I've been working away from my computer for the last two days and have finally gotten back. This is a fascinating discussion! 1.) In terms of activity, this forum holds a relatively steady amount of business. It doesn't change if we do contests or have other little programs running or such. It just keeps on keeping on about the same rate. 2.) I notice that this site isn't listed as one of the Carrara communities on the Eovia site. This is frustrating for me because this site is well known to Eovia but not advertised there like other sites. 3.) Activity does wax and wane. The summer months (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) are low times. So low that I've stopped having contests during the summers. Low business in the summer is true for Renderosity as a whole so this is no surprise. People aren't in school and they're vacationing and working on their yards more. There is also a flurry of activity from all the kids who are bored the first weeks of summer break who come in and spam the forums with junk for a little while. Then we ban them and move on. 4.) We've had a type of freebies program here where users could share stuff on a resource CD. That was a program I ran for three years and it did cost some money to run (and turned out to not be free, very disappointing). I do agree that freebies are a great deal! You can post tutorials here at Renderosity for free. We now have a great tutorial engine that users can use! People can still post freebies but they have to host it on their site. 5.) I wrote articles for about seven months. Those articles are up in the backroom now. They were part of the Renderosity magazine. Nobody has mentioned anything about them though. 6.) Renderosity offers quite a large range of services including a great gallery and the pros and well skilled hobbyists who live on this forum are of great help. Ultimately, I don't know what the reasons are that Carrara isn't growing like we would like it. Activity on this forum isn't down. The gallery is getting WAY more images in it than EVER before. I think there are more newer users than we've had in the last two years. I do think there are some things that Carrara could do to seriously get up to speed but so far, I'm not seeing them from Eovia yet. On a side note, I think the other 3D packages are coming down in price because of packages like Carrara. I think that's a good sign (at least I'm deluding myself into that line of thinking). -Kix

-Kix