Happy New Year to Members Old & New

As I look back on 2008, and forward to 2009, I am excited at how iStadia has developed as a community and how it could, if we all put a little into it. These are some personal thoughts about iStadia.

A Year of Progress

We've grown considerably this year - almost hitting the 900 members mark. Unfortunately I can't remember how many we had at the start of the year but I'm confident that next year we will multiply the membership in 2009 rather than just grow it.

We are now bringing in over 7000 unique visitors a month, with over 25, 000 page views. Compared to last year, we are bringing in more than triple the number of visitors, and more than double the page views.

Of course, the economic environment is hard for everyone in business just now, and I can speak for both Keith and myself when I say that we are grateful for the support of our premium members. I know that they can gain a great deal of benefit from their membership, but as we are a niche site and not a Facebook or a Linked In, subscriptions are important to our survival and growth. Funding is hard to come by, as it is for everyone, and this means that we can't always develop things and make improvements, or market the site to grow the membership, as quickly as we might like.

The Year Ahead

Looking forward, however, I do think that we've found the 'magic formula' that will take us to another level entirely, by bringing more people to the site and providing more specific focal points for people with common interests to interact - both of which are good news for our professional and business members. These 'communities' should be ready in Q1 of this year, but in the meantime we have set up some pages to start bridging the gap - 'centers'. These pull together related content and should start to bring in more visitors, but are a 'quick and dirty' solution and don't have the sophistication or interaction that we are planning to build.

Why do I think that this will work for everyone? Well, iStadia is currently very much a 'long tail' site. The long tail refers to the markket that is created by the sum total of lots of, say, web pages, that are individually get quite small numbers of visitors but in total get a lot. Visitors are attracted by the content that our members create. The more you create, the more will come, and that's working well.

On the other hand, our homepage is also 'niche'. Although the online networking phenomenon is growing, there are not yet many thousands of people each day searching for 'networking for sport and exercise professionals'!

So we have to fill in the middle. That's where the communities come in. We are confident that we can get high google placements for search terms such as 'sports science' (technically incorrect but more popular than 'sport science', sports business, sports coaching - or even Soccer Performance, Tennis Performance and so on.

Why is that important? Well, we believe that it will bring more people who are interested in these things - potential customers and business contacts - to you, the sport and exercise professionals.

So I'm excited about that.

A Request for 2009

But looking at the site we have, and the community we have, there is one wish that I have for 2009, and that is to unite those who were with us and were active at the start, with those that are currently active.

Looking back to 2007, we got some people interested in iStadia and they came on and started interacting. But we didn't have the numbers and there wasn't much of a response. Some of them have been dormant since. So, if you get to read this, the one thing I ask is that everyone invest a little time to explore iStadia now and again, and to engage with those that are posting good stuff, as well as perhaps posting something yourself.

If everyone takes just a few moments from time to time, then they really will be rewarded with new contacts, new ideas, and possibly new business or even friendship.

Happy New Year!

--
Rob Robson
Co-founder, iStadia.com