course, you could embed their youtube videos onto your pages just as Jimmy said.

eric
fresno, ca.

Nice resource, bookmarked & thanks

After some looking into, I'm not able to embed audio or video files. I can place just about any file on the server for folks to download but my storage allotment is limited. Just a few video files would put me at my cap....bummer....looks like links are my best option for videos as the upgraded storage cost is out of the question.

Raymond Adams
Eventually, all things merge, and a river runs through it..

Raymond, I've found your library to be helpful on many occasions. Thank you for your efforts. Lynn