How/why did you find elitefourum?

ayoveer · 2024-02-05T19:30:38.728Z

I was doing reseach on Gold Stars, one thing lead to another and wild SMPratte video appeared. This year is 5th active year on E4 and 5th active year trying to get every Gold Star.

lyleberr · 2024-02-05T19:43:22.085Z

Well you seem to be doing a bang up job of participating so far. When I think of E4… i think of great pokemon tcg facts, but when I think of stagecoach… I think of your claim to fame

pfm · 2024-02-05T19:44:26.199Z

I’m sure we could do a much better job of spreading the e4 gospel across social media sites. But no one on the current staff has any desire to run any social media account (aka advertisement campaign) like the e4 instagram. Or like posting links to reddit in an inorganic way. @Quuador has already done a good job in the past of posting links to e4 on reddit when it’s been relevant, from what I’ve seen personally. Generally, most users find out about the site via word-of-mouth or google.

It’s tough though because when we switched domain names, the “reputation” of the forum from the perspective of google had to start from fresh. So it took a long time to have those organic links getting planted across the internet again. Google ranks sites higher if they are frequently linked to. So for a while, we were pretty stagnant in terms of new members because there was zero attempt at social media outreach and zero organic search traffic. We are in a far better position now, with a lot of new members signing up every day like @Exocraze in this thread.

Personally I don’t prioritize trying hard and consistently to grow the active member count. I think we could do better but I’d rather hit my head against the wall than shovel links into facebook groups or run an instagram advertisement account. Instead, a large priority is to always have fresh blood coming in and some percentage of those users will stick. People come and go on the forum and in the hobby more generally, it can be a bit sad but that’s how it is. The true death spiral of a forum is when you lose a critical mass of regular users, which we are very far from but is inevitable if you don’t get any new members joining. Either way, we are well beyond that now that Google traffic has picked up.

If you want to help out the cause, just post a link to the forum on an external site whenever it is relevant.

Soda_Eesti · 2024-02-05T19:45:40.484Z

Discovered Through a “Pokemon Showdown! Beta” User, Tsunami Papi, known here as Tsunami Surskit. I checked out a little bit of the forum then made an acc. I now lurk here, and still have no idea what is going on 90% of the time, and make posts all the time. (Again Sorry For mentioning this) Since i play competitively i NEED to collect cards for the format i play, and like. and after looking at a few article topics for Base-Neo i was hooked.

Cheers!

D3F14NC3 · 2024-02-05T19:55:13.378Z

pfm:

If you want to help out the cause, just post a link to the forum on an external site whenever it is relevant.

im-doing-my-part-serious

pfm · 2024-02-05T20:32:13.087Z

5 posts were merged into an existing topic: Elite Fourum Memes

D3F14NC3 · 2024-02-05T20:02:36.042Z

In the early 2010’s I started getting into collecting more seriously. I originally found E4 when I was searching online for obscure promos and variations.

I’m usually slow to join new sites. I joined Reddit in 2020, and I regularly saw links to E4 and was told how knowledgeable everyone here was. I saw many links from @Quuador .

I lurked for many years and only created an account last year because I wanted to become more active and feel like part of a community rather than being a lone wolf collector. I glad I finally joined after lurking for over a decade.

gengarbrigade · 2024-02-05T22:00:30.954Z

@PokemonRadar suggested video on YouTube brought me back to Pokémon. @smpratte led me to e4 back in December of 2019.

I find myself using the forums now more than discord which used to be the total opposite

coil · 2024-02-05T23:03:23.596Z

I think like multiple others I saw Quuador post on r/pkmntcgcollections (which is a much nicer sub than r/pokemontcg) and I made an account so I could ask him to make a Magnemite list.

mrtz · 2024-02-05T23:11:20.848Z

Same as most here, bought a few random collection lots in 2018 and found Scotts videos. Took me like a year+ to learn he even had a forum lol

trainerred661 · 2024-02-05T23:12:17.934Z

I first heard of E4 when it was UPCCC. I couldn’t remember if it was Thor Gene or @fourthstartcg that introduced me to it, so I looked it up lol

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I wonder how many pikachu illustrator owners are on the site now

Charizard1020 · 2024-02-05T23:20:31.180Z

I lurked the proboards for a while then I decided I had to make an account and participate. It’s been so fun!

filthynwah · 2024-02-05T23:33:47.985Z

Rattle videos when he was going on about the Logan Paul case being fake before it was opened. I signed up, seemed like a good group of people.

Neutral · 2024-02-05T23:37:01.337Z

@Viral told me to join. Maybe his story is more exciting.

crosscards · 2024-02-05T23:44:02.823Z

It was the combination of SMPratte videos and Rattle’s unpopular opinions in Pokemon videos if I recall correctly. Eventually I heard the name of the site so much from those that I came along.

lyleberr · 2024-02-06T00:23:16.308Z

It was nicer when r/pokemontcg was 99% trash posts and anyone who actually wanted to learn about collections went the r/pkmntcgcollections. Its much slower now that r/pokemontcg enacted more rules and cleaned up a lot of the trash posts that were common, now people can post over there and the collections sub gets forgotten a lot. Still a good place to see some really cool stuff though, kinda like the misprints sub.

thundermoo · 2024-02-06T00:55:19.862Z

Gem Mints YouTube channel!

nic · 2024-02-06T01:03:36.891Z

Personally I kept looking up information about obscure pokemon cards and kept ending up on E4, so i decided to join!!

mthursty · 2024-02-06T02:23:02.296Z

I started buying packs in first year of university back in 2013, got bored of the TCG and swapped to video games. My friends and I would breed pokemon and battle each other and occasionally I’d play on pokemon showdown.
In 2014 I started following TheJWittz on YouTube who made awesome pokemon content. Some videos on pokemon cards as well.
One of the summers between university I went home and searched for my old cards I had from growing up. That led to me picking up collections around my city and eventually stumbling upon smpratte on YouTube around 2016.
In fact the first thing I ever bought on eBay was a Please Trade from Scott in 2017.
I lurked for a little while on E4 and then joined in Feb 2017!
My first pfp here was a Hooh I edited to be flying over the river that goes through my city it is very cringe. I am happy I changed to this one

jabby · 2024-02-06T02:34:04.882Z

Did some searching around for info about early/vintage Pokemon releases and couldn’t find the info I needed until E4 threads showed up. Seems like it was the only place that had concise knowledge & info on what I was looking for. From there I realized there was a wealth of knowledge to read and find on here. Overall this site has opened up the hobby to me in such a huge way, I never would have guessed it would be this big when I first got back into things.