[Jacob]

Upon launching Cashgamers.net last year, I had seen gradual progress with its overall popularity. The amount of daily viewers coming was continually growing, and I was achieving monetary success with the amount of commission I was receiving for signing up players onto King & WorldWinner. However, as of recent -- Cashgamers has not seen progress in the amount of daily viewers coming in. We're as popular as ever, at about 400 daily viewers...but we've been at this threshold for a few months now. Though the economic downturn may somehow play a role in the stagnation of the site, I personally believe that the ultimate success of the site sits with me and everyone else who has helped this site grow thus far.

As a leader, I decided to approach this problem using the framework given by The Leadership Challenge – a book that I read for one of my leadership classes. I've outlined what I need to do using the book's "five practices of exemplary leadership."

Inspiring a New Vision –
The original vision I had intended for Cashgamers needs to be re-evaluated. Though I initially kept close to building a website that was in alignment with the vision of providing tips and tutorials to gamers, I have somewhat strayed away from that goal by focusing on growing the forum community within the website. What can I say, I freakin' love you guys and chatting with you all is a lot more fun than recording games to do YouTube tutorials. I need to evaluate if the original vision of providing help to gamers is in alignment with the direction I envision the website to take now. This is not a solo decision -- everyone's opinion on what they'd like this site to develop into is much needed and I'm totally open to ideas and feedback. If we're no longer going to primarily focus on providing help to new gamers, I may need to redefine the vision of the site so that we have a clear sense of what objectives need to be set for the future.

Collaboration With Everyone Here

Once we have the vision defined, I will collaboratively work with all of you make the website’s vision come true. I'll always be listing to your opinions and views of what needs to be done for the site to work towards our vision.

Modeling the Way –

Along with re-evaluating the website’s vision, the values and purposes of Cashgamers need sto be reviewed. I have not put much effort into defining the goals of the website since it had originally launched. I will conduct a fun exercise with you guys of brainstorming words that you describe the website’s current values and intentions. It is important to clarify values so that decisions being made for the website are choices that are in the interest of growth. With the right values in place, we can make decisions that will lead to growth for the website, and ultimately get more people posting on here.

Challenge the Process –
As of this year, I did not have much success in signing people up for King and WorldWinner. However, we recently promoted SkillAddiction on here, and saw incredible results with the amount of people signing up to play. My conclusion to the influx of people signing up is that I had already promoted WorldWinner and King to a near saturated level – everyone on here has already signed up for them months ago. With the advent of a new site to win money from, players caught attention and excitedly signed up to try out the new site. Thus, I should continue to seek new gaming websites for you guys to play on. That way, we'll keep everyone more engaged with new gaming sites to win money from.

Though I did not earn much commission earlier this year for the two major gaming websites I had advertised, I was too afraid to take a risk and stop promoting them in turn for trying out other advertisers. I will experiment with removing the banners of WorldWinner and King in a couple days. My fear of trying out a new advertising strategy was irrational – there is little risk in trying something new when the previous plan did not work. I have realized this fact after reading The Leadership Challenge, and I will experiment what I thought would be a huge risk.

Improving the Forum Experience

I personally believe that I am already proficient in acknowledging the success of others, along with celebrating victories shared among my website’s community. However, I will push myself to be even more involved with the online community here. I will try my best to write out posts on my forum that are more thoughtful and encourage more discussion among everyone. Instead of writing 1-2 sentence responses to posts being made by members (due to being pressed for time), I will find a way to take more time in responding to posts and enhance the overall community experience of the forum.

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What do you guys think? Are there any overall improvements you feel should be made to the forum, or any ideas that could be implemented to better your experience on here? Anything new you'd like featured on the site?