pr0n=insta traffic! I'd be willing to help out anyway I can of course, I'll e-mail my video resume and pics to you straight away ioi (though you may have to forgive the quality of the pics, for taking a picture of yourself with a cellphone in some of those positions is very difficult to do).
Seriously though, becoming a jack of all trades and master of none wouldn't be wis, so trying to create a completely comprehensive news/reviews/ect ect wouldn't be that great of an idea. Networking with other larger sites may not be a terrible idea, but I'm not overly informed of the benefits and drawbacks as such. But being able to partner with IGN would give some definate pull and credibility to the site, which in turn makes you more powerful, and gives more partners to increase the accuracy of the data.
Personally, I think focusing on the meta-game that sales has created, as well as social networking (which is all the rage with them whippersnappers these days) is the way to go. A well organized predictions league that anyone with an account can participate in would be a big draw I think. Have moderators that work specifically on that, setting up contests (console sales for the month of january, 1st month sales of wiifit in the us, 1st week sales of MGS4, endless possibilites) and have a way that they participants can easily submit their predictions in a way that it's not ridiculously overwhelming for a couple of mods to sort through hundreds or thousands of entries, and then keep scores based on accuracy (nailing it within a certain margin of error can score 3 points, getting within 50,000 range or what have you scores 2 points, ect).
The sales meta game has become huge largely because of your site as well as NPD releasing public numbers. People are interested in that, will argue for hours about it, and thats alot of the reason we are here now. But aside from the occasional crow eating thread, we aren't held accountable in any meaningful way about our predictions.
Now imagine this. Say your prediction league becomes incredible successful, thousands are playing it, scores are tallied regularly, some people are great at it have high scores, high accuracy % at predicting sales of games, or platforms, or how a company will fair in it's quarterly report. You now have your own freelance team of market analysts with a trackable record. A large group of minds that know how the market works, all acting in tandem to produce data that on a regular basis is accurate within a certain margin of error. Wouldn't it be incredible if two years from now news sites were quoting VG chartz as a source of future predictions? Instead of an MSNBC story quoting pachter it states "The consensus from the VGchartz predictions room is that there is a 70% chance that Madden 2010 is going to sell considerably below EA's estimations". How awesome would that be? Now that's a pie in the sky, best case scenario thing, but the potential is there. If organized well, if data is constantly collected and disected (which is what this place does so well) then you could make useful application of the knowledge of hundreds of analysts that are better at the job than the ones that get paid to do it.
Anyway, that's my idea. (by the way if you make millions off of it, can I at least get a little bit of it?)
You can find me on facebook as Markus Van Rijn, if you friend me just mention you're from VGchartz and who you are here.
