The First Week

Well the first week of CommunityWalk has come and gone. Overall I am pretty happy with the results. The site is averaging around 1500 hits a day, with between 600 and 800 unique visitors. A lot of people are coming back and a number of people have signed up. A few are even clicking on the ads. I still haven't broken the $25 for overall ad revenue yet, though, so there is a lot of work to do there. There is potential though. The site has received little media attention outside of GoogleMapsMania, who have been excellent at covering the fantastic communities people are creating. So I hope that more people will discover it and find it useful as more media pick it up.

I have to say though, that this has probably been the most stressful week I've had in a while. It is a real roller coaster. I find mood hinging on the hit counts and sign up counts. One day only a few people signed up and it really bummed me out. I really need to adjust my expectations to the long haul better. Little good comes out of constantly checking the statistics.

There is a great deal of satisfaction in it though. I have recieved a great deal of good feedback. The most satisfaction though comes from looking at the maps people create. They can really bring things to life. Most people are using it to document travels with pictures and such and it makes for a very interesting story of people's lives in different parts of the world. I really find it fascinating. If the project never amounts to much financially speaking, but allows people to document important parts of their lives in a new and interesting way then I can't say I would be all that disappointed. Of course if the project were a raging financial success I would be probably be a little bit more excited :)