Starting last week we have seen a fairly larger jump in visitors to the site. I chalked some of it up to the Playing Mantis/RC2 news that has been happening, but it has been steadily increasing. Considering that we should normally be at a much lower traffic with summer in full swing, this seemed unusual.

In the course of a normal year (trends we have seen over the past 10 years or so) we see traffic drop about 30% from the highs of February/March to the lows in August/Sept. Traffic this past week has been almost 50% higher then our previous high in March. In fact this whole year has been unusual in that our traffic has been pretty much flat since March with little or no drop off.

This week I was informed that HobbyTalk was mentioned as a "must visit" hobby site in Smart Computing magazine in a "Take Your Hobby To The Net" article. 6 sites were named and included the likes of Hobby People, Hobby Lobby, HobbyTown and Rocketry Online. That’s pretty good company to be in!

Generally, this type of promotion only lasts a short time but it does give us good exposure to a lot of new visitors. Hopefully some of them will stick around and join in on the fun we have there. Thanks to everyone for making HobbyTalk a great site and a must visit place for your favorite hobbies!

Very interesting information Hankster. I always thought the boards were pretty busy all the time. I'm not one to check how many are on, and how many lurkers, how many of us log in, at any given time, but I guess someone does.

That exposure should carry into the fall with the RC news, and the Lightning Fest coming soon. I, for one hope to see alot of new members, both on this board, as well as meet everyone for the first time at Fest! (...I can't wait)

Congratulations Hank! I hope HobbyTalk was mentioned on it's merits as a well-moderated board with an interesting, and for the most part reasonable, group of hobbyists!

well jeez, if I'd known we were under the spotlight I would've behaved!

Hank, at Dirtrunners we have been getting between eight and twelve new people every race. We only race every other Sunday. We promote Hobbytalk all the time as a way of getting some answers to those questions you have when you are working on your stuff in the middle of the night. There seems to be people on line at all hours. Our club has really gelled this year. We have been averaging over 125 entries at every race. This on a club level.This past sunday we had an all time high of 136 entrues. We are a club so there isn't that racer atmosphere all the time.We are out to have a ggod time doing what we love. Anybody interested can check us out at www.Dirtrunners.com. Hank, keep up the good work. We all feel that this forum is great...................WAYNE

This is great news, Hankster! Since I was introduced to the alluring online world of hobby knowledge, what... four years ago, (has it been that long? :hat: ) I've been to several places like finescale.com & starshipmodeler.com, but you know what? HobbyTalk is always the first place that I go to lurk, post a question or show off my new build. You & all the members here have made this the best place to go & I really feel like this is a comfortable place to call "home".

Great job, Hank. :thumbsup:

That's very cool news! Congratulations!

WOW....I feel special now!!!!

Congrats to Hank and all the members who made HobbyTalk the way it is!

Congrats Hank! That's very cool news.

I agree with Steve, If only I could have known ;)

Great news, thanks for letting us in Hank.

Later, Bret

Thanks everyone for the kind words! While I try to hold down the fort, it's the members that make HobbyTalk what it is!

As a side note, we are still running strong at about 150K page views a day... and this is our slow season... hard telling what will happen as the weather cools down and everyone spends more time on-line.

I build models and have some Diecast and some slot stuff, I enjoy the whole site. HobbyTalk is one of my must see web pages everyday(and middle of the night)! HobbyTalk is Well run and high quality all the way! Live Long and Prosper :)