The decline of Digital Point?

Digital Point is one of the most popular Internet Marketing forums on the internet. With over 230,000 members it has grown rapidly over the past several years. However with such a large forum it is hard to keep everyone happy and within the past year I would say that Digital Points respect and authority over the Internet Marketing field has shrunk. If your not a member at Digital Point you may be wondering why such a large forum seems to be in decline and if you are a member you may already have some sort of idea, either way in this article I shall be explaning my own thoughts about Digital Point Forums and why it is declining.

I joined Digital Point back in November 2007 which may not seem like a very long time when you compare it to Digital Points overall lifespan but it has been enough time for me to realise that Digital Point is not what it used to be.

When I first joined Digital Point I was merely a beginner in the Internet Marketing field, I had little knowledge on any aspect of Internet Marketing but I was ready to read and learn. I was very interested in SEO and the concept of increasing traffic to your website through good search engine rankings and therefore I spent a lot of my time in the SEO section of Digital Point. From the moment I started reading threads within this section it appeared that there were several known experts of the SEO section so obviously I made more effort to read their threads and posts.

After I had spent more time exploring the rather large Internet Marketing forum I discovered the “Proxy Discussion Thread” which has grown over the last year and a half in to a thread which now has over 13,000 replies and 400,000 views an exeptional amount. I quickly became very interested in proxy sites and the well known yet very unrealistic idea of making a decent amount of cash daily with very little effort. With this in mind I set upon creating my first ever website this was to be a proxy site which quickly developed in to a proxy network. Long story short (it isn’t supposed to be my digital point life story) I learnt a lot from Digital Point throughout my first 6 very active months of reading, posting and replying. I had recognised that Digital Point had several visible experts in the sections where I was most active and a lot of the information back then was backed up by several members, it would be well explained and many of the members were exceptionally helpful.

However within the first 6 months of me registering to Digital Point forums I had received several infractions some which I agree with some which I dont. As well as Admins having made some big mistakes in trying to reduce the amount of threads in certain areas of the buy, sell and trade section by introducing the “Below $5 services or products belong in the freebies section” rule. Obviously this would seem a little strange considering the Freebies section is obviously for Freebies not something which you may pay for, however I was mature enough to let this go. Although with the introduction of this new rule my proxy advertising business dried up as fast as you can say “Stupid Fools” from what was making me $400-$500 per month it shrunk to a measely $5-$10 per month. The main annoyance from this was that to be able to get my business back Digital Point Authorities were basically telling me that I had to increase the prices of my services in order to gain my custom back although things would obviously not work this way.

To conclude this section, within the first 6 months of me registering to Digital Point I had realised that although Digital Point was a well established forum the Authorities were still making new rules to handle the rapid growth, the owner of Digital Point seemed to not take much control in their forum, a large amount of “newbies” were registering to the forum, questions would be repeated several times a week and lastly if you ever had a problem or were annoyed with a decision an Authority figure had made it was difficult for you to discuss this with the Authorities or to find out why such a decision was made.

Now I don’t want people to think this article is all about me having a rant as this is not what the article is supposed to be about and to be frank I don’t want to bring down the quality of my blog with an article which may seem like this. The previous couple of paragraphs explain quite common and assumable problems which you may find with a forum which has grown so rapidly as Digital Point has but its definitely the next 6-8 months which has brought on the decline of Digital Point. The previous paragraphs merely explain problems which could of been controlled and eradicated.

After a year or so of me having registered to Digital Point I started to notice that other members were getting annoyed with increasing numbers of newbies asking the same questions, threads which should of been stickied not being, Admins being “power possessed” and perhaps being a little to harsh on people, thread after thread being removed or locked, members trying to take advantage of newbies, scamming, cheating, insulting, general immature behaviour, spamming, the annoying database error and so much more (I could seriously go on for hours). There is so much that is wrong with Digital Point forums that it would take a lot to correct and with out the actual person who owns the forum (Shawn something or other) taking notice and charge of the situation it will keep on declining.

So why do you think Digital Point is declining?

So you may be wondering why I think Digital Point is declining well the previous paragraphs explained briefly some of the issues that Digital Point currently has other than this though I have been taking note of the amount of active members Digital Point has over the past month and I have noticed that it has started to decline.

I started recording the amount of active members in late November and noticed that although the forum had an overall 225,000 members there were only 60,000 members active. Now you maybe thinking well 60,000 members is still a very large amount and I agree but if you take that as a percentage compared to the amount of overall members its almost 33%. Obviously for a forum that has been established for as long as Digital Point has there are going to be the few who lose interest in Internet Marketing and let their account expire and there are going to be others who are stupid and get banned but I wouldn’t expect 66% of those members becoming inactive. So there has to be a problem.

Well in the last 6 weeks I have been analysing the amount of overall members compared to the amount of active members and I have found although the amount of overall members has increased from 225,000 to 239,000 the amount of active members have decreased from 60,600 to 59,500. Although this is only over a 6 week period it is still evidence to show that Digital Point is shrinking. You maybe thinking that its only shrunk by 500 members in the last 6 weeks but if you think about it more you will realise that although 14,000 more people have registering to Digital Point forums they have a growth of -500 members.

Now you maybe wondering well how can this be, whats the cause of this well I think I have a couple of explantions for the lack of growth or well minus growth that Digital Point has been experiencing.

What are the reasons for the minus growth of Digital Point?

The factors that I consider to be influencing the lack of growth in Digital Point are as follows

1. Members are becoming annoyed and are deleting or allowing their accounts to become inactive (now there are too many reasons they could become annoyed for me to list here (Digital Points famous Database error and slow loading speed)).
2. Digital Point Authorities (some of which seem to be power crazy) are banning too many people for stupid little nit picky things. Although the Authorities may only be using 7 day bans or 14 day bans the members that are banned may move on to a different forum. Remember its not like the old days where Digital Point was a breed of its own there are hundreds more Internet Marketing forums some which easily live up to Digital Point.
3. Accounts being suspended pretty similiar to the last point but instead of Authorities banning people they may suspend them instead.
4. Lastly and it probably doesn’t account for that many account deletions but members forget their details or the forum through real life problems or lack of interest.

There are probably several other factors which also help to cause the decline of Digital Point forums but these are the main factors I can think of. However I think the main reason for the decline of Digital Point is the current heirachy so to speak. Admins seem to have full control currently and although I cannot say this with 100% guarantee I don’t think Digital Point’s owner has much interest over the forum as it stands. This creates a big problem if anyone actually wants to ensure Digital Point does not become just a place full of newbies which it is currently on its way towards.

The problem is internal

It is obvious through the research that I have done that the problem is internal because although 13,000 new members had arrived in the last 6 weeks the forum was still 500 members down from 6 weeks previous. So the Internet is still drawn to Digital Point forums and people are still interested in joining the forum to learn however it seems that the more newbies that arrive the more experienced Internet Marketers leave either through their own choice or being forced.

I think the solution to Digital Point’s problems lies in the Internal Structure of its Authority as well as the structure of the overall forum. They need people controlling each section and they need people in control of reading people’s suggestions and writing feedback on the suggestions not just saying there is nothing they can do.

Where else can you go?

Throughout the last year and a half I have seen a lot of people losing interest in Digital Point forums many through annoyance and anger who have decided to retreat some where else, to smaller less clustered forums. I for one have become less active at Digital Point forums and much more active at the new forum I read and post on quite freqeuntly where I feel more comfortable. Without this turning in to an advertisement for a new forum I would recommend Niche Choppers to anyone who is registered at Digital Point or is interested in Internet Marketing and mainly Affiliate Marketing. By the way the link to Niche Choppers does contain my member referall because I am a part of a current competition but thats nothing to do with why I recommend it or why I have just spent the last hour writing a 2,000 word article on Digital Point.

In conclusion to the article I feel Digital Point has declined some what, however it is definintely not the end for Digital Point. It has so much energy through out the Internet Marketing field still that it continues to pull in new members it has its own gravity so to speak and with this it is able to expand. However with the continuation of problems and situations arising that have not yet been dealt with it is hard to say where Digital Point will be in the future years. As many people who read this blog know, I am a believer that things on the Internet are becoming much more focused and specific and I am not sure if Digital Point fits in to this new wave of niche sites.

I hope you enjoyed this article and I encourage anyone that has read this article to comment and express their own opinion on this topic, whether they are a member of Digital Point or just an avid reader. Thank you and a happy new year.

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