The RavishU Memorial Contest - Victor: LaLia

[Claire]

And we have a winner! @LaLia won the RavishU Memorial Contest!

[Shocker]

I already sent LaLia my congrats to a deserved victory. But I'd also like to point out that we had 10 people voting of 44 members that's 22.7% and a considerable higher percentage than I have seen before. So my thanks to everybody who took the time to read and vote.

[LaLia]

I already sent LaLia my congrats to a deserved victory. But I'd also like to point out that we had 10 people voting of 44 members that's 22.7% and a considerable higher percentage than I have seen before. So my thanks to everybody who took the time to read and vote.

Interesting that this is a good turnout compared to others. I actually thought it was a shame and disappointing that 32 people didn't participate at all. We need more active members, otherwise it will be difficult to keep the forum alive in the long term, and I found the turnout rather sobering.

[Shocker]

I already sent LaLia my congrats to a deserved victory. But I'd also like to point out that we had 10 people voting of 44 members that's 22.7% and a considerable higher percentage than I have seen before. So my thanks to everybody who took the time to read and vote.

Interesting that this is a good turnout compared to others. I actually thought it was a shame and disappointing that 32 people didn't participate at all. We need more active members, otherwise it will be difficult to keep the forum alive in the long term, and I found the turnout rather sobering.

Don’t let that dishearten you, it’s simply human nature. People come here, or any site, sign up and are never seen again. Others lurk in the shadows forever. Let’s take those participating actively as the blessing that they are.

[Claire]

I would like to reflect a bit on the contest now that it is over.

I am disappointed that we didn't have more than three stories that people could vote for, but given that this forum is young and the overall activity level is very low I was not surprised by this.

When I saw how RavishU had handled its contests in the past, I always wanted to do this better: Put the contest front and center on the page, advertise it via board announcements, have the participating stories clearly marked as entries for the contest, create backlinks to the contest thread within each story thread. And it worked like a charm. The contest thread is by far the most viewed thread on the entire forum with 690 views right now as I am writing this post. And to make clear to you how large that is: The Valentine's Day 2025 Quickie Contest thread on RavishU had only 624 views from January 21 to February 11 on a forum that had at least 10 times the daily traffic compared to Ravishment Academy right now. What you can see there is a leaner forum structure and I think somewhat decent advertising for the contest at work.

But that is not the only thing the contest did. It is currently the main reason why anybody finds this forum. The following three screenshots show data from Google Search Console:



This one here shows how often Google shows the forum to people. Impressions tell you how often a site shows up in a search. Clicks tell you how often those impressions were clicked. The Click-Trough-Rate (CTR) is just the ratio of Clicks divided by Impressions which is very good for a very new niche forum like ours at 27.8%.




This second screenshot shows you what the most popular searches were that lead to impressions and clicks for the forum. 7 out of the top 10 searches that find us are RavishU related. And the contest is the main reason why this link between RavishU and us exists.




This third screenshot shows what pages of the forum people landed on when they clicked on a search that showed us. Those URLs ending with t=190 are the contest thread. 190 is the topic ID of the contest thread. There is another URL in the top 10 most visited pages that ends with p=799. p=799 is the post ID of the first post of the contest thread, so essentially another link to the contest thread.


@Nickamano would not have found us if it weren't for that contest and that is likely true for some other new accounts we see here as well.




For the next contest, I hope that it will have a similar effect. By naming it "Ravished in a Flash" I hope to strengthen the connection between this forum and the word ravished or ravishment independent from RavishU. That final screenshot above shows that Google has already found the new contest thread. Once we create the threads for the contest entries, it will hopefully reinforce the connection to the new contest thread and tell search engines that this is important.

So overall, the contest was a tremendous success for the forum. Chances are that without it, the forum would already be dead and that it played a huge role in keeping some level of activity alive.

[LaLia]

Interesting statistics

I think we think alike, which is why I immediately suggested the next contest with the May 1st theme. It seems we're doing a good job of advertising it, and we've had a steady stream of new registrations over the past few days.

But, as I already mentioned, I'm also a bit disappointed with the level of participation (Stories and votes). People need to be more aware that 3-4 people can't keep the forum alive in the long run. Apparently, enough people missed RavishU and were happy about a successor. There simply needs to be more of a realization: "If you want the forum to be more than a flash in the pan, then help us."

[Claire]

I gave winner @LaLia and runner-up @Shocker 20 and 10 reputation points respectively. I will from now on make reputation points a standard reward for winning a contest.