Let the Users Do the Work
Now, I’m not saying this is a model that anyone else should adopt. This is merely an observation of my experience here at Crappy Graphs. I found myself reflecting on the user submission section after recently passing the milestone of 1,000 user-submitted graphs.
As any blogger knows, it takes a considerable amount of work to get a blog off the ground — setting up the site and generating its initial content. Many bloggers may relate to the decline in effort put into a site after a couple of months. It becomes less exciting. It’s no longer something you think about all the time. You end up not going to the site for weeks at a time.
With Crappy Graphs, I decided to create the user submission section. This required much more effort than posting a few graphs here and there. However, once it was completed, I was able to resume the decline of effort and let the amount of content on the site sky rocket on its own.
Since the site launched in June, I have drawn about 20 graphs. A Google search on CrappyGraphs.com shows that the search engine has indexed about 300 pages of content. Quality aside, it would take me years at this pace to come up with that many graphs.
The concept is in no way groundbreaking, but it still manages to surprise and fascinate me.
August 4th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
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