Future of Money SE, What should be the next logical step

Question

Its nearly a year [356 days as per area51], and we dont seem to make up whatever it takes to get this as a full site.
Quite a few site that were started with us have already graduated but I dont think they are doing well. The best example being:
http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/170/home-improvement
After 8 Months in Beta & And 4 Months in Launch
Total Questions: 2280 till now.

http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/1265/photography-and-photographic-editing
After 4 months of Beta & 8 months of Launch
Total Questions: 3000

Some of the other sites that started later then us have graduated, most recently being;
http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/8431/it-security
After 8 Months of Beta & 7 Days of Launch: Total Questions - 1K
Page Visits: 912

I think the key parameter this site is lacking is new users comming and answering the questions. It looks more like same old users keep on answering. As per the recent blog on SO, http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/07/power-laws/

So the question is what should we do about the future of this site?

Answer 1

Money SE was doing really well for awhile and then it got hit with a summer slowdown. That's not unusual but there's a few other sites that came out in the queue to graduate before Money. The site is generally doing well enough queue it up for graduation, but we're looking for a bit more steady growth before committing to a graduation date. Take a look at this blog post I just published.

Does this site have a chance of succeeding

What you can work on —

4.6 questions per day is worrying. I think this site can do better. It's not the quantity of questions which is of concern. There is a concerning lack of intriguing questions and a steady group of top users to answer them. The way to combat that is to look for opportunities for high-quality content (like Joel just started on Apple SE). Take a look at the blog post linked above, and to use those social bookmarks!

It's time for a community Cleanup

This site can use a bit of a cleanup effort. There are a lot of questions which should never have passed community scrutiny. This community is much stronger now, so it's time to start a community-wide cleanup. If a question isn't worth answering ("unanswerable" as asked, or low quality), start ridding yourselves of that cruft. I'm estimating that the bottom ~10% of this site's questions are completely forgettable content that nobody would ever miss. Just delete it. That clean-up effort is best initiated and organized through a meta post. Go for it.

In the meantime, focus on keeping your quality high, look for opportunities to attract new users (like Joel's OS X Lion initiative here), and use those social bookmarks to promote your most intriguing content.

Answer 2

So the question is what should we do about the future of this site?

Get the word out! Post to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogs, etc. Just make sure it's appropriate and you're not spamming.

Basically the issue is concern about having a large enough user base to make for a healthy site. You may notice that the questions/day stat is less than stellar.

That said, it may just be deemed good enough. (I'll refrain from spreading anything unofficial, but feel free to read between the lines.)