During the first week of the survey this month members responded for 14,711 cars. This broke the previous record–by three cars.

As encouraging as this is, I feel far more members should be participating, and have been giving a lot of thought to how to make this happen. People sometimes tell me they respond as a favor to me, and this is neither accurate–since the purpose of the site is to help as many people as possible, not me personally–nor do I expect it to be much of a motivator. Would it help if people had a stronger sense of how their responses help other members? If so, how can we provide this sense?

We’ve had a testimonials page for years, but few people visit it. Plus I’m often the one who is thanked. Members aren’t thanking each other, which is what really needs to happen. What might we add to the site to enable and encourage this?

I also understand that more people need to feel a stronger benefit from the site, and we’ll continue to make improvements to it. Among other things, we intend to present our information in a clearer, simpler form for people who don’t have the time to dig into all of the details we provide, while providing as much detail as possible to those who appreciate it.

Finally, it might be time to re-examine how we structure memberships. We absolutely intend to keep providing anyone who helps provide the site’s information each quarter with a free membership. But far too many people agree to help with the survey to get a free membership, use the site, then never participate. This isn’t fair to those who do take the time to participate, and doesn’t exactly motivate me to keep putting in the insane hours I put in each week.

When something is given away so easily and freely, people might be less likely to see any value in it, and thus be less likely to participate. Which reduces the benefits for everyone. One possibility: restricting new free memberships to people referred by existing members. But if we did this, would enough members refer their friends and family? Might being able to get others free memberships become a tangible benefit of being a member, if it cost money to join otherwise? After all, giving someone a gift that is free to anyone anyway isn’t much of a gift.

Your thoughts?