How we are going

[Admin]

Over the last 12 months we have had a very rocky road here at Aircraft Pilots. For most of last year I was ill and unable to focus on the site with a clear head and make rational decisions.

 

In October/November last year I had to make some very hard decisions for the betterment of the site and whilst some users were unhappy about that, I can now show you the figures that resulted from those unfortunate and undesirable actions:

 

 

In the above site statistics what can't be seen (it would look far too squashed up) is the forum's Threads and Posts had bottomed out at an extremely low level after earlier in the year being 2 to 3 times higher then what they ended up being from July to Nov. The site was going downhill and those hard decisions had to be made.

 

It took a month to stabilise the site from all the backlash that happened by a handful of users. I then began to manage the site like it was prior to my illness and you can see the results of that style of management that got the site going again.

 

Far more threads and posts began to occur meaning more variety of topics with more interest by users. From the end of Jan to now there has been slight growth but not as much as I would now like to see so I will be taking further steps, very slight ones, to stimulate that growth further to ensure the site provides you with an even greater amount of help and support in your flying endeavours and a greater enjoyment in your use of the site.

 

I want to stress that any changes now will only be slight, as I feel that perhaps all the sites changes of late have been a contributing factor in not achieving a higher rate of growth that I would have liked so any major change is "off" the table. You can be assured of a stable and resourceful site to meet your needs.

 

The other interesting thing is the impact on the site with the change from Recreational Flying to Aircraft Pilots. As Recreational Flying we achieved a world wide web site ranking of around 770,oooth. We lost that when we moved to Aircraft Pilots and had to start again which started us off at around the 10 millionth mark. I am happy to say that we have already, and extremely quickly, clawed our way back to the 1.1 millionth website in the world with the closest aviation website in the Southern Hemisphere being way back at 3.5 millionth (GA only site) and other recreational aviation websites either not ranking at all or 5 and 8 millionth. So Aircraft Pilots is still the number 1 aviation website in the Southern Hemisphere by a long shot and we are still climbing rapidly.

 

 

Another interesting thing is in changing our name we have literally screamed up the charts in the USA with now being the 466,000th website in the US and Aircraft Pilots, as such, has only been going for 1.5 months under that name. So we are making a huge impact in the area of aviation web sites.

 

We currently get around 300, and at times peaking at 450, registered users logging in every single day PLUS, we have around 2,000 "unique" guests visiting the site every single day, which going by the above independent chart, around 28% of those are from the US. We currently have around 8% of registered members from the US and a further 5% from other countries around the world, the remaining 87% of registered users are from Australia. So in essence we are maintaining the Australian flavour for you catering to the Australian aviator's needs whilst at the same time building up the International presence in a slow and managed way. No matter where we put our hat, we are all still aviators.

 

Some of those slight steps that I will be taking with the site soon will be targeting the conversion of visiting guests into registered users to hopefully further fuel the increase in growth for everyone to benefit from greater participation.

 

So there you have a current snapshot of the site figures. Unfortunately I know that the decisions that have to be made at times are not popular, often resulting in a severe dislike of this site and me personally, even to a point of some people's paranoia, but the figures don't lie and my focus has to be on making this site better and well managed for the majority of you and that's what I do. It's funny, even those that leave the site grumpy I see are still coming here almost every day anyway.

 

After all, if the site grows, more and more posts are made creating an enormous single repository of helpful information for all aviators, and someone posts something that saves the life of another user, even the grumpy ones...the job is done.

 

Thanks for listening and please, help this site to help others by posting as much as you can as you never know, your post, your experience, your mishap, your knowledge...just may help someone else and it is better to have it all in a single place for everyone.

 

 

[Admin]

Update...in just over 3 weeks the site has continued to climb in a dramatic way compared to other sites, who I may add have actually gone backwards in the millions. As you climb higher in the ranking it gets harder and harder compared to being way down in the ranks however in just over 3 weeks we have broken through the millionth and climbed an extra nearly 250k places to now being ranked at the 896k website in the world (ranked 422k in the US):

 

 

This is an extraordinary achievement and why this site gets thousands of visitors every single day and continues to grow...also a direct result of 8 years of hard work, performed all day nearly every single day of the year by some great people who know their stuff...I would like to say thanks to not only them but all of you users who contribute, helping each other out, helping to make this site the most popular and resourceful home of pilots, aircraft and aviation

 

 

[Admin]

Another 9 days have passed and we are still climbing up the charts...naturally the higher you go the slower and harder it gets but we are still the number 1 aviation forum site in the Southern Hemisphere by a long long long shot...thousands of unique visitors every single day and we have even climbed up the US charts putting us at the 401k website across the entire USA...and how many millions and millions of websites are there just in the US?