This might not be the appropriate thread to ask this, but I feel that if I create an Ask HN with just this, nobody will see it and I won't get any responses.
I've been running a website for over 15 years, something popular, on a specific topic. It has no ads; I only have Patrons who give me between 100 and 200 dollars per month. I don't get many visits (between 800 and 1200 per day, except on special days with some news where I can get many more).
I grew up in the era of web rings and old websites, and aside from being very nostalgic, I would love to go back to that. And I know that if I don't start, others won't either. But I have this constant debate about whether I should do it and follow my desires or what the audience wants. I feel that if I do that, people will stop taking the website seriously. Unfortunately, visitors come to my website, and if they don't see something modern and well-done, they won't take it seriously.
So I'm between a rock and a hard place: do I follow my desires and do what I like, knowing that it may cost me an audience? Or do I adapt to trends to try to get more visits and new readers?
I don't know if anyone has the answer, but I would like to hear your opinions (any type of opinion is welcome).
Sorry - I gave the example of the Patrons to give an idea of how much people consume me. I don't do it for the money - I invest a lot of money in fact, paying contributors, etc. I just want to be an important voice in this topic and have some kind of influence.
Nothing says you can't sorta do both. You can have a simple but clean looking website that both makes people nostalgic for the old days yet is still easy to navigate in the modern era, and that website can be part of whatever webrings you want to be part of.
Besides, what people count as modern or usable varies a lot depending on the niche, and if your content is good enough... well, you can get away with a lot of archaic design there. I mean, look at Serebii.net. Biggest Pokemon site in the world, probably the defacto source for information for many people in the community... and it's barely updated its layout in the last decade or two.
Heck, in more niche subject areas you have literally every website sticking to fairly traditional web design principles. Retro gaming and computing sites (like those about 8-bit computers, video game mods or demoscene stuff) tend to look about as retro as their subject area, and very few people care about that.
So, either mix them together since these things aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, or do whatever knowing that if your content is good enough, the aesthetics won't exactly matter a huge deal.
I've been running a website for over 15 years, something popular, on a specific topic. It has no ads; I only have Patrons who give me between 100 and 200 dollars per month. I don't get many visits (between 800 and 1200 per day, except on special days with some news where I can get many more).
I grew up in the era of web rings and old websites, and aside from being very nostalgic, I would love to go back to that. And I know that if I don't start, others won't either. But I have this constant debate about whether I should do it and follow my desires or what the audience wants. I feel that if I do that, people will stop taking the website seriously. Unfortunately, visitors come to my website, and if they don't see something modern and well-done, they won't take it seriously.
So I'm between a rock and a hard place: do I follow my desires and do what I like, knowing that it may cost me an audience? Or do I adapt to trends to try to get more visits and new readers?
I don't know if anyone has the answer, but I would like to hear your opinions (any type of opinion is welcome).