How do you increase activity on a tracker?

If you follow blogs, dozens of private trackers are popping up everyday. Some have many great new innovative ideas, and some tend to be duds that are just as generic as every other tracker. When I was new to BT, I tended to jump on these sites alot, curious to see what they would offer. But now, I'm pretty much ambivalent to any new post of a torrent site. I have rarely joined a new site, and for the most part I just simply just pass.

Why? Its simple. Lack of activity. Many trackers have great new promises: ratio free this, ratio free that, unique bonus system, filling an interesting niche, ect. ect. But one that has always kept me from coming back to the site: I check back, afters days or months, and the tracker is still the same as before: a veritable ghost town of 1 (or sometimes 0) seed torrents. There may be some great and dedicated uploaders, but with no activity, retention will die off within a matter of days. Their seedboxes can only hold so much before they have to cut off the torrent. Even many established trackers seem to have this problem as well. I won't mention any specifics, but when user activity lacks, so does my willingness to use the site.

This effect seems to snowball into a problem that just gets worse. When there is a lack of activity, many other users begin to feel that the tracker is lacking as well. In turn, they don't download from the site either. This spirals into a never ending problem, and is in my opinion the number one cause of failure for a new torrent site.

So how do we solve this problem? Institute a ratio free system in a unestablished trackers and seeds will cut off after the minimum seed time. Establish a strict ratio system and everyone will be cautious of wasting their ratio on a site with few leechers, and activity will suffer even more.

Another interesting point I noticed was from BCG: In attempts to spur even more activity (BCG is certainly isn't short of peers, and with SP system + recycled torrents the site is extremely ratio friendly), stoi upped invites even further, giving anyone over 6 months old 5 invites. Invitees came in by the masses, but activity didn't seem to increase significantly. Stoi though that perhaps this may be due to the concept that increasing invites decreases the "l33tness" and rarity of a site, and due to that, new invitees are less likely to use a a site thats "so easy" to get in to. That provides an interesting point: One could try to open registrations to increase peer activity. But does that make there site seem less "leet" and "exclusive", and as of thus decrease peer activity as well?

So the question is: How do you increase activity on a tracker?

Speaking from personal experience here, I found you have to differentiate your site from other torrent communities. So many trackers pop up all the time with an unmodified or slightly modified Gazelle/TBDev base and the same generic content.

Your site needs to:
-Be accessible, but not open
-Have unique content (i.e. it fills a niche, not the usual 0-day crap)
-Have an active and committed staff team, that actually uploads to and leeches from their own site (generates more activity leading by example)
-Get publicized on blogs like FSF, TF, etc and filesharing forums like this one

I think the biggest problem is the majority of people who hear about and sign up at new trackers are already committed to one or more other trackers.

FWIW I remember IPT and SCC seeming pretty quiet. Sometimes it takes years...

good question. there are a few trackers out there that are certainly not lacking in activity and never will because they are at the top of their game. I'm not talking about leet trackers although all the top tracker's i'm a part of seem to be doing great. I'm talking about niche trackers. For example my mma tracker ;) , my extreme sports tracker, my NHL tracker etc. It seems any new tracker that comes out as a general tracker is destined to fail. Don't even try, the odds are massively stacked against you. I think TF mentioned there are still 40 new trackers a month popping up. All 500 new trackers that pop up in the next year will fail except for the dedicated and if they don't have a nice niche within the next year they will eventually give up when there is no activity.

Great topic.

To survive and be sustainable, there's got to be enough ticks on the list of strategies that can make you...survive and be sustainable, in order for it to work.

There's lots of things on this list, like developing and maintaining a loyal community, being awesome, being unique (content-wise and feature-wise), things like that. Some sites thrive for a different combination of reasons than others.

As for torrent activity itself - in all honesty, torrents has DDL to compete with these days, increasingly so, and *content* really is key to ensuring success of a tracker. If your site is awesome enough, people will keep on seeding your torrents in support of it and because they want to be able to keep on downloading new torrents from your site. (via your ratio/seeding rules).

Simplest fix would be to simply stop creating masses of trackers.
People who do that should dedicate that time to make one of the current ones better instead.
Most of the time some new tracker pops up the admin(s) fits one of following:
1) Someone lost in BitTorrent sad dreams who wants to make some wanted "leet tracker" or whatever and become "famous" (fail, become famous in something real instead...).

2) Someone who is unhappy about some things about current things on certain tracker. Should try to make that tracker better instead rather than ragequit and attempt to make own one...

3) Someone who doesn't really know much about torrents and makes tracker just for practice/lulz and doesn't really care if it dies.

All 3 fail.
Then there's of course 4th that's success and that is people who really just want to make good tracker that fills some uncovered area but it's VERY rare at this point.
Can't see real need for any more trackers, there's way too many already.

It's easy...

Phase 1: Collect Members
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Successful Tracker

:P

It's being more and more difficult to create a successful nowadays. It's not what it used to be a few years back.

So, here's what i think a successful site needs nowadays:

- Dedicated staff and uploaders (and not the kind that are looking just for fame)
- Good coder(s)
- Unique content (like said before, there's enough 0day out there)
- New ideas (focusing on making the users active specially)

Being known in the bt world can be a great advantage or a disadvantage.

Don't know if I'm forgetting something, but these points are essential :)

Edit: As for being small and secretive... that doesn't work anymore. People get curious, they get in, and then they never login again.

Ok here it is in a nutshell. You need to have other activities on your tracker besides just seeding and leeching. The most successful tracker I have ever been on does the following to keep the members hanging around.
1. Uploads releases within minutes of their appearing on the scene.
2. Has a very active Forum with games on it as well as other topics.
3. Has a variety of Arcade games
4. Has a casino where members can gamble their ratio. This includes video poker, Slot machine, roulette and blackjack. In addition members can wager their ratio directly against each other in a 50/50 bet propisition.
5. Has a live chat window open on all pages where members can just chat if they are online. This is open on all the pages and does not require any special downloads or anything else to access.
6. Rewards seeding with a formula system. The speeds on the site are always blazing fast.
7. The Sysop has programmed an exclusive Role Playing Game that he adds sections to periodically for members to play and compete in.
8. Staff is plentiful and helpful and available in the Shout box 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
9. There is always a contest going to fill requests where the winners (those who fill the most requests in a given period win prizes)
10. There are two weekly lotteries for gigs.
11. Questions pm'd to particular staff are usually answered within an hour and rarely later than 24 hours from the request time.

In short, Content, availability of competent courteous staff, easy communication and entertainment to keep folks hanging around the site for other reasons than just to seed and leech. In other words, a community where folks participate and make friends. Now if this sounds like a lot of effort to be successful, well it is. Success does not come by posting a url and expecting people to come flocking to you. You have to work and earn it.

TO me its simple,
If its a good site with lots of people wanting in (there's 50 or so just published in a survey) then have minimum amount of torrents downloaded per month. Make it something like around 6 or so. If your not meeting the minimum then u get a warning. couple warnings then account deleted. Many people are members at 5-15 top sites , yet only use 1-2 of them. If your not using the account someone else should get a chance to use it. I had some other accounts but i wasn't using them so I left them dormant , they gave me a warning and I let them expire.

I think another idea would be to tie into your ratio ( on ratio sites) your activity. THe more items downloaded the more it imporves your ratio. SOme have bonus points but many sites bonus points are useless.