turning newbies into actives.

Submitted by Rickj on Tue, 06/24/2008 at 6:20am.

i welcome new members through welcome games, but often as not, the game only lasts a few turns and the newcomer looses on time, often after only one move.Stastically , I've done 50 of these games and of these welcome games, 13 went more than one move and 5 more than 5 moves.

Even cutting and pasting a link to my welcome post didn't make anything change.

http://blog.chess.com/Rickj/welcome-to-chesscom

I guess a lot of people join and then forget passwords/drop out. I wonder how many multiple accounts there are on here? A few I'd guess.

The question I'd like to ask is "how can we encourage people to become active?"

I'd take a guess that a high percent of active members are paying the membership in one form or another. What are the statistics for new members per day? and how many of these visit again? and how many of these visit frequently?

» posted in Rickj's Blog

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Comments:

by basicb - 4 months ago
North Carolina United States

Member Since: Mar 2008
Member Points: 11

For whatever reason these questions arouse my curiosity too.

When I joined a few months ago I didn't play a welcome game, though I'm sure I was offered. I really didn't use the site much at all at first; just explored. Eventually I got a few friends-family to join and I've played solely against them. I've yet to branch out to play others (STRANGERS) that I never would have contacted if not for this site.

There must be some comfort level threshold that varies from individual to individual as to how involved they want to become and how quickly they'll get there. I seem to be the—take it easy and explore a while first—type. Others dive right in. Although it's funny - I'm far more comfortable diving in on this public blog than I am challenging someone I don't know to a game. Gotta get over that!

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