I wrote a fair amount of code and solved some nagging problems tonight. My to-do list is still pretty long, but most of the things on it are fairly easy, as well as time consuming.
The little experiment with a private member forum on CoasterBuzz has energized me a bit, because it demonstrates that there are a fair number of people who do care about the site, and enjoy using it. Those are the people I want to build stuff for.
My goal now is to launch something that represents the new platform, but doesn't necessarily have any new features. It's just so stale, and I can't deal with it anymore! :)
I've had Google Analytics running for a long time now and there's a mountain of data that shows how I'm really doing. Tie that to the ad revenue and I finally have a better idea about what the sites do, and what they might be capable of. I remember when the idea that you could monetize a million page views a month would net you a heap of cash, but that's not the case anymore (not that serving a million pages isn't pretty cool). It's actually inspiring that if I could duplicate the success with a site that has a more broad appeal, I could do better. That's kind of exciting.
For CoasterBuzz, at least, it's not the amount of traffic I want to concentrate on anymore as much as the quality of the traffic. Naturally I see quality traffic as paid members, and I'd like to have more of them. Forum noise has really shown that popularity isn't synonymous with quality interaction. That's something to keep in mind.
Overall, I feel a little energized today, and that's on five hours of sleep. Alas, the crash is coming, and the bed calls...
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