Posting classes several months in advance

Hello fellow facilitators and potential facilitators,

    Based on my past experience,
it seems to me that it takes several months on the EXCO website
for some classes to gather enough people to make a good group.

    I am guessing that about half of the classes
do not succeed after only one month on the website.
This would be especially true of classes
that offer ideas so specialized
that only a small percentage of visitors
to the EXCO website will decide to join.

    One of my classes was on the EXCO website for over a year
before there were enough committed people to make a class.
(This was: Becoming More Authentic:
The Positive Side of Existentialism.)

    Given the current numbers of visitors to the EXCO website,
MOST classes will not gather enough participants
in the one month between the deadline
and the beginning of classes for each term.

    The chances of success can be increased
by more ADVANCE PLANNING:
Get your course listed SEVERAL MONTHS
before the first meeting.
Every day, new people look at the EXCO website.
So every day, someone might join your class.

    For example, the months of November and December
of each year will have very few active classes.
But the classes that will begin in January and February
of the next year (or even later)
can still be listed on the EXCO website.
Then the website will not be bare between terms.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Another way to gather more participants
is to increase the number of visitors to the EXCO website.
If twice as many people visit in any given period of time,
each class will gather enough people
in half the time that used to be required.

    Ideas for increasing the number of visitors to our website
should be another forum topic.
What experiments are worth trying?

Yours,
James Park, EXCO facilitator