I'm tired, I'm leaving ...
When I said that you need to invest in the community and User Groups, you invested in tennis tables. Now we have a lot of average tennis players and no community.
From recent
In the article I want to talk about why I want to close one of my sites - the technical .net community, whose primary goal is to publish technical articles. In general, everything that will be discussed here can be easily extrapolated to many technical resources and technical bloggers of Runet. I removed direct links from the article so that my post is not recognized as an ad.
')
I cannot say that this decision was easy for me, and the decision itself was thought about, probably for the last six months. But you need to recognize an obvious fact: the site has currently ceased to perform community functions. Further activity will not be conducted.
Below I will tell you what, how and why.
The site was created several years ago as a resource for covering the activities of the local User Group. Therefore, the domain name came up with a local one. After some time, the targeting changed twice: first - Ukraine, then - ru- and uanet. Thus, we hoped to expand the audience. And they were not mistaken - after a while the resource received a permanent audience and authors.
It should be noted separately that the founders of both the User Group and the site at that moment were ordinary students, due to which many decisions were not always correct. For example, the domain name could (need) be changed even then, but then who was looking for years ahead?
For several years, several hosters have changed, as well as the last year (a little less) the site works on a new engine, written from scratch. The idea was simple - to learn how to develop applications on new technologies, to gain experience in developing a real project, to experiment (for example, autotriping works with the help of Named Entity Recognition tools), etc. We have always implemented and tested new libraries, approaches, components on the site, and only then offered to use our customers or listeners at IT events.
At the best of times, up to 3-4 unique technical articles per week appeared on the site. Over the past year, this figure has fallen several times.
What goals did we set?
We also set a commercial goal: advertising on the site, press releases for money - in order to become self-sufficient.
So, I am proud that:
In addition, there were some rules that we also did not violate (which I am also proud of)
Yes, we tried to monetize the site somehow, but we didn’t want to hang up the links (although I agreed several times, but the advertisers ’requirements were really quite tense), they put Google AdSense (useless at weak traffic), they turned banner of companies (twice, if I am not mistaken, but my nerves were burned for 200 times), etc. Then it was decided not to waste all these things at all, so that our site was not an overloaded advertising tree.
The first and most important is the need for up-to-date technical content in Russian or Ukrainian. When I had a lot of time, I spent part of this time searching for young and promising authors - at this time the number of articles was less stable and the quality was also on the level. Naturally, this process should be permanent - naturally, the less time there was, the fewer the authors became ready to do something for someone practically free of charge. In addition, before the Ukrainians could take part in programs to support authors, getting some presents for their work - for example, books or Xbox. Let me remind you that some time ago the program was closed for non-residents of Russia. At the same time, the remaining authors almost completely ceased their activities. After all, the motivation was very vague, and the reputation of the site was not so big as to steam over the support of its author column on our site.
Here are some important points:
If to speak even more objectively, you should always look to whom your work may be interesting. Our target audience is IT people, and IT people need everyone, we thought and ... were wrong ...
We are not interested in large online sites due to the small audience (compared to their audience).
We were not interested in companies because in Ukraine there is a doe, in Russia - habr, no one wants to look further. In addition, many representatives of the companies talked tearfully about support, and then, as if punctual Englishmen left, without saying goodbye, and after that they did not get in touch for months. No, positive moments sometimes happened, but they did not affect the big picture.
Microsoft is not really needed at the moment either, because:
For the sake of justice, I should note that MS never dictated what material and in what sentiments should appear on the site, and also always provided bonuses to activists upon request, if such an opportunity existed. For that, in general, thanks.
Well, actually, our readers need us, although we did not reach the critical mass just a little.
I look with envy at stackoverflow.com, dotnetrocks.com, codeproject.com, windowsphonegeek.com and others. And I understand that in Russia and Ukraine there is no such kind and level of resources (and it is unlikely to be in the near future, although I want to be mistaken). According to active technical bloggers, I notice that they have become much less likely to write and much less; many have migrated to English-language resources or written in English.
The second point is technical, and this is hosting, domain, engine development, bug fixing, support, answers to questions, help to authors (strangely, but 90% of IT people could not fully master markdown, and what can we say then for TEX or XSLT? ??), and a simple banal support.
Since we are conducting another technical site, where there is not less work, and more, we speak about 4-5 times a month across the CIS, and also work, so another resource that has never been self-sufficient, this is superfluous work that, as we have seen, no one wants to do. A side effect is SEO, i.e. separation of PR, TCI, as well as other parameters, which is bad for search results.
The third point is professional. For some reason it seemed to me that if a person maintains his blog, writes normal articles, etc., then sooner or later he should be in the field of vision of more famous publications that should be interested in such people. I was wrong. For 4 years, no known resource on its own initiative offered me or other authors to work as a freelance correspondent. And it equally does not work both for our resource, and for a habr and other known resources.
But foreign magazines offered to write articles for them. Refused, because it took time, which took free content, and also because of the need to wait some time from the moment of writing the article to its release and, in fact, receiving feedback.
Companies, blogging on Habr, all the time went into minus, instead of asking (hire) a person from the same Habr, who could do it faster, better, more productive. The companies, having ignited the idea of ​​creating their own "elite" community, burned out at zero-second or third meeting, without consulting even those who are in the "topic". Even after offering help, even after offering free help ...
A very significant example is msdeveloper.ru, which published a technical (free) magazine, and, in fact, was an analogue of our resource. So far, unfortunately, has not taken off, and the author recently left the game, selling the magazine to the current owner.
Disagreements about targeting - the fifth point - someone advised to make the resource narrowly focused, someone - common. As a result, whatever one may say, some part of the “board of directors” was not pleased. So we lost some more good authors.
If you get the impression that the previous part of the article was written on behalf of D'Artagnan, you may be right about something. To correct this situation I want to add a few words.
Judging the project as a startup, I also made a lot of mistakes. Lack of a business plan, development strategy, availability of a backup development strategy, etc. - all this prevented the development of a resource to a normal scale.
But my most important mistake was to attract friends to the project, because of which there was a lot of personal and professional mix. Many are able to perceive such situations normally, but sometimes situations come to the interpersonal level. Yes, sometimes I myself could flare up and say something extra. In any case, this also did not add constructive. But, as elsewhere, without complications and errors does not happen and thanks to such situations we all got some experience.
Our possible further actions: we will transfer the content to another resource, making one big resource, with some sections going to the past. We will not close the resource tomorrow, it will happen, maybe in a week, maybe in a month - as soon as it takes some time. Perhaps we will even make some offline backups. In general, this is a matter for discussion.
Perhaps I would have sold the resource to someone, but I doubt that in the current situation someone needs it.
In any case, I want to say that sometimes in order to move forward, you need to give up something. And experience, as they say, you will not drink :)
I'd like to see truly technical resources at the level of codeproject or stackoverflow in the CIS, and IT specialists and companies are happy to support similar initiatives.
Thanks for attention!
From recent
In the article I want to talk about why I want to close one of my sites - the technical .net community, whose primary goal is to publish technical articles. In general, everything that will be discussed here can be easily extrapolated to many technical resources and technical bloggers of Runet. I removed direct links from the article so that my post is not recognized as an ad.
')
I cannot say that this decision was easy for me, and the decision itself was thought about, probably for the last six months. But you need to recognize an obvious fact: the site has currently ceased to perform community functions. Further activity will not be conducted.
Below I will tell you what, how and why.
A bit of background
The site was created several years ago as a resource for covering the activities of the local User Group. Therefore, the domain name came up with a local one. After some time, the targeting changed twice: first - Ukraine, then - ru- and uanet. Thus, we hoped to expand the audience. And they were not mistaken - after a while the resource received a permanent audience and authors.
It should be noted separately that the founders of both the User Group and the site at that moment were ordinary students, due to which many decisions were not always correct. For example, the domain name could (need) be changed even then, but then who was looking for years ahead?
For several years, several hosters have changed, as well as the last year (a little less) the site works on a new engine, written from scratch. The idea was simple - to learn how to develop applications on new technologies, to gain experience in developing a real project, to experiment (for example, autotriping works with the help of Named Entity Recognition tools), etc. We have always implemented and tested new libraries, approaches, components on the site, and only then offered to use our customers or listeners at IT events.
At the best of times, up to 3-4 unique technical articles per week appeared on the site. Over the past year, this figure has fallen several times.
What goals did we set?
- the creation of a technical resource;
- creating a container resource for all User Groups;
- development of the IT industry (well, the young were naive too - which is cunning :)
We also set a commercial goal: advertising on the site, press releases for money - in order to become self-sufficient.
What am i proud of
So, I am proud that:
- many “activists” thanks to the site, as well as the events that we carried out, found high-paying jobs;
- many of our “activists” were able to attend various events for free in Ukraine and in neighboring countries;
- many "activists" were able to obtain prestigious international titles - MSP, MVP, etc .;
- the site helped and inspired other people to create User Groups and communities (it’s a pity that many of them are now inactive - see the reasons further);
- I was recognized at international events by guys from the USA in a T-shirt with the site logo;
- we have collected a large collection of free e-books and cheat sheets;
- thanks to the site, many good people met many other good people;
- I personally received extensive knowledge in the field of hosting, DNS, SEO, configuration and deployment, support, etc., which qualitatively influenced and affects my current main activity.
In addition, there were some rules that we also did not violate (which I am also proud of)
- we didn’t block or delete comments that we don’t like, accounts or articles (except for outright spam);
- we did not introduce karma and other measures for users, giving the opportunity to realize ourselves both to novice developers and highly professional specialists;
- never published links to pirated content, cracks, etc., on the contrary, they strongly promoted BizSpark, DreamSpark and other loyalty programs, allowing to use paid software legally;
- we never poured the user database (over 2000) to third parties;
- we rejected the opportunity to work under a specific company, although such an offer came only once and for a long time;
- we did not abuse the mailing list (read - spam), sending only important news and then very rarely;
- We used the technique called “holivar” very rarely (although honestly I would say that we used it), these days the influx was greater than when an article was published that was of high quality and necessary for IT people.
Yes, we tried to monetize the site somehow, but we didn’t want to hang up the links (although I agreed several times, but the advertisers ’requirements were really quite tense), they put Google AdSense (useless at weak traffic), they turned banner of companies (twice, if I am not mistaken, but my nerves were burned for 200 times), etc. Then it was decided not to waste all these things at all, so that our site was not an overloaded advertising tree.
Actually, what went wrong
The first and most important is the need for up-to-date technical content in Russian or Ukrainian. When I had a lot of time, I spent part of this time searching for young and promising authors - at this time the number of articles was less stable and the quality was also on the level. Naturally, this process should be permanent - naturally, the less time there was, the fewer the authors became ready to do something for someone practically free of charge. In addition, before the Ukrainians could take part in programs to support authors, getting some presents for their work - for example, books or Xbox. Let me remind you that some time ago the program was closed for non-residents of Russia. At the same time, the remaining authors almost completely ceased their activities. After all, the motivation was very vague, and the reputation of the site was not so big as to steam over the support of its author column on our site.
Here are some important points:
- over the past few years, the number of pops on the Internet has increased several times - in particular, this is due to the fact that many modern companies have chosen the way of consumerisation, which has increased the demand for content for blondes, in which we didn’t want to be and we don’t want to be;
- a large growth of social networks, in fact, supplanted many of the usual channels of access to information (subscriptions, RSS, daily visits to 5-8 sites, as it was before). Actually, there is no need to go to sites now, because sites can themselves publish interesting links on social networks, and only the “most liked” ones can be viewed. I am already silent for the average session time - it has decreased by several times, because you still need to read twitter, linkedin, classmates, VKontakte, facebook, sign in and check out, etc. Sorry, but there is no time to read big and smart articles ...
- many act according to the principle: “I don’t want to think a lot, I need bread (in the amount of several thousand ye) and circuses (holivars, fotozhaby, bashorg, snot, drool, scandals, investigations)”. We have seen how many serious offline publications have closed - for example, Computerra, CO, many of the publications from the top 10 have problems with advertisers and conversions, problems with RSDN Magazine, etc. ... Where are the small resources ...
- the need to write a lot now for competition. When you are not working on a full time project, it is not possible to achieve this;
- good article you need to write a few hours, or even days. A large and good article is not necessarily a lot of views and reviews. Holivar is another matter ...
If to speak even more objectively, you should always look to whom your work may be interesting. Our target audience is IT people, and IT people need everyone, we thought and ... were wrong ...
We are not interested in large online sites due to the small audience (compared to their audience).
We were not interested in companies because in Ukraine there is a doe, in Russia - habr, no one wants to look further. In addition, many representatives of the companies talked tearfully about support, and then, as if punctual Englishmen left, without saying goodbye, and after that they did not get in touch for months. No, positive moments sometimes happened, but they did not affect the big picture.
Microsoft is not really needed at the moment either, because:
- there is no funding on the UG and the community (at least in Ukraine, in Russia, as far as I can see, the situation is slightly better, but this is not easier for the Ukrainian resource);
- need love konsyumerov, but we do not have them - we have (as it were) a technical resource;
- we have MS-loyal users, and MS is important to conquer new horizons (you need to make a website on Android :).
For the sake of justice, I should note that MS never dictated what material and in what sentiments should appear on the site, and also always provided bonuses to activists upon request, if such an opportunity existed. For that, in general, thanks.
Well, actually, our readers need us, although we did not reach the critical mass just a little.
I look with envy at stackoverflow.com, dotnetrocks.com, codeproject.com, windowsphonegeek.com and others. And I understand that in Russia and Ukraine there is no such kind and level of resources (and it is unlikely to be in the near future, although I want to be mistaken). According to active technical bloggers, I notice that they have become much less likely to write and much less; many have migrated to English-language resources or written in English.
The second point is technical, and this is hosting, domain, engine development, bug fixing, support, answers to questions, help to authors (strangely, but 90% of IT people could not fully master markdown, and what can we say then for TEX or XSLT? ??), and a simple banal support.
Since we are conducting another technical site, where there is not less work, and more, we speak about 4-5 times a month across the CIS, and also work, so another resource that has never been self-sufficient, this is superfluous work that, as we have seen, no one wants to do. A side effect is SEO, i.e. separation of PR, TCI, as well as other parameters, which is bad for search results.
The third point is professional. For some reason it seemed to me that if a person maintains his blog, writes normal articles, etc., then sooner or later he should be in the field of vision of more famous publications that should be interested in such people. I was wrong. For 4 years, no known resource on its own initiative offered me or other authors to work as a freelance correspondent. And it equally does not work both for our resource, and for a habr and other known resources.
But foreign magazines offered to write articles for them. Refused, because it took time, which took free content, and also because of the need to wait some time from the moment of writing the article to its release and, in fact, receiving feedback.
Companies, blogging on Habr, all the time went into minus, instead of asking (hire) a person from the same Habr, who could do it faster, better, more productive. The companies, having ignited the idea of ​​creating their own "elite" community, burned out at zero-second or third meeting, without consulting even those who are in the "topic". Even after offering help, even after offering free help ...
A very significant example is msdeveloper.ru, which published a technical (free) magazine, and, in fact, was an analogue of our resource. So far, unfortunately, has not taken off, and the author recently left the game, selling the magazine to the current owner.
Disagreements about targeting - the fifth point - someone advised to make the resource narrowly focused, someone - common. As a result, whatever one may say, some part of the “board of directors” was not pleased. So we lost some more good authors.
Instead of conclusion
If you get the impression that the previous part of the article was written on behalf of D'Artagnan, you may be right about something. To correct this situation I want to add a few words.
Judging the project as a startup, I also made a lot of mistakes. Lack of a business plan, development strategy, availability of a backup development strategy, etc. - all this prevented the development of a resource to a normal scale.
But my most important mistake was to attract friends to the project, because of which there was a lot of personal and professional mix. Many are able to perceive such situations normally, but sometimes situations come to the interpersonal level. Yes, sometimes I myself could flare up and say something extra. In any case, this also did not add constructive. But, as elsewhere, without complications and errors does not happen and thanks to such situations we all got some experience.
Our possible further actions: we will transfer the content to another resource, making one big resource, with some sections going to the past. We will not close the resource tomorrow, it will happen, maybe in a week, maybe in a month - as soon as it takes some time. Perhaps we will even make some offline backups. In general, this is a matter for discussion.
Perhaps I would have sold the resource to someone, but I doubt that in the current situation someone needs it.
In any case, I want to say that sometimes in order to move forward, you need to give up something. And experience, as they say, you will not drink :)
I'd like to see truly technical resources at the level of codeproject or stackoverflow in the CIS, and IT specialists and companies are happy to support similar initiatives.
Thanks for attention!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/147044/
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