[Taiki]

Ahh I know this will be considered Necroing but I really want to a part of this conversation.

I joined Syndrone but I will NEVER donate money to them. People on that team have started at least 4 other avi sites that they have given away or let die so I won't trust them. The team keeps changing but I believe there's a couple of people that stay the same and they started Chloria, Elidiun, Terrasus, and now Syndrone. Terrasus only lasted a few months. I don't know how true this is but I've hear that most of those people are like 17 years old so they don't know anything about running a business.

I've even noticed that Chloria and Ernya have posted things about needing more donations to survive.

As for avi sites dying. I believe it's a bunch of things, not so much people losing interest. People do lose interest but those sites usually don't do any advertising so they won't get new users to replace the ones that leave. Plus most sites don't innovate and just copy what Gaia does. Just because they have a different "theme" than other avi sites doesn't mean they are necessarily different. Being stagnant, even if you're releasing items on time every month (donation items and commons) and having basic events... if you do nothing more than that, people will still lose interest. Avi sites need to step up their game if they want to survive but since most don't make a lot of money, I don't see that happening.

They need to have more to do than just post and some games. Look at Gaia, they build all kinds of things; Towns, Fish Tanks, Puzzles, MMO, etc. Just think outside of the box. I've seen people mention it on here before, but a card game specific to the site would be awesome. Especially if those cards were somehow in part of your inventory and could obtained in a variety of ways, Au bought, Rune bought, prizes from events. Like actual collecting of cards that you could play against an AI or other people. People love card games don't they? xD Though that would take money to develop the system and art for the cards.

The most important thing I think is innovation. You must make yourself stand above the rest with actual UNIQUE features, not your own take on features everyone else already has.