Does anyone know anyone that is experienced with Flash programming and development? I need to bounce some ideas off someone that has experience building games and applications with this language..

Please advise, thanks.

How indepth? I have a programmer that works for me thats done some flash stuff for us but not full fledge gaming system stuff.

Well, in-depth enough to develop something that might be "game" like. I'm trying to explore some ideas for tools or toys to give readers of this site more to play with and do when they come out to the site. More features, more fun, if you will. It's getting increasingly harder for the little guy to compete with the big guys and if this site is going to survive long-term we need to continually reinvent ourselves. Not that we're in "trouble" per se, but traffic is down due to a recent Google update that pretty much chopped visits in half and every time this happens I start thinking about the 10 year plan.

I thought having a small game out here would be fun, or perhaps change the giveaway structure where if you submit a review or add content in some way you get to pull the one arm bandit on a golf themed slot machine that rewards with the occasional "gift card" 3 of a kind.. something, I don't know.

More tools too. I think it was kevboy_telford that started a thread with a tool that helps determine club distance based on several variables. I tried it and it didn't appear to be working, but I like the idea.

Anyway, I'm mostly thinking out loud here, but of course budget is going to have a lot to do with our capacity to implement new things. I'm also thinking of more ways to democratize the site, get readers more involved, or increase ownership somehow. I think there's strength in numbers and 10 people working on this site (or 20 or 30) are going to create a much better resource for golfers than one guy who spends a couple hours a night outside his day job.

I've got the user-article entry form in programming right now and after that I'm queuing up the golf course review entry form. But I want to make sure I've got projects slated for after that too. But I want these things to be of value. Anyway, FWIW..

Thoughts? I'm rambling..

Chris, some sites have monthly contests where site sponsors give away something, it's a random drawing where you post an entry on that monthly contest thread.
Then the person who winds the thing has to post a review.
One sponsor provided a putter for people to try out and review, he sent it out all over the country over the course of a couple of months (each person had a week with it). It is good for the sponsor, because he gets free advertising from word of mouth and maybe someone who demo's it likes it so much they buy one.

Thanks Aimee.. that's not a bad idea as long as the sponsor agrees to manage the shipping costs, etc.

As you know, the goal here is to generate more reviews, and unique, useful content so that would definitely add to what's currently coming in. Obviously, it's content that drives more of the free search engine traffic because the Google, Yahoo, and MSN's of the world index that content and bring new visitors in. Unfortunately paying for traffic just doesn't work because the RPV (revenue per visitor) for this site is only $0.04 normally, which doesn't cover the cost of most minimum cost per click advertising programs.

Normally we see a review or two every day or two, but this month has been slower since traffic dropped. We probably have about 12 reviews submitted so far this month. I do have the $100 gift card running right now, but that doesn't seem to be much of a motivator. I think some people are leery of contests or just figure "I would never win" so they don't contribute. Or maybe the review submission form is too complicated - who knows. I wish there was some novel, unique way to encourage folks to submit content. Like a rewards system somehow. I talked with Scott about this a while back, but the hard thing is that to implement anything usually takes some programming.

I also thought that I could do a pay per review concept, but we operate with such a tight margin, that it wouldn't make sense to pay any more than a buck or two per review. Considering the average person could probably bang 4 out an hour that's better than minimum wage, but that really doesn't appeal to most people anyway.. plus, you'd have to have access to a lot of equipment to keep contributing and actually make any money from it.

I'm confident though that we'll figure something out though. We can compete with some of the larger sites for traffic, it's just going to take some creativity and a community effort. It's the challenge that's fun though. It's really exciting when you come up ahead of some huge web properties on various search terms.

So I'll stop rambling for now, but sometimes thinking out loud helps!

Anyone feel free to respond. Maybe I should issue GGR stock and get everyone involved.. LOL.. there's power in numbers!

It motivates me!
I haven't had time to write up a review yet. I have at least 3 things to review so far. After that, my reviews will slow down unless I start reviewing the daily weather.

Can I make this 3-in-a-row win? I'll try!

$100 gift card would motivate me too, however, it is still winter and I haven't golfed since last august. and I do have a few things to review.

Chris, remember that if the prize gets to be too big, you'll have scammers...people who post under multiple names to increase their odds!

No, we would never do that, would we?

You can have multiple entries. More reviews from me = more entries = increased odds of winning. I think that was the whole idea Chris had in mind. But that Scott and Don characters keep getting in my way!

Yeah, posting under different names doesn't really matter, everyone is welcome to submit as many as possible. I take a random number generator and use the starting review ID number from the beginning of the contest and the ending ID number so I don't even look at the name until it spits it back at me.

OK, so duly noted... I should probably update a contest winners page or something though. Maybe I will start that from the last contest with DocT.

Why not make it easy on yourself and just put my name for every month from here on.

Well, we'll be adding more opportunities for folks to contribute, aside from reviews. From a per capita standpoint, once you've reviewed everything you have in your bag, there's not much more you can contribute aside from participating in the forums. That's why I'm working on a user article submission form, that will allow your own picture and video attachments, and a golf course review form. I think that will help with contributions. It's just taking a while to develop with our programmer.

I think we also need some tools or things that will cause folks to link to the site or forward to friends - like that yardage calculator that kevboy_telford found. I'm wondering if there are other useful golf related utilities out there we could add to our bag here at GGR.

Perhaps some good articles on how to use certain equipment items. Such as "how to best utilize a range finder" or GPS, or that new hybrid.

In summary, more useful stuff. What do you guys think? I know I'm always pitching new ideas out there to try and develop a strategy for where to take the site, but you guys always offer good feedback, so thanks for your opinions...

Well another tool would be a handicap tool. Yahoo offers one and there are a few others but there aren't too many free ones. But a system where people could enter their scores and get a handicap would be useful, maybe even track stats like GIRS, FIRS, etc. The one I use at my club doesn't let me enter in my statistics just my scores.

I do think having course reviews wouldbe nice but it would take a while to get enough reviews to make people come here just for that. but over time it shoudl build up.

I definitely like Scott's idea of a handicap system. I have been working on my own spreadsheet / golf log that calculates my handicap, but I am not the greatest with creating excel formulas.