The Future of WinCustomize.com...

Some changes are coming to WinCustomize.com.  Big changes.  But before we get to that, for those of you who haven't been here from the start, let me give you a brief history of WinCustomize.com...

...In the beginning the dot-com collapse of 2000 has knocked out many of the sites in our "skinning" community.  Many of us feared that it would be the end of our community. So in early 2001, Stardock quickly put together WinCustomize.com.  The idea at the time was that Stardock would provide the servers and bandwidth and community volunteers would take care of everything else.  That didn't work out so well and within the first month of the site's development, T-Man, a Stardock developer, had been put in charge of the site's development (which he continues to this day) and I came on as the primary administrator.  So that when the site was launched in March 2001, Stardock was taking care of the bandwidth, the servers, site coding, and overall site direction.  However, community volunteers did come to the rescue in the form of people like Jafo (and many others over time) who essentially take care of WinCustomize on a day to day basis.

But over time, the "skin" community has changed.  Despite skinning becoming increasingly popular, no major skin sites have been launched since 2001 (other customization-oriented sites have launched but no major gallery sites).  Moreover, since 2001, some of the existing skin sites have essentially gone on auto-pilot.  The skinning community, at its prime, was something to behold.  But it is not what it once was in my opinion. It is fractured and dispersed.

Meanwhile, traffic at WinCustomize.com has continued to grow and grow:

   
Figure 1: Traffic per month

At the same time, the # of subscriptions per month has declined and declined:

Figure 2: Subscriptions per month

So as a community of sites, we're at a cross-roads.  As someone who wants the skinning community (people who like to create and use "stuff" to alter the way their computer interfaces look & feel) to thrive, I want to do something that can help the community return to where it was.  But I'm also in the position of being in charge of Stardock.  The business case on WinCustomize has always been pretty weak.  The most profitable thing to do historically has been to close WinCustomize and just point to deviantART libraries of skins and themes for Stardock's software.  But at this point, closing WinCustomize.com would be a true last resort because a single site, deviantART, which is primarily an art site now, not a skin site, would have a virtual monopoly on skinning content (that's not to take away from Skinbase and other very good skin sites, but we're talking purely in terms of monthly traffic).

We're at a cross-roads then.  We have to get WinCustomize to a point where it can pay for itself.  I think the key to this is helping bring the skinning community back to its prime.  That means more community features, more galleries, more bandwidth, more programming, more of everything.  But to do this, it's going to cost money. Even with the people who volunteer, we still have to code the site, pay the bandwidth and the size of the site means that we need more people who's jobs are dedicated to the site.

So we've brought on two new people: Mike Bryant who many of you know.  He'll be creating some exclusive suites this year for WinCustomize subscribers.  We also have brought on WishX to help organize and keep the sites running, to interface more directly with the community volunteers.  And we hope to hire more ASP.net and SQL database developers to add in new features for people.  But to do this it's going to cost money. A lot of money.  Stardock writes most of the cost of WinCustomize off as "marketing".  But even today, WinCustomize costs many hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to run.  These changes are going to add dramatically to that cost. 

So later today, we're going to launch a subscription drive.  Our hope is to get 2,000 new (or renewed) subscribers between now and October 31st.  We'll be keeping you all informed of our progress. With 22 million visitors (over 3 million of whom are unique), getting 2,000 people to subscribe or renew shouldn't be a major problem we hope.  But we'll see.  We'll have more details on the subscription drive and what subscribers will be getting for sure and what they'll get IF we make the 2,000 goal.