My assessment of Cashgamers thus far

[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.

____________________________________

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?

[Raptor]

I think it would be cool to have something interactive for everyone. Like maybe a "Web Game of the Week", in which (every week) a random online game is chosen and everyone can post their score and someone wins at the end of the week. I'm not sure how the games would be chosen - by suggestion - by the winner of the previous game - or always by you? Obviously it would be fun to have prizes or something of acknowledgement, although it would be best kept free and digital prizes at that - whatever that would be?? It might be a little something that would get more random people posting, and possibly a stream of people returning?

[Grengoddess]

this is a skillgamer forum yet there are not games here! i want a forum arcade

[Jacob]

I will get a forum arcade in here today. I haven't done it before because I've researched that its CPU usage can shut a forum down...but hey, we won't know for sure until we try, right?

And with an arcade up, we'll definitely have a "game of the week" contest. Stay tuned.

Great ideas guys, keep em' coming!

[Flignats]

Help with skill games, advice, ect is what first brought me here :\

[Renaldo Moon]

I lol'ed

Someone needs to read their MSN Messenger chat history from Jan 08-09

[theartsyone]

If it is not already apparent, I'm opinionated and pretty verbose so here's my two-cents

I found this site whilst googling a particular game so my initial interest was the sifting through the threads with game tips. I registered because I noticed familiar user names from skill game sites I was already signed up for so the second attraction was interacting with other gamers. I don't know how far away you should veer from continuing to provide tips/tutorials/videos/etc. about the games because that sort of feels like the glue that holds this place together. I also felt confident that the videos/tips etc., listed here were from reputably sources whereas just surfing youtube can yield some really great videos by cheaters. I was a familiar with a lot the usernames and there stats from different sites so I knew they weren't BS/cheaters and could trust the information. That is something that's not really played up but it could be--basically people get information from experienced gamers with good insight. One idea; gamers love being #1 so anything to commemorate top players here, I think would be fun. Perhaps a little quasi-fame would push that expert to be as chatty as myself or share more videos/tips. Even though bragging is emphasized here, it's a shame that most just announce top scores and not share the "how I did" stories. Maybe people are afraid that others will capitalize off a person's diligently earned practice?? I dunno, but bragging with more detail would really be nice. Plus I think having a community with resident experts is generally a good way to attract the masses as well as more experts.

I didn't know that a focus here was referring players to King and WW. I was already a member to both of sites so I didn't even pay attention to the banners. In truth, King and WW are huge and THE skill gaming sites so they can found through hundred of gaming sites as well just through a basic search--good for you for being some kind of affiliate (per say) but it seems pretty difficult to attract a newbie who hadn't already visited King/WW before they came here. Not sure what tags are for this site but at one point I saw an ad for King on TV--kind of hard to compete with that. But obviously, one way to counter the drop in referrals is to refer other/smaller skill gaming sites. I didn't know about SA or Dukebox so I think just keeping current list with all the great skill gaming sites would cover the both the newbie and people who are burned out with the skill gaming giants.

I think this little arcade was great addition, I wish there was a quick little word game on there but ultimately it is very appropriate to have some games on site dedicated to gamers

And that is all folks!

[khassa]

Well this is a place for Professional players as this place comprises of skilled games..So definitely some games must be managed weekly to have a championship so that the people will get more and more aware of this website...also some promotion need to be done at some social community websites like facebook, orkut and all where they can know that this place is a gmaing place and they can try their skills here...Well some adventurous games must be launched so that people get involved in it more and more and can enjoy there stay here by getting more involved in it...

[Grengoddess]

its not important....but i think more emoticons and the addition of spoiler tags to the forum would be a nice touch

[Jacob]

Originally Posted by Grengoddess

its not important....but i think more emoticons and the addition of spoiler tags to the forum would be a nice touch

I'll look up more emoticons today, shouldn't be hard.

Spoiler tags? Why would we need em'? Oh, I know why...

<spoiler>WORLDWINNER CANCELED THE W3 WOF TOURNAMENT AHAHAHAHAHAHA SUCKS FOR YOU ALL</spoiler>

Am I doing it right?