First off, thank you to all who participated in our survey. The response was amazing and we got some really great feedback. 2004 was such a great year for CollectionDX. We've managed to triple our traffic and attract some good advertisers, as well as increase the amount of new content for you. We posted 131 new reviews this year, an average of one every three days, for the whole year. Add into all the great collections, news and feature articles, and you have new content almost every day.

The survey also let us know who our users are. Here's a general overview:

86% of you are male
64% of you are 25-34
55% of you are college graduates
58% of you own a video game system
Most of you make a pretty good living
65% of you said CollectionDX affected your purchasing decisions.
32% of you said you bought something because of an ad on CollectionDX.

Those are pretty important numbers. Those help us match up with advertisers that will enable us to continue to deliver top content and develop new features.

Probably the most interesting thing about the survey was the comment field. We got some great suggestions and comments, so I thought I would address some of them here.

bring back the news section. raffle and games wont hurt.

News is hard to maintain - there are so many established sites that already do a great job of covering news. What we plan on doing next year is creating a news aggregator that will collect all the toy news from other sites that provide it, and combine it with our own news coverage, to create one comprehensive news source. We will also be soliciting companies to sponsor contests throughout the year.

I would like to see the reviews to contain more actual opinions of the toys (whether they were good or not), rather than just a straightforward description.

That's a good point. When you write as many reviews as I do, It can be hard to not fall into a rut. In the future we will try to add an opinion as to what we think of the toy. Keep in mind, what we may not like you may find fantastic. In 2005, we're going to be enabling commenting on reviews. If you disagree with our opinion, you'll now be able to let the world know.

A monthly Yahoo Japan search link wishlist would be cool

Another new feature we are looking into is to really create a dynamic YahooJapan page. We're going to allow submission of search terms, error notification, and yes, maybe even wishlists. We also hope to tightly integrate the system into on-line translators and proxy bidding services to make shopping on YahooJapan easy!

Scrap the cookie cutter reviews of toys from the same line/series.

Ok, I admit, I'm guilty of this. But sometimes when the same characteristics apply to the same toys, like with the Medabot models, it can't be helped. Some people find these pages through search engines, and only read one of the reviews, so it is important that the same facts be on each toy. I know it is not exciting for a regular reader, but bear with me, it doesn't happen often.

I'd love to see people be able to post huge collections, not just the 5-6 images

Typically I just post what people send me. So if there are only a few images, thats all the user sent. I also tend not to post photos that are blurry or out of focus.

Find out what happened to gundam toys, please

This is something I hear a lot. "More Soul of Chogokin", " More Gundam", etc... The main reason you don't see a lot of Gundam, Transformers, Zoids or other lines not covered here is because its not what I collect. For a while I was into Gundam, but I got burnt out on it. I have all the Soul of chogokins, but I want to space them out. If there is a toy line you want to see covered, let me know. Or better yet, write it yourself! We are always looking for people to review toys. I try to keep the mix interesting and keep CollectionDX well rounded. Hopefully I can expose you to toys you've never seen before.

forum...discussion

Currently we use Robot-Japan's discussion board. Hosting a discussion forum is time consuming and often more trouble than its worth. Trolls, spam, giant pages filled with animated icons.. I feel that would detract from CollectionDX as a whole. There are already many bulletin boards on the internet devoted to Japanese toys. What I hope to do on CollectionDX is to have discussion through comments on individual reviews, articles and news. Keep tuned for more details as we head into 2005.

Inventory system for collection that collectors can make certain parts public, others private.

One of the coolest new features we will be implementing is a user system, where you will be able to establish a profile, create want lists, and checklists of toys on CollectionDX. You will have a central page that keeps track of your discussions, reviews and your own collection. It's gonna be awesome.

2005 will be a big year for CollectionDX. We'll be covering Toy Fair in New York in February, and rolling out new features all throughout the year. Thanks again for all your support through the year, and we look forward to an even better year in 2005!

Thanks!

Josh

JoshB with Astro Boy