You might have noticed that back in June the article posting on FCP.co slowed right down to a stop. It had been slowing down for a few months, but Ronny’s article about the Watchtower of China has been topping the page for a fair few months. So what happened?
As you probably know from seeing my image under articles, I’ve been in charge of the site from the day it started back when we were all running FCP7 and FCPX hadn’t even been previewed at NAB! That’s a long time to keep a website active.
Keeping a news site going takes a huge amount of time and money. The latter we had as we still get great support from long-term advertisers, the former was the problem.
It had come to the point where my family were the losers, they didn’t see much of me when I was out editing and then the spare time I did have was taken up keeping FCP.co going. It is a virtual Tamagotchi, requiring constant attention to keep it alive. BTW I’ve only just found out that Tamagotchi means ‘Egg Watch’ in Japanese!
So, I took the decision over the Summer to spend time with my wife and children and not stare at a screen during the holidays or into the small hours. It has really helped and put a lot of things back into perspective, including FCP.co.
It isn’t going to die like a neglected egg watch, hopefully the reverse, but this time on a slightly different footing and that’s why I’m asking for help.
I want the site to be much more community focused; have more articles from more sources; more info; more interactivity; well, more of everything really!
That’s why I’m getting help running the site. Iain Anderson has already stepped up and you will see more from him on a regular basis, there are others we are talking to as well. You will start to see new articles being posted as the site slowly ramps back up to speed between now and Christmas.
During the last design overhaul, we implemented a feature that allows users to load a story from the front page. Please get in touch if you would like to submit a story this way.
One of the things that has convinced me to revitalise the site are the amazing Google stats from when the site was inactive. As of today we have just under 50,000 unique users visiting the site per month, that’s quite a big audience and shows the demand is there. And of course, the Forum just seems to have a life of its own and grows every day.
However, I’m looking at the long-term sustainability of the site, so if you would like to help out, please let me know. Drop me an email: editor (@) fcp.co.
We are obviously very keen to hear from advertisers who would like to reach our audience and we are also looking to start up a Patreon page to help as well.