February Workouts (General)

by Don Lester, Wednesday, February 08, 2006, 07:34 (7011 days ago) @ siegrun

? This is incredible! It seems to have stopped - 1 month before the year is
? up! After this month, the site would be practically looking after itself.
? But may be nobody joined after the price was put up too high?
? I'd love to know, why nobody answers our emls.
? g l to yous all, siegrun

Signs of this have been coming for a very long time. If you read the previous posts here (which won't take all that long since there are only a few hundred), the writing on the wall has been there since the beginning.

There has really only been spotty engagement by Tony Kosten and Nathan Goldberg. Nobody else involved with the site has ever done anything other than post their content whenever the whim struck them.

I had such high hopes for this site, which I have stated many times. I have tried, more times than I should have, to communicate to those running the show here that a successful web-based business still requires all the same customer service commitments that a regular retail business does.

It seems pretty obvious the hope was to put up a site that has a lot of static content, not differentiate it from the dozens of other sites out there that do pretty much the same thing for free, and then somehow a large customer base would magically appear and start sending them lots of money.

Well, to no great surprise, that isn't happening. As we near the end of the first year they are now approaching the biggest juncture in their business and probably don't even know it. All the most interested customers they have, the ones that expressed interest and signed up before the site even opened, are now going to have to decide (if the site even stays open) whether or not to renew their subscription.

One of the most basic laws in business is that it is much easier to keep a customer than it is to replace one. As shocking as it is to watch, they are making the decision for all of us.